© (photo credit: TALIA KIRSHNER)THE DEE family poses for a photo, in 2021.
Dear David,
We have not met, however, you may have heard about my family. My wife Lucy and two beautiful daughters, Maia (20) and Rina (15) were recently and cruelly massacred by two Palestinian gunmen while driving on their way to a holiday on the Sea of Galilee during the festival of Passover. The gunmen swerved the car off the road until it stopped and then got out of their car and shot 20 bullets into my wife's brain stem and 6th vertebra, Rina's face and Maia's leg. They all died from their wounds but not before Lucy donated all her organs to save five lives including one Muslim Arab Israeli in the North of Israel.
You, I understand, have recently had the honor of becoming the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery and the tenuous honor of becoming the de facto head of CNN.
As you know the founding fathers of Warner Bros. were Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack. They founded the company in 1923 and acted very bravely in the 1930s when they resisted a Hollywood ban on anti-Nazi films which was allegedly requested by Joseph Goebbels himself (chief propagandist for the Nazi Party) by way of the Nazi consul in Los Angeles, Georg Gyssling.
Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack would be turning in their graves today if they knew what Warner Bros was supporting in the Middle East.
CNN is an organization that draws a moral equivalence between the innocent victims of terror, such as my wife Lucy and my daughters Maia and Rina, and the mother of a terrorist who was morally eliminated by Israeli forces in order to prevent him from murdering more innocent victims.
I know this, David, because of a conversation I had with the head of your Israel bureau, Richard Greene. When I asked him, "Do you think that it is morally equivalent to compare what happened to me to what happened to the mother of a terrorist?" Richard answered me, "Rabbi Dee, with great respect you are making an assertion that I do not agree with." This is an appalling statement to someone, such as myself and my surviving three children, who have just been bereaved through a violent murderous attack by Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorists on three of our most precious family members. If CNN cannot admit that there is a moral difference between the murder in cold blood of three beautiful innocent women and the man who murdered them, then it can only be described as an evil organization.
AS YOU are well aware, this year, Freedom House, the world standard for measuring human rights for countries, granted the Palestinian Authority a score of 25 which means that it is not free. That means that the 2.5 million mostly Muslim Palestinians are denied basic human rights such as the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion and the freedom to vote by the Palestinian Authority. At the same time, Freedom House granted Israel a score of 77. That means that the two million Muslim Arab Israelis are granted full freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to vote. The Palestinian Authority is exactly the sort of fascist regime that the original Warner Brothers fought to bring down.
In fact, David, if you look at the Freedom House scores around the Middle East you will find that Israel is the only free and democratic state in the region, surrounded by Gaza (score of 12), Iran (score of 14) and Syria (score of 1 - the lowest score in the world).
CNN seems to constantly try to draw a moral equivalence between these unfree regimes, where their local Muslim populations are effectively slaves to a corrupt elite, and Israel whose local Muslim population lives in freedom and democracy. And then they try to blame the troubles of the Middle East on Israel! How ridiculous!
It is obvious to any person with a high school diploma that the problem is most likely to come from the fascist regimes surrounding Israel, rather than the only free and democratic state in the region. And since CNN staff have University degrees, and many from Ivy League universities, it is clear that they are not misinformed, and so they must be intentionally misleading the public or just plain evil.
Well, David, there were two very different Josephs in history. There was Joseph Goebbels who perpetuated the fascist, Nazi regime which led to the brutal murder of six million of our people and many more of different races, religions and sexualities.
BUT THERE was also Joseph the Righteous, the son of Jacob. In the first year of famine in Egypt, having stored up seven years worth of supplies for Pharaoh, he sold grain to the Egyptians in exchange for all their animals and all their money. In the second year of famine, they had nothing to offer for grain except their land and their bodies. They actually offered themselves to Pharaoh as slaves for perpetuity. Joseph refused. He took the land into the possession of the state but he refused to make them slaves and instead instituted a 20% tax on all their produce. Joseph was called the "Righteous one" because he saved the whole Arab nation from becoming slaves to their totalitarian leader.
David, I believe that we all have a choice in our lives. We can choose to be Joseph G. or Joseph R. The decision is ours. But I can assure you that the Righteous Joseph is remembered for good and for perpetuity and the G version will be soon lost to the annals of history.
David, I would love to have the opportunity to meet with you and discuss this in more depth, along with some friends of mine who have been through different holocausts (including the one that I have been through myself). I believe that you have a good heart and you wish to do good in the world. Why else would you wish the stress of being the head of a major media giant?
So, before I commence a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against CNN and Warner Bros., please agree to meet me, in London, Efrat, or NY, in the next week to discuss this in person. I do believe there is a solution of shalom (peace in Hebrew) that will accommodate all our needs - the need for truth, honest reporting, hope and human kindness. And, yes, you will continue to make large profits, possibly even larger ones, if you have three hours to hear what I have to say.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom, a life of shalom and that you should never know a fraction of the pain that I have had from my tragedy and the pain that I have been put through by your staff.
With love,
Leo
The writer, a rabbi, was a happily married man with five children until two Palestinian terrorists massacred his wife and two of his daughters on April 7. He is now dedicating the rest of his life to achieving peace (personal, state, global, relationship and more). He is the author of Transforming the World: The Jewish Impact on Modernity, which is available on Amazon and contains his whole world outlook.