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JDL's death threat to David Irving at LA Show
Los Angeles, Oct. 31 -- Witnesses heard Jewish Defense league chief Irv Rubin screaming death threats at British writer David Irving today.
The writer's publishing imprint Focal Point Publications has a stand at the Great Western, the biggest militaria show in the United States. Staged twice annually in Los Angeles, the show was crowded with thousands of visitors at 1:25 PM when word was passed to the FP stand that Rubin and several thugs wearing insignia of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) had been seen entering the building.
While they searched the stands Mr Irving took necessary security measures including removing the cash box and valuables from the stand.
Rubin [right] approached the Focal Point stand accompanied by two thugs wearing grey T-shirts printed with the Star of David. Mr Irving recognised one of them as an expensively dressed man who had inspected the stand yesterday and identified himself, after asking questions about the war, only as a Jew.
As the accompanying thugs shouted at him Mr Irving stood with arms folded and said nothing. Rubin snarled in German, "Sprechen Sie deutsch," without getting a response. Since they could not threaten in German, Rubin then shouted in English, "We'll be back. We'll kill you," before running out of the building.
Other booksellers had shadowed Rubin and his thugs and told him that they had witnessed his threat. Show security and the city police were called, and the JDL thugs were escorted off the exhibition grounds, protesting, "He's a holocaust denier" -- a phrase Prof. Deborah Lipstadt claims to have invented.
Mr Irving declined a police invitation to press charges. He said: "I suppose that if Rubin comes back he, or his friends, or his lawyers, or their friends around the world, will ask if I am antisemitic; and I will reply as usual, Not yet."
