Last October Wilson brought together
a group of Jewish militants to discuss
"forging a united militant Jewish front"
that would co-opt the JDL and take it
firmly out of Kahane's orbit. Seated
around a corner table at Lou G. Siegel's
kosher restaurant in the garment district
were: Bertram Zweibon, an attorney and
co-founder of the JDL and once Kahane's
closest friend; Chaim Stern, a wealthy
Holocaust survivor and one-time Kahane
backer living in Queens; Mordechai Levy,
head of a small JDL offshoot, the Jewish
Defense Organization (JDO); and L.A.
JDL chapter head fry Rubin, who had
been selected by Kahane last August to be
the JDL's national director.
"We agreed to carve up the U.S.,"
Wilson told me. "Rubin was to get the
West Coast [where he has about 60 hard-
core followers], Levy the East Coast; a
JDL representative would have a desk in
Levy's New York office, and a JDO repre-
sentative would have a desk in Rubin's of-
fice in L.A."
Rubin says he agreed to the arrange-
ment because Kahane was exploiting the
JDL. "After all these years of promoting
Kahanism, we're entitled to something."
Kahane gets all the money and headlines,
he says, "yet we don't even get a
bone . . . I couldn't even get enough money
to go to Kansas City to hassle Farrakhan."
The sit-down at Lou G. Siegel's was
notable if only because it brought together
Rubin and Levy, who had been bitter
enemies. Levy once belonged to the JDL
chapter in Los Angeles. But, according to
Rubin, the independent-minded Levy had
a habit of launching violent actions on his
own. Rubin says he finally beat up Levy
so severely that he spent two weeks in the
hospital.
Meanwhile, by his own account, Levy
spent much of the early 1980s leading a
double life. In Los Angeles, he was a
maverick JDL activist. During the same
period, he would sometimes turn up on the
East Coast, reincarnated as a security
agent for a violently anti-Semitic, right-
wing hate group headed by Lyndon
LaRouche. Of Levy, LaRouche once said:
"I think of him as my son." Nevertheless,
Levy claims he didn't join LaRouche, but
rather . infiltrated the group and shared
• what he learned with the Anti-Defamation
League of the B'nai B'rith and other
Jewish organizations. Gail Gans, do ADL
official in New York admits that Levy pro-
vided them with information about
LaRouche. In 1982 Levy changed colors
again and founded the JDO — which, like
the JDL, has been dedicated to a cam-
paign of violent harassment against its
enemies.
Word of the Lou Siegel meeting quickly
leaked to Kahane in Israel. "He was hor-
rified when he found out," Rubin later told
me. "He thought I'd gone over to the

you're dealing with," Wilson replied. "And
you wouldn't let me do what I wanted to
do."
"Murray, do what ever you want to do,"
said Rubin.
Nevertheless, Kahane, ever the master
of manipulation, put down the revolt. He
let Rubin keep the JDL's West Coast
chapters as his private fiefdom, as well as
the title of JDL National Director, in
return for a promise to stay away from
Wilson. "Kahane threatened to take away
Irv's JDL T-shirt if he didn't behave,"
snorts Wilson.
Though Rubin says he has since made
up with Kahane ("He just sent me a let-
ter saying I'm doing a good job"), he is still
trying to distance himself from his former
mentor. "It is my purpose to break away
from Israeli politics and establish a viable,
independent JDL" that is not weighed
down by "the negative baggage that sur-
rounds Kahane," says Rubin. "If Kahane
becomes prime minister, there wil be a civil
war in Israel, and Jews will die. That's my
greatest, greatest fear. I never joined the
JDL to fight Jews."
In the spirit of detente, Rubin recently
forged an alliance of sorts with JDL New
York boss Vancier. Vancier, in turn, has
established an uneasy truce with Levy,
though they both still compete for money
and recruits. Meanwhile, Vancier has set
out to rebuild the JDL on the East Coast.

The New Wave

"This time we write,
next time we bomb.
JDL."

enemy camp." A few weeks later, Kahane
sent Rubin a threatening letter written on
Knesset stationery. "Dear Irv," the letter
began, "I was really distressed to hear
you're involved in dope smuggling from
Mexico. Give my regards to Murray and
Bert. P.S.: Bob Manning also sends his
best . . . . I will decide what to do with you
when I see you in L.A."
Rubin phoned Wilson in a panic. Not on-
ly did Kahane threaten to smear him with
what he claims are baseless charges, but
Bob Manning, a former middle-weight
boxing champion in the U.S. Army, is
reputedly one of Kahane's most feared
enforcers.

"If he [Kahane] died tomorrow, I'd be hap-
py," Rubin whined to Wilson. "I would not
sit shiva."
"Now you know what kind of garbage

When Victor Vancier joined the JDL in
1971, he was a junior at Jamaica High
School in Queens. Three years later he was
convicted for his first felony — a JDL fire-
bombing of a Soviet diplomat's car in
Manhattan. Vancier served two months on
Rikers Island, then joined SOIL (Save Our
Israel Land), a JDL-front group set up by
Kahane to demonstrate against returning
Arab land captured by Israel in the Six
Day War. Borough Park assemblyman
Dov Hikind, who was then SOIL's leader,
remembers Vancier as being "extremely
sincere, dedicated . . . and devoted to
Jewish causes."
Vancier was also one of the JDL's most
notorious bombers. After committing a
wave of bombings and arson for which he
says he was never arrested, in December
1978 Vancier and another JDL member
were convicted of firebombing 11 Egyp-
tian diplomatic targets in New York,
Virginia, and Maryland. Vancier served 16
months of a 21-month sentence in federal
prisons in New York and Florida. He was
released from prison in April 1980 and
returned to New York, where he found a
job in the advertising department of the
Jewish Press. In August 1983, Vancier
founded a JDL splinter group called the
Jewish Direct Action, which claimed
responsibility for firebombing the Soviet
UN diplomatic residence in the Bronx in
1984.

Continued on. Page 36

16

Friday, July 25, 1986

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS