OPEN LETTER TO PETER WALLSTEN OF THE L.A. TIMES

October 29, 2008

Dear Mr. Wallsten:

At issue is a video of a social affair for Rashid Khalidi, with Senator Barack Obama in attendance, which you are apparently withholding from the public. This tape reportedly shows that Senator Obama’s comportment during the event – being described with terms like ”Jew-bash” – conveys direct or tacit approval of the anti-Jewish sentiments voiced there and of the people who had voiced them.

I submit that the only logical, the only moral option is to release the tape: but uncut, unmodified, unedited. If it proves to be of no consequence, so much the better for Senator Obama. But if the Senator had indeed condoned the sentiments voiced in the event by today’s premier enemies and killers of Jews, then the tape offers a window on a prospective President’s true views with respect to a small and vulnerable people who have struggled for survival for so many centuries and whose survival today is anything but a certainty. I propose that the American people, indeed people everywhere, have a right to know whether, as is being alleged, a vote for Senator Obama is a vote for the death of Israel – that is, for the death of still more Jews.

These are high stakes. Indeed, it seems to me that, from a moral perspective,the decision to withhold the tape is at this point no longer yours to make, irrespective of any promises you might have made to its originator. Please let it go now. I ask this not just for us the living but to also honor the memory of the martyrs. For your convenience, I include a brief list of those – plus the only two survivors – from my own immediate family:

-- Simon and Frida Klein – died June 1944, Auschwitz
-- Evzen Klein JD – died January 1943, Ilovskoye, Russia, in a slave labor unit
-- Miroslav Kubat JD (born Klein)– 1910-2001 – survivor of 3 years of slave labor camps, then an officer in the Czechoslovak Army in exile in the USSR and a veteran of some of the most desperate battles of the war
-- Romola Klein, Miroslav's wife – died June 1944, Auschwitz
-- Miklos Klein, Miroslav's son – died June 1944, Auschwitz, at the age of 3
-- Arnost Klein, PharmD – died on the Eastern Front, time and place unknown, in a slave labor unit
-- Ilonka Klein – died June 1944, Auschwitz
-- Bartholomew Kubat MD (born Klein) 1917-2004 – survivor of 6 years of slave labor camps, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Lieberose, Sachsenhausen
-- Etel Klein – died June 1944, Auschwitz

Mr. Wallsten, a great many people are looking over your shoulder now – millions who still live, still more millions out of empty eye sockets. To us, the issue is simple. The tape may reveal whether a prospective President Obama will be tempted to – or actually will – contribute materially to the death of still more Jews. We have a right to know this, for our own sake, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of the millions of those of use who had been martyred throughout the ages.

The decision to withhold or release this particular video is therefore – to coin a phrase – above your pay-grade. It is, in fact, ours to make. I appeal to you to release the video now, or persuade your superiors to do so.

Very respectfully,
Michael J. Kubat
Virginia Beach, Virginia