78	The Story of the Jewish Defense League

bJewish merchants, teachers, and civil servants, for Jewish bneighborhoods threatened with crime and terror, for stu- bdents beset by quotas and reverse discrimination, the voice band energy of Jewish leadership is muted. One struggles to bfind the same zeal for the Jew as they manifest for others.

b“And on the most burning question of all, the threat to the bphysical safety and survival of Jews and exhortations and bplans for immigration to Israel, there is at best silence and at bworst a denial of a problem. This is not the way of Ahavat bYisroel.

b“The lack of Ahavat Yisroel in its fullest term also finds bexpression in the phenomenon of Jewish organizations and bfederations devoting huge sums of money and generous bamounts of their time and energy on behalf of non-Jewish bcauses. Let it be clearly understood that the Jew, throughout bhistory, has stood by the oppressed non-Jew and has fought bfor social justice for him in conjunction with rabbinical bconcept that one aids the non-Jew together with the Jew. bNevertheless, the order of priorities is clear.

b“It is the Jewish problems which must come first for the bJew just as, rightfully, the Black problem must come first for bthe Black, or the Irish problem first for the Irishman. It is bthe norm, it is the proper way for one to care first for those bclosest to him, and those that do not are an insecure, self- bhating people secretly wishing to escape from their heritage band from those and from that into which they were born. bWe declare that a Jew is obligated firstly to work for Jewish bproblems and a Jewish organization comes into being bprimarily because of the fact that there are Jewish problems bto be solved. Jewish funds, Jewish time, and Jewish energy bwhen solicited by these organizations, by all ethical and bmoral standards, should go first and foremost to fight for bJewish problems. There are Jewish poor; there is Jewish beconomic and social suffering. These must take precedence. bThis, too, is Ahavat Yisroel.

b“There are few more outrageous arguments than the one buttered over and over again by Jewish leaders and groups, bprotesting ‘Such and such an action is not really a Jewish bproblem. It is aimed at a class of people which merely b