Dear Mr. President...Speaking Out at Twelve

History and politics were constant subjects of discussion between my father and me. My teachers encouraged me to write letters to political leaders, and so I did at the age of twelve. Here are scans of a letter that I wrote to the U.S. President at the time, Ronald Reagan, in defense of Israel, of which I was a strong supporter. Today, I find the letter pompous and naive among other things, but it makes me smile.

Page One of the letter to Ronald Reagan

Page Two of the letter to Ronald Reagan
I am not sure why I have a copy, because it can only mean one of two things: either the White House sent me my letter back for safekeeping, or I drafted another copy for archival purposes, which seems odd for a twelve year-old. But I seem to recall my parents encouraging me to make a copy for my grandmother to keep, because it's from her archives that this was retrieved upon her death.

As a child, my political opinions mirrored those of my parents. My family's support of Israel had to do with two basic facts. First, Israel was a U.S. ally that always supported the U.S. in the U.N. and everywhere else. That made them seem like a loyal friend, although I realize now that the U.S. paid dearly for that loyalty in the form of financial aid. Second, Israel is geographically a tiny country and appears like the underdog next to its larger Arab neighbors. This generates sympathy right off the bat. The atrocities committed by terrorists, such as the kidnapping of Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics, discredited the cause of the P.L.O. in the eyes of many Americans. However, it is true that Israel was guilty of atrocities as well.

Several years earlier, I had written to Jimmy Carter on the subject of the Iranian hostages, which was to erode much of Carter's popularity, but that letter is lost to the ravages of time. The Carter Administration replied with a letter personally signed by an Administration employee that addressed the content of my letter, and may or may not have been a form letter. The Reagan Administration sent me a generic form letter making no reference to my letter's contents, and I can't recall whether it was signed by a human hand or merely stamped, but I felt like my letter spent little time in the open air between emerging from the envelope and being deposited in the garbage can.