The J.D. What!
Lev, Yehuda
THEJ.D. WHAT? In Los Angeles, some people find the Jewish Defense League too moderate. They've come up with a new organization. YEHUDA LEV In case the FBI was present at the scene, I am the...
...There were a few more comments from Levy and then questions were invited from the floor...
...Levy is addicted to the telephone and has often, in the past several years, rung mine to explain, in quiet, reasonable tones, the iniquities of the Jewish Defense League and especially those of its West Coast leader, Irv Rubin...
...I suggest, however, that this is because they are Jewish and thus may be the objects of attack by the various Jewish defenders...
...It was not the kind of audience that would be prepared to pay the parking fees demanded by the Beverly Wilshire...
...This, he said, would have to be in the form of training our people in the use of arms...
...What then do our Jewish defenders do to act out their fantasies of violence...
...Most of these turned out to be statements of support for the JDO and its goals, although a few people questioned the need for supporting two different organizations...
...As follows: Understand from the beginning that in the American version of the JDL (as contrasted with the Israeli version led by Meir Kahane, which functions in an environment in which one's darkest fantasies can be realized) the first rule is: Be home in time for dinner...
...JDL watchers will recognize familiar elements that went into the meeting...
...to effectively carry out the task for which Levy believes it is intended: the physical removal from the scene of Nazis, Klan members and other anti-Semites...
...For that sum, the hotel provides some 60 gilt-backed, plush, red-bottomed chairs, a public address system, a podium and, for this occasion at least, a highly visible uniformed security guard who smiled benignly at all of us who walked by him...
...I did not contribute any money, participate in the discussion, or indicate in any way that I was party to what was taking place...
...Finally, he posited his suggested solution to the problem...
...You may preach all the violence you want and vow the destruction of whatever anti-Semites are on your daily calendar, a particularly important point to be used in fund raising, but no one is to get hurt or be sent to prison...
...My dinner partners who are horrified or disbelieving when I talk about my evening with the would-be assassins do have reason for alarm...
...YEHUDA LEV In case the FBI was present at the scene, I am the white-haired gentleman, dressed in a gray three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase, who sat in the last row, right-hand side...
...For that, he would need money with which to purchase arms and to rent a campsite, and of course, he would need volunteers to learn how to shoot...
...Then he went on to warn those present of the nature of the commitment they would be taking on by adhering to the program of the JDO and asking if they were prepared to go so far...
...Then he shifted to the dangers posed to the Jewish people by the emergence of Nazi and Klan sympathizers as serious political candidates in various state and local elections in this country...
...After the room had filled, Levy went to the podium and began speaking in the quiet tones with which I was familiar from our telephone conversations...
...The La Fiesta Room rents for $175 an evening...
...In Los Angeles, at least, they have found targets that are readily available and do not fight back...
...Those Nazis or Klan members who may be elected to public office have less reason to worry...
...The question occurred to me, as it must have to most in the room, of how this proposal differed in any way from the program of the Jewish Defense League...
...after all, how many of them have witnessed the founding of an organization that proposes to assassinate the enemies of the Jewish people...
...Certainly, the JDL is eager to take on the Nazis or the Palestinians (I have not heard of any confrontations with the Klan in these parts) but its members are always careful to wave their signs and shout their slogans in situations where there is a strong police line dividing them from their adversaries...
...Rubin has been the subject of much public criticism from me in my columns, which appear in a local Jewish newspaper, although my negative feelings about Rubin and the JDL stem from very different considerations than do those of Mr...
...But if the thought occurred to Levy or to anyone else present, it was not addressed...
...That is the bottom line...
...He warmed up somewhat during the next half hour, in which he discoursed on the iniquities of the American Jewish leadership during the Holocaust, the farsightedness of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and other related subjects...
...The meeting had been called by the Jewish Defense Organization for the specific purpose of raising enthusiasm and funds for the recruitment and training of assassination squads...
