David Littman (activist): Difference between revisions

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David Gerald Littman (b. July 4, 1933, London, England) is a British historian^[1][2] and a human rights activist^[3] at the United Nations in Geneva, operating in various NGOs gathered under the name "Association for World Education". He is the husband of Bat Ye'or.^[4]

Littman married in 1959 and moved to Switzerland the next year with his wife Gisèle, who later became known under the pseudonym Bat Ye'or. In 1960, they moved to Lausanne, Switzerland.

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization was founded by his brother, Louis Littman.^[5]

He was educated at Canford School, Dorset, England, and Trinity College, Dublin, where he earned his BA and MA degrees in Modern History and Political Science, followed by post-graduate studies at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London.

For four months in 1961, Littman ran the Casablanca office of the Geneva-based international NGO for children Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants de l'Afrique du Nord (OSSEAN), Littman volunteered for a mission arranged with the assistance of Mossad to assist in evacuating Jewish children from Morocco, the codename for the mission was Operation Mural, after months of negotiation by Littman the children left Morocco under the guise of a supposed holiday in Switzerland. In all Littman assisted in the repatriation of 530 children immigrated to Israel.

In 1986, the 25th anniversary of the operation, a gathering of the children was arranged and Littman was honored with a certificate in recognition of his activities.^[6][7]

In 1970, with friends, the Littmans founded the Centre d'Information et de Documentation sur le Moyen Orient in Geneva, which published studies on Middle East subjects till the mid-1980s.

In 1987, Littman appeared before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, charging the Soviet delegate with antisemitism in an ascerbic diatribe,^[8] and in 1988 he appeared before a meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva which heard various "experts" discuss glastnost, in which he raised the cases of several Jews in the USSR who were being refused the right to emigrate.^[9] In August 1989, he appeared before the UN Commission on Human Rights representing the NGO the World Union for Progessive Judaism.^[10]

After 1991, Littman worked with René Wadlow, main representative of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, then with the World Federalist Movement, and the Association of World Citizens. He has been a representative at the UN in Geneva for the Association for World Education since 1997, and the World Union for Progressive Judaism again since 2001. During his work at the UN, he has delivered or drafted over 300 oral and written NGO statements to the CHR and the Sub-CHR.

In 1997, Littman responded to a Palestinian Authority charge, that Israel had infected Palestinians with AIDS, by reminding the Commission in a speech that he made to it that it was not the first time such libels were leveled at Israel, as in 1983 then-PLO-chairman Yasser Arafat accused Israel of "poisoning Palestinian schoolgirls" in a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General, a charge later shown to be false by a team of independent medical experts.^[11]

Early in his publishing career, Littman's writings were published in the Wiener Library Bulletin, a periodical of the Wiener Library. Others have been published by the Centre d' Information et de Documentation sur le Moyen-Orient (CID), an organization of which Littman and his wife were co-founders. The CID disseminated its publications by mailing them to prominent people and institutions. Littman also published historical writings with Les Editions de l'Avenir, which distributed its publications in a similar manner.^[4]

He also published a chapter in The Century of Moses Montefiore, published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, under the auspices of the Oxford University Press.^[12]

Since 1971, Littman has published articles on historical and human rights issues in academic journals, including in Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Temps Modernes, in the press, and in three books.^[4] He has translated into English many articles by Bat Ye’or, and co-translated three of her major books, the last published in 2005.

• Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel (edited and introduction by D. F. Green – pseudonym of David Littman and Yehoshafat Harkabi), Editions de l'Avenir, Geneva, 1971-76: 3 eds. in English, 2 eds. in French, 1ed. in German (over 70,000 copies of all editions).
• David Littman, "Mission to Morocco (1863-1864)", in The Century of Moses Montefiore, (ed. Sonia and V.D. Lipman), Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 171-229.
• "Human Rights and Human Wrongs," N° 1 – 11 (verbatim oral and written statements: 1986-91 made by all accredited representatives of the WUPJ to the UNCHR and UN Sub-Commission, Geneva: 84 texts, of which 68 (oral) and 9 (written) by David Littman (WUPJ, Geneva, 1986-1991). (344 pages)
• David G. Littman (ed.) "Human Rights and Human Wrongs at the United Nations," Part 5 (pp. 305-472) in (Ed.) Robert Spencer, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims (Prometheus Books, Amherst, N.Y. 2005).
• "Protected Peoples under Islam" by David Littman and Bat Ye'or, CID, Geneva, 1976
• "Jews under Muslim Rule in the late Nineteenth Century," Wiener Library Bulletin 28, n.s. 35/36 (1975)
• "Jews under Muslim Rule, II: Morocco 1903-1912", Wiener Library Bulletin 29, n.s. 37/38 (1976)
• "Quelques Aspects de la Condition de Dhimmi: Juifs d'Afrique du Nord avant la Colonisation," in Yod, Revue des Etudes Hébraiques et juives modernes et contemporaines (Publications Orientalistes de France), 2: 1, October 1976 (Geneva, Avenir, May 10, 1997)
• "Jews under Muslim Rule: The Case of Persia," Wiener Library Bulletin, 32, n.s. 49/50 (1979)
• "Les Juifs en Perse avant les Pahlevi," Les Temps Modernes, 395, Juin 1979 (pp.1,910-35).
• The U.N. Finds Slavery in the Sudan, Middle East Quarterly (Philadelphia), September 1996.
• "Dangerous Censorship of a U.N. Special Rapporteur," by Rene Wadlow and David Littman, Justice (Tel Aviv) No. 14, September 1997.
• "Universal Human Rights and 'Human Rights in Islam,'" Midstream (New York) February/March 1999, pp. 2-7
• "Islamism Grows Stronger at the United Nations," Middle East Quarterly, September 1999, pp. 59-64.
• "Syria's Blood Libel Revival at the UN: 1991-2000," Midstream, February/March 2000.
• "Utopia: A 'United States of Abraham'," Part 5, Chapter 48 (pp. 453-68) (Lecture: Society for Semitic Studies, Lund University, Sweden, November 23, 1994). Part 5, Chapter 48 (pp. 453-68), in The Myth.