Conroy Said: The Blacks Should Get The Hell Out Of America

This is how the conversation outside the White House went. Mind you, this was recorded, during the daytime, in front of a TV camera.

A caucasian reporter, “What do you say about the black problem in America?”

James Conroy, a decorated news reporter and member of the White House Press Corps, “They should get the hell out of America.”

Reporter, uncomfortable laughter, “… Any better comments?”

Conroy, “They don’t belong here. They belong in Africa.”

Is that nerve?! Imagine a news-reporter in his eighties, who has authored books, covered presidential campaigns, works for ostensibly respectable media outlets, in broad daylight, in front of a running camera—calmly fielding such questions so deftly?

Is this total insensitivity? Or is he simply a disgusting (to me) racist, miserably left over from a crass, less politically correct generation of bigots. One thing is clear to me: This won’t go unnoticed. I am one hundred percent sure that all my fellow Jewish liberals will make sure Conroy is rightly stripped of any capacity to report unbiased news.

Okay. There really is no Conroy. He’s fictitious. And did not say any of the above.

But, there is a Helen Thomas. She’s on the White House Press Corps and a Hearst Newspapers Columnist. And following is, verbatim, her taped interview, outside the White House, May 27, 2010.

A Jewish Reporter: “Any comments on Israel?”

Thomas, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.”

Reporter, “Woo….,“ uncomfortable laughter, meekly, “… any better comments?”

Thomas laughs, collects her thoughts, thoughtfully looks into the camera, “Remember, these people (Arabs) are occupied. It’s their land. It’s not Germany. It’s not Poland.”

Reporter, “So, where should they go? What should they do?”

Thomas, “They’d go home.”

Reporter, “Where’s the home?”

Thomas, “Germany and Poland.”

Reporter, “So, the Jews should go back to Germany and Poland?”

Thomas, “Yes.”

Back to the author: Let’s be clear on this: I am backing the uprising of calls calling for this lady’s expulsion from the public arena.

Allow me to explain why.

I wondered how anyone in this day and age of political correctness could say such things—even more, into a camera! Here were my pondering.

Maybe Thomas is simply ignorant of some basic facts. Like, it’s not our home.

Maybe she didn’t know that our 1,000 years of sovereign rule in Israel was the most glorious period in our history. Beginning in the year 956 BCE, with King Solomon, it lasted until the year 70 AD, when the Romans destroyed our Temple and exiled us.

(Israel has been sacred to the Jews since Biblical times, when it was promised to the patriarch Abraham, 1948 BCE.)

But, during the second and third centuries our remaining and very populated centers of learning in Tiberias and Jerusalem produced the Talmud. Indeed, over the centuries, we’ve always kept a strong and vibrant presence there, to the degree allowed by the rulers.

Tel Aviv did not start in 1948. It was established, next to Arab Yaffa, in 1903.

But, Thomas couldn’t have missed those fact. She’s a decorated author.

I mused, further, maybe she thought it was kind of a funny thing.

You know, she didn’t really think about the ramifications of the message. The reporter was Jewish, too. But he was filming it, ostensibly, to air it.

So, maybe it was a joke. Telling six million Jews living in Israel they should go back to Germany and Poland, where six million of their fathers, mothers and sisters were just slaughtered. Kind of like: Ha, ha, ha. Get it? Six million, six million.

I asked a couple of my first generation holocaust survivor friends if they got the joke. Like my wife who lost 13 uncles and cousins. I didn’t see her laughing.

I don’t know, could Thomas’ apparent blind hatred be connected to the fact that both her parents were born in Lebanon?

It’s weird. I mean, if you’d said what Thomas said about any other group, they’d make sure of one thing: Her immediate expulsion from any public position. They’d argue she is fringe, racist, and demented.

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