...Their victims run the ideological gamut— from the Orthodox-sponsored Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Center through Conservative synagogues to Reform temples...
...In the past several years, the JDL has piled up a record of hostile demonstrations against Jewish individuals and organizations with whose policies and programs they are in disagreement...
...Thus they will demonstrate across the street from any number of enemies of the Jewish people, since that is where the police will require them to remain...
...There might be others who agree with Levy that the JDL has sold out for the sake of seeing itself on the 11 o'clock news...
...It all sounds like something the Israeli Mossad might plan in some Jerusalem back office or a twist on a plot by Damon Runyon...
...Levy themselves, who have found targets—among their own people—which enable them to respond to a need for action and self-glorification, while being assured of returning home in time for dinner...
...The rivals will exchange epithets and hurl curses but no one gets hurt in the process...
...Levy answered this by explaining that the Jewish Defense Organization would be clandestine, secret, not a publicity-seeking group but one which would operate out of the spotlight...
...At this point, to my amazement (considering all that I had been told by Levy during the past year), he yielded the microphone to Irv Rubin who began, accurately enough, by informing his audience that for the first time during his ten years in Los Angeles, he was being regarded as a moderate...
...The demonstrations, whatever the site or the nature of the program they are disrupting, consist of catcalls, attempts to rush the microphone, personal remarks on the ancestry and marital status of the speakers and the physical crowding of persons with whom the JDL is in conflict...
...And most secure of all would seem to be Mr...
...There is a noticeable chill that follows the recital of my tale, a disbelief that such measures could be contemplated, let alone publicly discussed, among American Jews...
...After a half hour or so, the meeting broke up, with several people coming forward to contribute money or suggestions...
...But in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel...
...On more than one occasion the JDL members have been successful in forcing an end to the proceedings...
...It is Levy's contention that the JDL has become too respectable, too interested in publicity, Yehuda Lev is editor of Directions, a newspaper published by the University of Judaism...
...Levy...
...Most of us left, walking several blocks to our cars...
...Rubin and Mr...
...The head and, as far as I can determine, only member of the Jewish Defense Organization is a man in his late 20s, Mordecai Levy...
...Thus it was with some surprise that the first person I saw on the premises was Rubin himself, shaking hands with all who entered and acting very much the politician which, in fact, he is desirous of becoming (as a candidate for the California State Assembly...
...This would be essential, he observed, in view of the assignments it was going to take on, which would rid Jewry of the threats posed by the Nazis, the Klan and all anti-Semites...
...No one, as far as I could determine, opposed the general thrust of Levy's proposals...
...And I am prepared to swear under oath that I am not in favor of forming assassination squads to kill members of the American Nazi Party or the Ku Klux Klan who are elected to public office...
...Yet that was the subject of the meeting which about 70 people attended recently in the La Fiesta Room of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, a caravansary of such impeccable distinction that Los Angeles Jewish organizations sometimes hold their functions there when they want to upgrade their images...
...I figured that Rubin was protecting his flanks, trying to prevent a wholesale desertion of his followers into the ranks of the JDO...
...I looked around at the La Fiesta Room, as glaringly red and as selective in its occupants as a Parisian brothel and as public as the sign in the lobby which announced the presence of the Jewish Defense Organization, and wondered how any level of secrecy was being maintained...
...If not, he suggested, they should consider remaining in the Jewish Defense League...
...The evening has since provided me with several opportunities for shocking my friends...
...To be fair, the Nazis are equally cautious and probably have their own wives and children and mortgages to worry about, so they too appear to avoid the more obvious opportunities to commit mayhem...
...Depending on my frame of mind, I either allow my friends to go on believing that we have reached a nadir in our communal history, or I tell them what I must disclose to you: There was more of Damon Runyon than of the Mossad in the La Fiesta Room...
...In many cases the police have been called in to eject the demonstrators...
Vol. 7 • June 1982 • No. 6
