Unparalleled Knowledge of the UN
The combination of this incessant, respectful seeking out of the opinions of others with his decades of chronicling the official goings-on in the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Secretary General’s office made David an authority on the world organization without parallel.
“He was the institutional memory of the United Nations,” says his longtime fiend, the Haitian journalist Serge Beaulieu. “His knowledge and memory about the UN were without precedent.”
Inevitably, this meant that anyone seeking out David could get a detailed earful on the high and low points of UN history, whether it was the recognition of Israel in 1948 or the “Zionism is Racism” Resolution of 1975. David saw it all, and could calmly put the two extremes in perspective. He also encouraged others to do so.
“I was for many years the correspondent of Paese Sera, a left-wing publication out of Rome, Italy, and when that infamous resolution was passed I called up my editor, Fausto Coen, an Italian Jew, to consult with him about it,” my father recalls. “He told me that there was enormous pressure on all left-leaning newspapers to get in line and praise the resolution in their editorials. I answered, ‘What are you saying? Not only is it wrong, but I have to sit here next to David Horowitz! How can I do so if you publish an editorial praising this defamation?’ My plea worked, and Paese Sera was the only left-of-center Italian newspaper that denounced that infamous resolution.”
My father’s concern was not exaggerated, for sitting next to David Horowitz was a privilege which no one in their right mind would take for granted. I can still remember the joy of those school holidays when my father would take me down to the UN and I would be deposited next to David while my father concentrated on the morning’s article.
A multicolored stream of fascinating talk would be directed at me, much more than even a bright and curious boy’s head could hold: aspects of biblical archaeology, memories of Caruso, Torah wisdom compared with the spiritual teachings of other religions, recollections of long-ago doings at the UN and the people who had done them, advice about life.
The Grandfather I Never Had
David was the grandfather I had never had, for both of my grandfathers had passed away when I was very small. There is something that goes to the very heart of David’s being in these kind encounters between a European Jew born in the Edwardian Age and an Italian-American Catholic baby boomer, and that is this: We are all human. There were few people at the UN old or jaded enough not to consider David their grandfather.
When I was first brought to the UN by my father and mother, David repeated the action of that long-dead Swedish rabbi and put his hands on my head, saying, “Vanni, you will be a fine journalist.” I leave it to others to decide the accuracy of his prediction, but a journalist I became, and spent the last summer of David’s long life covering the war on terror in Kabul, in the aftermath of yet another challenge to his vision.
My last contact with David was a few weeks before he died, when I sent him a copy, via his longtime faithful assistant Gregg Sitrin, of a piece I had written for The Jewish Press on the last synagogue in Kabul. This was in early October 2002, right after I had returned home; it will forever be a cause of regret in my life that I delayed in going to visit him before the phone call came from Gregg: “It is with much sadness and regret that I inform you of the passing of our beloved spiritual leader, David. He was gathered into his fathers overnight.”
