Nine members of the Jewish Defense League took over the Manhattan office of Americans for Progressive Israel (API) today and demanded that Interns for Peace, a program that operates out of the office, stop helping Arabs in Israel. Eight persons in the office at 150 Fifth Avenue were ejected.
Dov Becker, who led the group, called the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, to tell of the take-over. He said the JDL demands that Interns for Peace “give up the dangerous false hope that Jews and Arabs can peacefully coexist inside or outside the land of Israel” and Becker said the interns should “disband immediately unless all their efforts are directed in aiding only poor Jewish families and not Arab ones in the State of Israel.”
Arieh Lebowitz, editor of Israel Horizons, the publication of Americans for Progressive Israel, said the JDL members forced their way into the office and forced the people inside to leave. He said that the group did not resist since he said the JDL is known to use violence and that “is not our way.”
Lebowitz stressed that Interns for Peace is an independent program, which like several others, uses the API office. He said the program has diaspora Jews help train Jews and Arabs in Israel in an effort to improve relations between the two groups. Noting that the JDL said that Jews and Arabs cannot live together, Lebowitz said, “we think they can and that’s what the program is about.”
The JDL members were arrested later by police who took them to the 13th Precinct. Becker led a similar raid on the offices of Hebrew University and the American Friends of Hebrew University June 25. At that time they demanded that all Arabs be expelled from the university in Jerusalem unless they sign a declaration recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the “land of Israel.” Five members of the JDL were arrested at that times.
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.
