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For David Irving's attempts to speak at Berkeley, see our dossier.
October 25, 1995
Dear Sirs,
The following Reader's Letter addresses two items published today in the Daily Cal about the repeated attempts to stop me speaking at Berkeley. Please publish.
I am indifferent about Jennifer Rice's refusal (Letters, Oct. 24) to regard me as an historian, Every university in the Union, indeed in the U.K. and around the world, has many if not most of my thirty books in its library; for students at West Point, The Citadel, Sandhurst and other military colleges my books are required reading. [*]
As for Rabbi Rona Shapiro, whose B'nai Brith Hillel and whose sister organisation the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai Brith, have been orchestrating and funding the (often violent) attempts to silence me methinks she uses the phrase "anti-Semitic" too freely.
The topic of my talk was Freedom of Speech. What does B'nai Brith find offensive, or anti-Semitic, about that? Even had I touched upon my well-founded skepticism about technical aspects of that over-hyped tragedy, the Holocaust, is that tantamount per se to anti-semitism?
If there is rising anti-Semitism at Berkeley today, I venture to suggest it is because of the authoritarian tactics used by Shapiro to silence me and because of the street violence organised by Messrs Barbara Frank, Shadow Moyer, et al. of the Spartacists, from whom Shapiro quaintly and disingenuously disassociates herself, although they relied exclusively on the lies disseminated by the ADL. Besides, there were too many witnesses of what Adam Schwarz, former president of UCB's Israel-Action Committee, was up to on the evening of my speech on Feb. 3 for Shapiro to get away with what she has written in today's Daily Cal.
Once again, let me promise that I shall return. Eventually, Shapiro or no Shapiro, Berkeley's students will have a chance to think for themselves.
Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Further notes:
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