Remembering David G. Littman, historian, activist, and a great friend.
By RAPHAEL ISRAELIDavid and Gisele Littman(photo credit: Courtesy)
David Littman, historian, writer, financier, public figure and relentless activist at the UN in Geneva promoting human rights issues as well as supporting Israel and the Jewish People, sadly passed away on May 20, 2012 in his home town of Gland on Lake Geneva.David was born in London on July 4, 1933. For several years he was main representative at the UN for the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ). Since 1997, David was affilliated with the Association of World Citizens (AWC) and the Association for World Education (AWE).While forging a career in his family's business, David chose to continue his postgraduate studies in London's Institute of Archaeology. Among other sites, he excavated Hazor in the Galilee region of Israel under Professor Yigal Yadin in the summer of 1958.In September 1959, David married Gisèle Orebi, a Cairo-born, French-speaking fellow student who was known by her nom de plume, Bat Ye’or. As a stateless refugee, David's wife had been forced to flee Egypt in 1957. Soon after the birth of their first child, David volunteered for a delicate humanitarian mission in Morocco. Accompanied by his wife as secretary and their baby daughter Diana, David stayed in Morocco from March 15 until July 24 1961. David managed the Casablanca office of the Geneva-based international NGO for children called OSE, and used his office to smuggle out hundreds of Jewish children to Israel. The initiative, known as Operation Mural, earned David the “Hero of Silence” award, bestowed upon him by a grateful State of Israel in 2009. The venture became the subject of the film "Operation Mural Casablanca 1961" which premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival in 2007.But perhaps David's greatest claim to fame is his partnership with his wife's ground-breaking research on dhimmitude, Eurabia and the rising Caliphate of fundamentalist Islam that seeks to conquer the West through Jihad. Indefatigably supporting Orebi's work, David was her constant companion in all of her lecture tours, relentlessly defending her against her many detractors.These are the words I penned in a dedication of one of my books to this remarkable couple: To Gisele and David Littman,"What a couple!" it was said of them.In wonder of the golden half-century of their marriage,And in recognition of decades of their unflinching friendship,"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments."(William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116.)
