r' a special feature the, Sundoy daily on the Jewish defense league Number 62 Page Four Sunday, September 24, 1972 The Jewish Defense League: ie animals 'Nice' boys becor -4 4 By RICHARD E. MEYER Associated Press Writer ISRAEL LANDAU is 5-feet-2. He weighs 135 pounds, has large, quiet eyes and wears gold-rimmed glasses. He attends yeshiva, speaks with an Hassidic accent and wears a black and white knit yarmulke to keep his head covered in the sight of God. But Izzy Landau is an animal. Muscles of zarzel - Jewish steel - ripple under his red polo shirt, un- buttoned over a barrel chest matted with curly brown hair. He is a marks- man, proficient at karate and a good boxer, but his favorite weapon is the sawed-off leg of a straight-back chair. Softly, muting the threat, he says, '"I'm proud to be a Chaya. I don't' like violence, but I protect Jews. I'd give my life for any Jew." Chaya - "animal" in Hebrew - is what the Jewish Defense League calls, with affection, its toughest members. Izzy Landau, 20, is on the cutting edge of an organization that champions itself to be the most vio- lent Jewish group in the United States - the closest thing American Jewry has to the Black September Arab guerrillas who attacked the Is- raeli Olympic team in Munich ear- lier this month., Yet, paradoxically, the Jewish De- fense League disavows the most vio- lent act ascribed to it: the fire- bombing of Soviet talent importer Sol Hurok's New York office, which killed one and injured several. The JDL claims at least 15,000 members- N but says its core of dependably mili- tant members numbers no more than 20. IT EXHORTS Jews to make aliyah -emigrate to Israel - but Pre- mier Golda Meir says the Jewish De- fense League is "doing great harm to our cause." From his international headquarters in Jerusalem, its rabbi leader, Meir Kahane, t a Ik s of spreading a worldwide young Jew- ish revolution - but in the United States the Jewish Defense League is in the throes of internal reorganiza- tion and has had to close its only training camp for lack of money. On friendlier terms with Joseph Colombo Jr.'s Italian-American Civil Rights League than with its fellow- organizations in the American Jewish community, the Jewish Defense League has caused a deep and bitter .controversy over how to be "a nice Jewish boy." The debate' centers on what JDL does, or is suspected of doing. To American Nazis: -Beating and .clubbing party members in Berwyn, Ill., and warn- ing, "Nazi speeches have beer; and are a prelude to murder of Jews. There is no measure too militant in dealing with Nazis." -Marching in Hightstown, N.J., to protest cross burnings; chanting, "Tomorrow it may be you," and threatening that if the police can not handle the Klan "they will be taken care of by us." To Austrians: -Hanging a Nazi flag and a sign, "Don't Visit Nazi Austria," on their Washington embassy to protest ac- quittal of a former Nazi officer by an Austrian court and slugging it out with their ambassador and his staff. -Raiding the Palestine Liberation Organization in New York, overturn- ing desks, dumping papers and beat- ing an official; invading the Action Committee on American-Arab Rela- tions; attacking two officials with clubs, and shattering the Palestine Liberation Organization office with a bomb. But mostly to Russians: -Pushing and shoving and shout- ing at their diplomats on the streets of Washington and New York, "Svo- boda Yevreyam," freedom for Jews; following them into stores; taunting their wives; picketing their homes, telephoning their apartments and pounding on their doors to deliver in- sults; calling them again and again, at their offices, and triggering more calls by posting stickers in public rest rooms, bus stations and bars ad- vertising a massage parlor and list- ing the embassy telephone number. -Singing, chanting and marching in front of their Washington em- bassy; loosing a Biblical plague of 50 frogs in the New York office of Aero- flot, the Soviet airline, and 5G white mice in the office of .Amborg, the Soviet trade agency; chaining a goat to the door of Tass, the Soviet Press Agency, with a sign: "I am a scape- goat, please save me;" spraying the Aeroflot office with black paint and breaking a mirror and a window; shouting and pounding on desks at Amtorg, roughing up its president and threatening his secretary with a piece of pipe; crashing a Washington reception, pouring a quart of human blood over the head of an attending Soviet counselor and screaming, "Murder, free. the Jewish prisoners, no tokenism, exodus now." -Trying to bomb a Ukranian dance concert in Los Angeles; snip- ing with a high-powered rifle through the windows of an 11th floor apartment at the Soviet U. N. mis- sion where a couple and their four children were watching television; and finally, bombing Amtorg, Aero- flot, the Washington embassy and the New York offices of Columbia Ar- tists and Sol Hurok, impressario whose acts have included some of Russia's greatest performing artists. The bombing killed Hurok's recep- tionist and injured Hurok and a half-dozen others. HEIR ACTIONS have won JDL members countless arrests. They have been