THE 'ZIONIST HOOLIGANS': THE JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE.
Item
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Title
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THE 'ZIONIST HOOLIGANS': THE JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE.
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Identifier
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AAI8112371
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identifier
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8112371
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Creator
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RUSS, SHLOMO MORDECHAI.
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Contributor
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Stephen Steinberg
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Date
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1981
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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The major purpose of this work, was to record and document the evolution of the Jewish Defense League from its origin in the Spring of 1968, until its virtual decline eight years later.;The League was originally formed by Meir Kahane and Bertram Zweibon to protect local Jewish neighborhoods in New York City. Their activity, at first, revolved around the legal process, fighting for Jewish interests through the court system. Occasionally, they mounted patrols: guarding a cemetary at Halloween from black vandalism; standing vigil outside polling booths in Crown Heights during a community anti-poverty board election; and of course, guarding Temple Emanu-El against a black takeover.;By the second year of its existence, League members began focusing on Jewish issues in foreign affairs: American support for Israel, Arab terrorism, Soviet Jewry, and the welfare of Jewish communities in radical Arab states.;The League went through a number of changes once they went beyond the confines of neighborhood safety. The most publicized change was JDL's shift in tactics. Abandoning the legal process, JDLers were arrested for gun smuggling and bombing. Concomitant with this, JDL's membership shifted from adults to youths. Jews in other cities began organizing local chapters, with the most active chapters in Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.;This dissertation describes the activities of the JDLers as the League went from local affairs to international politics. Material for this work was obtained from a number of sources. Aside from newspaper reports, I interviewed close to a hundred JDLers, and their oral histories provide a rich source of information. In addition to the JDLers, the lawyers involved in the various JDL trials provided me with much material. These include: assistant United States Attorneys in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York; and such defense attorneys as Nathan Lewin, a former State Department official and Assistant Solicitor General in the Johnson Administration; Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School; and Barry Slotnick, a noted criminal lawyer.;The reports from the secret undercover police agents who infiltrated JDL were also obtained. Trial transcripts also yielded valuable information, including former Attorney General John Mitchell's testimony about his conversations on JDL with Henry Kissinger and J. Edgar Hoover. Confidential State Department cablegrams between Moscow and Washington--which refer to JDL's harassment and bombings, and their effects on United States-Soviet relations--have become available, and these cablegrams have been incorporated in this work.;Using this information, the dissertation starts with JDL's confrontation with blacks, and goes on to show how these tactics were used to harass Soviet installations in New York and Washington. It traces the JDL bombings of Soviet buildings, and deals with who the bombers were; the way the New York City Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service tried to apprehend the bombers; the illegal wiretaps and secret police informers within JDL; how the police learned of JDL's plan to use a drone airplane to bomb the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, and the way government authorities thwarted the plot; the 1972 Hurok firebombing which caused the death of Iris Kones, a Hurok secretary; the police investigation of the bombing and the subsequent trial.;Also included is a review of the Washington JDL chapter, led by Dr. William Perl, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, and a professor of psychology. This work also describes the JDL chapters in Boston and Israel. The relationship between the League, and other Jewish communal organizations is analyzed.;The dissertation concludes with an analysis of the ideology of the League, and provides a chronology of its activities for the first nine (1968-1976) years.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
