Behind the Headlines French “jewish Defense” Group Vows Physical Combat Against Anti-semitism

A secret “Jewish Defense Organization” has been set up in France with the avowed aim to combat anti-Semitism by both political means and “physical action.” After lengthy preparations it struck openly last week. Some 200 JDO members, many wearing motorcyclist helmets and carrying steel bars, burst into a meeting of the “New Right.”

The assailants entered in what eyewitnesses said “seemed a battle formation” organized in small, highly mobile squads and seemed to follow a well-laid dawn plan. According to the same observers, another small group, which had earlier infiltrated among the 1,000 strong audience, donned helmets and joined in the fray.

JDO members told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they had originally come to express their “indignation” and that the clash broke out when the meeting’s security men tried to chase them out using anti-Semitic terms. Both sides agree that the clash lasted about 15 minutes during which the Jewish activists had the upper-hand. Then, as suddenly as they arrived, at the sound of a whistle, they disappeared just before the police arrived. They took with them their helmets, their sticks and even their wounded who were all privately nursed, avoiding public hospitals and possible police identification.

Jewish defense organizations of one type or another have always existed. Generally, they sought either to defend Jewish areas or institutions or, like Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, to play an active political role by the use of physical violence.

BACKED BY PROMINENT PERSONALITIES

The new French organization is set up differently. First, because it wants to act both through political and physical means, secondly, because it is backed–according to some of its members–by a number of prominent communal personalities and organizations, and thirdly, because most of its members are not just “wild youths,” but respectable members of the professional classes–doctors, lawyers and upper level executives in their late twenties or thirties.

The Jewish Defense Organization was created, according to some of its members contacted by the JTA, about six months ago. Its main purpose is “to fight anti-Semitism in France by a mixture of political action and physical violence. Our attack against the New Right meeting had a double aim: We wanted to scare them physically and show them that if they are toughies we can be tougher than them. But we also wanted to brand them politically as neo-Facists and give them the publicity they want to avoid,” a committee member told JTA.

The man is in his thirties, tall and athletic looking. He stressed his point by frequently using the expression “Doctor’s pledge” and explained “I don’t always hit people over their heads-generally I try to cure them.” He is known as “Doctor George.”

He said that “trying to break up their meeting is not our final aim. Our task now is to inform public opinion of who the New Right members are and what they want. For us physical violence is part of a larger role: provoking the moral and political conscience of the country in which we live, France, into some sort of action to stop them before it is too late.”

“Most of the people in the JDO are like me,” the informant said, “people with active, normal professions who feel that the traditional Jewish establishment is not doing enough to combat anti Semitism or show its support for Israel. Generally, all they do is vote resolutions and send them to the press. We feel that something else is needed.

“A few months ago we started organizing ourselves. The people who joined us come from all sorts of organizations, from the extreme right to the extreme left. We have former Trotzkyists as well as former Betar people. All we have in common is our desire to do something concrete to combat anti-Semitism in France,” he said.

The JDO discovered to their surprise that several respected members of the Jewish establishment were prepared to back them. Among them is a young Jewish deputy, Jean-Pierre Bloch, the son of LICA president and former minister Jean-Pierre Bloch. The younger Jean Pierre-Bloch, who was elected to Parliament on a pro-Giscard ticket last March, refused to confirm or deny that he is the JDO’s honorary president. The president of the Jewish Medical Association in France, Dr. Hubert Dayan, also refused to comment on JDO members’ claims that-he and his organization back them “to the hilt.”

JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS SILENT

“Dr. George” claims that the JDO has over 400 active members prepared to participate in future actions and cells throughout France. “Our attack against the New Right is just the start of our operations. We intend to go on,” he said.

In recent days, the JDO has tried to keep a low profile. The New Right organization, a study and research group for a new European organization, has lodged formal complaints with the District Attorney charging assault, bodily harm and claiming that 20 of the people present in the meeting hall at the time of the attack, including a five-year-old girl, were injured during the clash. New Right president Alain De Benoist, a philosopher and staff member on France’s respected publication “Le Figaro,” said that the meeting was discussing “ways to combat totalitarianism and dictatorship” when its members were attacked.

The Jewish organizations, with the exception of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICA), headed by Jean Pierre-Bloch, have also kept silent. The French police have started an official investigation and JDO members believe that its attitude will be directly linked to that of the major Jewish organizations. Up till now these have kept silent.