Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder and leader of the Jewish Defense League, has praised the “Jewish militants” who are attacking Soviet diplomats and offices as “Jewish patriots” who understand that detente is the only leverage that Jews have against the Soviet Union, according to a statement by Kahane in Jerusalem released here by one of his representatives.
Kahane said he did not know who the militants were, but said their attacks can lead to “the destruction of the policy of detente that the United States and the Soviet Union had worked for over the past decade.” He said a kidnapping or assassination of a Soviet official would destroy detente and such an attack “simply cannot be prevented.” If the Soviet Union wants detente they will have to pay for it in Jews, Kahane said.
Kahane strongly criticized major Jewish “establishment” groups for attacking the militants and singled out the American Jewish Congress which passed a resolution last week at its biennial convention calling for the arrest and punishment of persons responsible for shooting into the Soviet Mission in New York on April 2.
He said the AJCongress “is a criminally gentilized organization whose passing from the scene would be a day of joy for the Jewish people. Their statement is in the best tradition of the kapos, Judenrats and those who turned over Jewish Irgun fighters to the British in the Land of Israel in the 1940s.”
SEVEN JDL MEMBERS ARRESTED
Meanwhile, seven members of the JDL were arrested by the police today after they got onto the roof of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and shouted slogans at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations across the street. Police who were stationed in front of the Mission reportedly entered the synagogue under a law forbidding harassment of foreign diplomats. Police later charged the seven with trespassing and one of them, Dov Fisch, associate executive director of the JDL, was also charged with using an unauthorized sound device, a bullhorn.
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, spiritual leader of the synagogue, said this type of harassment of Soviet diplomats is “destructive” of the cause of Soviet Jewry. “Shouting four letter words, particularly from a synagogue, that is not the way” to help Soviet Jewry, he said.
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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.
