Seven members of the Jewish Defense League, including Rabbi Meir Kahane, JDL founder, were arrested yesterday at Temple Emanu-El here on charges of criminal trespass. They were given summonses and released for appearance in New York Criminal Court on Feb. 20.
Russ Kellner, JDL operations officer, said the seven JDL members had been holding a vigil in the virtually empty sanctuary of the Reform synagogue in protest against “the silence of American Jewish leadership on United States pressures on Israel” in the negotiations for which Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger is again visiting the Middle East. The sit-in at the Reform synagogue was one of a series of protest actions staged by the JDL since Kahane returned from Israel, to protest alleged U.S. pressure on Israel.
FEB. 21 HEARING ON ANOTHER DEVELOPMENT
In another development, Judge Jack B. Weinstein of federal district court in Brooklyn has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 21 for Kahane on charges of parole violation. Judge Weinstein, who sentenced Kahane in July, 1971, to five years probation on charges of conspiring to make firebombs, ordered the Feb. 21 hearing after receiving a report by James F. Haran, chief probation officer for the federal district court.
Haran said, in his report, that Kahane, while living in Israel, sent several letters to Joshe Jaffe, a JDL member who was a co-defendant in the 1971 trial on bomb-making conspiracy charges, to which Kahane pleaded guilty. Haran said that in one of the letters, Kahane allegedly demanded the immediate kidnapping or killing of a Soviet diplomat, that bombs be placed in the offices of the Occidental Petroleum Co. and the Chase Manhattan Bank to discourage trade with the Soviets, and the takeover of a building behind the Soviet Embassy in Washington and the blowing up of the Iraqi Embassy building in Washington.
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