charged with disorderly conduct, harassment, criminal tres- pass, criminal mischief, malicious de- struction of property, violating gun control laws, rioting, resisting arrest and making, receiving and possessing explosives. Seven members are await- ing trial in the Amtorg bombing. An- other four are under indictment in the Hurok bombing. And the JDL has won unqualified hatred from its targets. "Fascists," growls Palestine Liber- ation Organization representative Sadat Hansan, beaten by the invad- ers in his office. "Thugs," snarl the Soviets. "Storm troopers . . . terrorists . . gangsters . . . hooligans . . . bandits . . . Zionist Ku Klux Klan men . . extremists . . pogromists . . . and provocateurs." But the bitterest reaction to the Jewish Defense League has come from Jews themselves. Unique in American Jewry, the JDL has caused what its general counsel, Bertram Zweibon, acknowledges to be the deepest split in the U. S. Jewish com- munity in recent history. "Batmen . . . goon squads," de- clares Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, who as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations rep- resenting all congregations of reform Jews in the Western Hemisphere says: "The so-called Jewish Defense League violates every concept of civil liberties and democratic process, in American life." The American Jewish Congress barred Kahane from its biennial meeting in Cleveland. "We have noth- ing to learn from him," says its imagine some young people think they are doing what's right but they are absolutely wrong and doing great harm to our cause. No small group can take on itself that is knows better than the organized Jewish world. Violence is against our prin- ciples. By using such methods, they play into the hands of our enemies." THE JEWISH Defense League was born on a peaceful, sunny day in June of 1968 at Young Israel of Laur- elton Synagogue in Queens. Among the congregants gathered for morn- ing prayer that Saturday were Zwei- bon, a lawyer who had grown up in the Bronx, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side; Morton Dolinsky, a pub- lic relations consultant and national commander of Betar, a militant Zion- ist youth group, and an Orthodox rabbi named Meir Kahane. All were in their 30s. Kahane had been a member of Be- tar and his father, a highly regarded Talmudic scholar, was a close friend of Zev Jabotinsky, founder of the militant right wing of the Zionist movement. Meir never completely lost his boyish good looks and youthful stutter. He took a degree from Brook- lyn College in 3%/2 years, a law de- gree from New York Lak School and a masters degree in international law from New York University. Aft- er several months in Israel as a rabbi on a kibbutz, he returned and got in- volved in a secular endeavor to mo- bilize campus support for the Viet- nam War. For this he secularized his name to Michael King and co-authored a book called "The Jewish Stake in Viet- nam." Now he was married, the fath- er of four, slight at 5-feet-7 but handsome. He was writing for an eth- nic New York weekly called the Jew- ish Press-and he was worried. HE ASKED Zweibon and Dolinsky to return early for the afternoon service, took them aside and told them his concern was caused by mail he had been getting at the Jewish 11 }i THE JDL AND THE Mafia seem to have at least one thing in common-- they both complain of police harassment. To combat this problem, the JDL and the Italian-American Civil Rights League, headed by Joseph Co- "When Germany started persecuting the Jews, she had un. dergone a humiliating defeat just as we have... We will yet pay for our JerryRubins and Abbie Hoffmans. Don't under- estimate the patriotism of the American people. They'll see Rubin and they'll see the Jew." -Meir Kahane .... .. .. . tt:... ..,1.. .....V: ""':.1." tiV:. ": t:::t .. } .....N:: }::"i":"1 :;:.....:: it:":":J::v::" ": .:''::i""::1:..":N: t: .: . r.::':::"::"::: president, Rabbi Arthur L. Lelyveld. Jews from 38 nations banned Kahan'e from a three-day congress in Brus- sels on the plight of Soviet Jewry, and Belgium expelled him from the country. "The JDL is a tragedy," says Israe- li Prime Minister Golda Meir. "I Press. From the mail, he said, it was apparent that Jewish life was becom- ing more and more difficult in the United States - and could become dangerous. He would write about his concern in a book called "Never Again," published last year. From his conversation with Zweibon and Dolinsky, the book and Zweibon's subsequent elaboration emerged a manifesto for Jewish militancy. According to the manifesto: 0 When Jews gained affluence in America, they fled the Williamsburgs and Crown Heights and Brownsvilles of New York and Mattapan-Dorches- ters of Boston and Fairfaxes of Los Angeles for the gilded ghettoes of Scarsdale, Shaker Heights and Bev- erly Hills, leaving behind thousands of fellow Jews, Orthodox and Hassi- dic families with housefuls of chil- dren and small incomes. More than 800,000 of these Jews, most of them in the inner city, live below the fed- eral poverty level. They live in terror of crime and violence. And they are the victims of