“If we are to combat the Jewish Defense League, we must look inwards, into ourselves and our society, and look to see what nourishes it (the JDL),” Richard Yaffe, chairman of the National Council of Americans for Progressive Israel-Hashomer Hatzair, and editor of Israel Horizons, said last night. Addressing some 300 persons attending a “protest meeting against terrorist acts and the Jewish Defense League,” as it was termed by the American Association to Combat Fascism, Racism and Anti-Semitism which convened the meeting, Yaffe said it was difficult to combat the JDL because it makes points difficult to refute.
“Jews have memories of many holocausts, not only the last one,” Yaffe said. “We are afraid, and it is useless to say we are not.” The JDL, he noted, states there is a moral bankruptcy in the American Jewish establishment. “It is hard to argue with such a point,” he said.
The JDL says there is anti-Semitism in America. “There certainly is, almost anywhere one can go,” Yaffe observed. “Just because it is not virulent today does not mean it may not be tomorrow.” In addition, he continued, the JDL’s views on the alienation of Jewish youth and the future of Jewry in America is also undeniable. “But,” Yaffe asserted, “the answers do not lie at the end of a billy club or a bicycle chain.”
The rally unanimously adopted a resolution appointing a committee of seven to meet with Mayor John V. Lindsay to demand that the Police Department “take vigorous action” to apprehend those responsible for terrorist crimes in the city. Specifically mentioned was the shooting into a window of the Soviet Mission on Oct. 20, 1971, and the bombing of the offices of Sol Hurok and Columbia Artists Management on Jan. 26. The resolution also demanded an end to “the terrorist activities encouraged or committed by the Jewish Defense League.”
JDL CREATES ANTI-SEMITISM
Yaffe warned that an alternative must be provided to those Jews who find the JDL and its leader, Rabbi Meir Kahane, an effective answer to their fears and anxieties. “We must join together to do something about our society here. We must fight for equality and the rights of people everywhere, as a group of knowledgeable Jews, as progressives.” But the JDL is not the only force that has to be combatted, he added. The fight has also got to be waged against Jewish leaders who have become “WASPish.” he noted.
We must be able to fight for the right of Jews to live as Jews, for decent allocations from Jewish welfare funds and federations for priorities we consider more important than putting up new community centers. We must fight for more help for Jewish education of all kinds, including religious education.” Speaking on Soviet Jewry, Yaffe said it was not, as the JDL claims, the JDL that put the plight of Soviet Jewry on the front pages of the daily press, but the Soviet Jews themselves.
Paul Novick, editor of the Morning Freiheit, the pro-Soviet Yiddish-language daily, accused the JDL of “creating anti-Semitism, not fighting it.” He noted that “American Jews are American citizens. Whatever problems they have must be solved here.”
Sam Pevzner, executive director of the Jewish Cultural Clubs and Societies and a member of the pro-Soviet monthly magazine, Jewish Currents, called the JDL “a grave danger to the Jewish people of the US and the Soviet Union, of Israel and world peace,” and stated that it was “the most dangerous and unsavory phenomenon that has yet arisen in the Jewish community of the United States.” Several other speakers at the meeting urged that the JDL be ostracized and swept into oblivion.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
