178	The Story of the Jewish Defense League

bdinner with and the ability to drop the biggest gentile name bimaginable, might do well someday to go south of 50th bstreet and meet some real Jews for a change. We were more bimpressed with the November 4 Wall Street Journal article by bDavid Gumpert, which played up our charges against bLindsay. Gumpert had met some of the Jews Lyons had bnever heard of in his Babylonian den writing:

b“The JDL appears strongest in Jewish neighborhoods bthat border on Black ghettos. Residents there are worried babout a mounting crime rate (increasingly, schoolchildren bare being harassed by both Black and white thugs) and the b‘blockbusters’ who are invading the neighborhood. . . . b[Kahane] has an answer to the problem. ‘Blockbusters must bbe convinced that they will eventually get their blocks bbusted,’ he recently told a gathering of about two hundred bfifty East Flatbush residents. ‘It’s about time someone like bhim came along,’ commented an elderly man as the rabbi bspoke. ‘We’ve been getting pushed around too much.’ . . .”

bThe Jewish Establishment phobia was not new nor did it bend with the 1969 New York City mayoralty campaign. The bflight from a “Jewish vote” was conceived in fear of high bJewish visibility and was manifested even more clearly in b1972, when both the B’nai B’rith and American Jewish Con- bgress came out against Jewish endorsement of candidates in bthe presidential elections that year. It must be added here bthat the Establishment opposition to the concept of a Jewish bvote is always given added impetus when there is fear that bthe vote may turn away from a liberal candidate. Thus in bAugust 1972, the governing board of the B’nai B’rith bviewed “with disfavor” any specifically Jewish backing of a bparticular candidate and stated: “We would remind candi- bdates of all parties that Jews do not vote as a bloc or in bresponse to any single issue.” Our answer came in the form bof an article that I wrote for the Jewish Press, September 1, b1972, under the heading “Heaven Forbid”:

b“Formation of ‘Jewish Committees’ in support of any bpolitical candidates is viewed ‘with disfavor’ by the govern- bing board of B’nai B’rith. Thus, the story came to us over the bwires. ‘We would remind candidates of all parties that Jews b