anti-Semitic hatred fanned by blacks and Puerto Ricans who moved in when the wealthier Jews moved out. * Anti-Semitism generally is in- creasing, from the usual Nazi sourc- es, black militants, the radical right and from a new and subtle source: liberals who seek opportunity quotas for minority groups in schools and jobs. "A quota system for blacks and Puerto Ricans and Chicanos guaran- tees the exclusion of a certain num- ber of qualified Jews." For a people that makes up only three per cent of the American population, quotas lumbo Jr. formed a mutual aid pact joins Joseph Columbo Sr., during a FBI headquarters in New York. have .. . We will yet pay for our Jerry Rubins and Abbie Hoffmans. Don't underestimate the patriotism of the American people. They'll see Rubin and they'll see the Jew." To Kahane, this spelled trouble. HE ADVERTISED in the Jewish Press for Jewish Defense League members and, with a nucleus of initial supporters, picketed New York University for hiring a black he ac- cused of writing anti-Semitic artic- les. The infant JDL stood guard on Halloween night at a Jewish ceme- tery where hundreds of tombstones were toppled and broken the year before. It marched at a New York radio station to protest the broadcast of w-hat Kahane called a "viciously anti-Semitic poem" and it stood guard at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue to keep black activist James Forman from demanding reparations. The JDL organized dusk-to-dawn foot and car patrols, armed with bats, chains and guns, in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. It picketed for an hour and a half in front of Black Panther headquarters in Harlem, after Kahane toured the building posing as a representative of the American Jewish Congress to make sure there were no guns inside. It confronted police and its mem- bers were arrested, first because of its activities in the black - Jewish ghettoes and then with regularity as it included Soviet Jews, whom it viewed as victims of cultural geno- cide, among those it would defend. JDL adopted a uniform: blue shirt, dark pants and a blue beret. The garb, Zweibon says, makes it easier for JDL to identify its own during demonstrations. It adopted an insignia, a clenched fist in the Star of David; a newspa- per, Iton; JDL T-shirts, buttons and yarmulkes. "Never Again" became the JDL motto. "Never again" would Jews go to gas ovens undefended. KAHANE by now had become a rab- bi at a synagogue in Rochdale Village in Queens. He lost the job because the congregation wanted a full-time rabbi, and he was spending too much time on JDL. The Jewish Press disassociated itself from Ka- hane because the JDL opposed New York John Lindsay, whom Kahane felt was soft on anti-Semitism. It costs the Jewish Defense League $100,000 a year to operate, Zweibon says. JDL's national coordinator who asked to be identified only by his He- brew name, Baruch Simcha, says the last year. Here, Meir Kahane, lef June 8, 1971 demonstration outside mation League puts it at 50 to 100 members. Zweibon says it numbers about 20. But most of the hard core members are young, he says, and thoroughly dedicated. IN THE Jewish Defense League, dedication means learning how to fight and shoot. For the past three years, JDL operated a summer train- ing camp in the Catskill Mountains, where instructors taught karate and riflery. The camp closed this year. Zweibon says the main reason was lack of money. Karate has been assigned to; local chapters. And members who heed Kahane's advice, "For every Jew a .22," are shooting at local rifle ranges. The epitome of JDL dedication, however, is the Chaya. "They are," says Baruch Simcha, "a different kind,of Jew." Like Izzy Landau, most are young, tough and graduates of inner city schools of street fighting the Marquis of Queensberry didn't attend. They wear Army fatigues with Army patches and stripes. A lieuten- ant who identified himself as Shalom Ben Israel says Chaya advance along an Army chain of command. For all this, there is a certain equivocation to JDL's acknowledge- ment that it engages in violence. Ka- hane says, "I am in favor of vio- lence if it's necessary." THE VIOLENCE, however, has put the JDL under close scrutiny from police and federal agents. Ka- hane has accused the government of wiretapping JDL's Manhattan head- quarters. To minimize the threat from in- formers, from federal agents or from fanatics who might attend its meet- ings, JDL has assigned some of its members to internal security. These members, whose identities are known to only a handful of JDL leaders, keep a close eye on all who attend JDL activities. To fight what it calls police harass- ment, the JDL struck a mutual aid agreement last year with the Italian- American Civil Rights League, head- ed by Joseph Colombo Jr., who is de- scribed by federal authorities as head of a Mafia family. But JDL is convinced the best in- ternal security and all the help Co- lombo's league can offer won't pro- vide the security that Jews feel in Israel. "The place for all Jews," says Kahane, "is in Israel.' "They'll take courses learning how 4 4 I fir' .;: .. i t f .,.. }p ,'f" '.'..!r