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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
Doron G of Los Angeles lectures Mr Irving, Tuesday, November 9, 2004, on the gentle graces and great virtues of Israel and its inhabitants.
A Los Angeles Jew writes about Israel to Mr Irving
I STUMBLED upon your website today and it brought tears to my eyes. I grew up in Israel, a place that taught me love, kindness, compassion, fairness, and tolerance.
I speak to you directly from my heart. I have no political association whatsoever. I did not vote in the recent election, I belong to no group. I am simply a family man who likes to write software for a living.
My mother lived through the holocaust. Her brother was killed by the Nazis when he was 16 and her father was sent on a train and returned after several months after he was dumped in a pile of bodies after a train ride that took several days. He was believed dead.
My mother and I are very close. I call her every day. I live in Los Angeles, and she lives in Israel. I heard first hand from her and from other family members and friends parents and grandparents the horrors that the Nazi's inflicted.
You are older than me, and seem versed in world history, and I haven't read all your material, but I get a sense of obvious bias. Israel is a small nation, made up of about six million Jewish people on a very small piece of land.
Regardless of anything you may think of Jews, what is the harm in them having a single piece of land to exist?
Yes, they have nuclear weapons, etc. but why? Do you think Israelis will use them except as an absolute last resort to not get innailated? No, as a former Israeli and an Israeli at heart, I can assure you that Israel is a nation of mostly good people who wish harm to no one.
Even with all the terrorism against civilians, most Israelis don't care about revenge, they simply want their kids to grow up and be happy. There is no conspiracy, if there is; I and all the Jewish people I know sure didn't get the memo.
I am telling you this as one non-perfect human to another. I think that on balance, I am more a good person than bad, and I believe that most Israelis are like me.
Sure, there are corrupt officials, Rabbis, and every kind of person. There are bad Jews and good Jews. But I know that percentage wise; there are no more bad Jews than bad Christians, bad Buddhists, bad Muslims, etc.
I need to put my kids to bed, and my wife is starting to nag me, so I'll hurry up and conclude: I want you to know that what growing up in the Jewish state has shown me is that a loving heart is stronger than a hating one.
I have no hate for you whatsoever. I hope you will dig deep inside your soul and find good. I am not religious but I do talk to god from time to time. I will pray tonight that your heart will guide you towards good.
I am never compelled to write, but I hope this letter finds you and make you think about positive things. I assume you had a hard life and maybe was hurt by someone Jewish.
If that is the case, I want to personally apologize. The saying goes "it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks", or something like that, and I assume you probably make a living by selling anti-Jewish material. Being the optimist and maybe a little naïve, I wish you can transform like in the end of the movie "Monsters, Inc." (If you haven't seen it, you must).
I hope you see this analogy appropriate and you understand what I mean. As a 34 year old Jew, I feel the pain, the happiness, the awe, the fear and the triumphs of the Jewish people throughout history. I don't know or understand why, but I do. Be healthy and happy -- I mean it from my heart. Shalom
Doron G.
Los Angeles.
[Name and address withheld by this website]
David Irving responds:
YOU ask what harm there is for six million Jews to live on a small piece of land; in abstracto, none whatsoever, and the higher the wall around them perhaps the better.
But it is not their land. They have taken the land and the homes and even the furniture in those homes from the owners, they have offered no compensation, but only hardship and death to those whom they have expelled from their ancestral homes. In the law of any land, that is stealing.
That is a very short answer, but it should suffice. I am sorry you will not let me publish your name, as there will be many others, friend and foe, who will wish to write to you messages of support or criticism. The very reluctance to listen to such messages may indicate that within yourself you are aware of the basic wrongfulness of your position.
For all the glowing praise you have for Israel, I note that you elect not to live there, but in Los Angeles (and why not: California is a beautiful country). President Harry S Truman was dismayed by what he perceived as this ingratitude of the Jewish people. "I have given them their Israel," he said, according one Oral History account, "but they are all still here."
David Irving