288	The Story of the Jewish Defense League

bthere are behind me and the JDL, but not with us on the line! I bdo not refer to the firing line, to going to prison or to making bthe kinds of sacrifices that they applauded so much when bothers—we—did make them. I mean that for all the genuine bapplause, the JDL never found these same people giving of btheir time or their money. Funds could be found for every bmadness in the world but when it came to writing a check for bJDL, some atavistic instinct stopped the Jew from writing his bname. Who knows the fears that plague the Jew, the irra- btional, senseless, foolish fears? He fears his wife, his bemployer, his child. What will his wife say? What will his bneighbor say? What will his dog say—if he joins the JDL or bwrites a check? Will the FBI come visit him? How can a bwealthy person give us a large amount of money if this bcannot be in the form of a check and thus tax deductible? bHow can he give us money unless he gets a plaque or is bhonored at a banquet—yet he is afraid to hang a JDL plaque bon his wall and is terrified of being openly honored by the bJDL at a banquet. If only the Jew feared G-d as he does man b. . .And so, because they cheered us and were afraid to give btheir money, we could not build the Jewish Identity School band we could not do all the things that were so vital and that bothers did not do. What a pity that so many were behind us ball the way and we could not see them.

bThe first reports in March of a genuine breakthrough and brevolutionary change in Soviet emigration practice had bbeen greeted with consternation by the major Jewish groups bwho invented all manner of reasons to explain the change baway rather than admit that the JDL “hoodlums” and their btactics had done that which they could not.

bIn an NBC television appearance, the Anti-Defamation bLeague’s Arnold Forster intoned: “Nothing can be ac- bcomplished by throwing a bag of garbage through the win- bdow of the Soviet Embassy.” “Their (JDL’s) avowed plan to bharass and assault Soviet diplomats only harms rather than baids the cause of Soviet Jewry,” parroted the Philadelphia bADL’s David Berger. We no longer even bothered to reply bto the desperate condemnations of informers and dwarfs bwhom even the Jewish public was beginning to be disgusted b