Free Republic

Nearly 40 years ago, long before the latest conflagration between Israel and Hamas militants, a bomb ripped through the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, taking the life of the group’s regional director, Palestinian American activist Alex Odeh. The FBI labeled the bombing a terrorist attack and early on identified the Jewish Defense League as “the possible responsible group.” At the time, the JDL was the focus of numerous state and federal investigations and had gained notoriety as an underground network of radical militants, espousing a violent form of Jewish nationalism that mainstream Jewish leaders rejected. The FBI...

Six Jewish vigilantes were jailed in Paris yesterday over a "savage gang attack" targeting attendees at a fundraising event for Gaza in 2009 in the French capital. The defendants used iron bars, baseball bats and bike chains in the onslaught, in which they deliberately targeted anybody who looked like a Muslim. Among their victims was a 22-year-old singer who suffered a “lynching” by the 20-strong mob who chanted “Death to Arabs” and “Long live Israel”. All were leading members of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a notorious vigilante group that is outlawed in both America and Israel because of its...

First let’s understand what we ‘re talking about. We are talking about thugs who learned their tactics from the Brown Shirts... Back then they spoke mostly German. Today they speak mostly Arabic even if it’s in English. The target? The Jews. Anybody else? Nobody else. Think Kristallnacht (the infamous Night of Breaking Glass) – except on a daily basis, not just one night – and focused on every business imaginable, and the campuses. Nearly every college and university in the United States has them, and has them ready to “break glass” and riot against anything Jewish or Israeli. Mostly a...

Ari Ephraim Rubin, vice chairman of the Jewish Defense League long led by his father, Irving (Irv) Rubin, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 20. He was 30. Ari Rubin had been active since his youth in the militant JDL, which has long been rejected by mainstream Jewish organizations for its violent tactics, and he became vice chairman in 2006. His death was ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, whose spokesman, Craig Harvey, said that a neighbor found Rubin in his car with the self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. The report was confirmed...

When Jihad Came to America by Andrew C. McCarthy On May 2 and 3, 1990, the U.S. embassy in Cairo alerted its counterpart in Khartoum that Egypt’s “leading radical,” Omar Abdel Rahman, was on his way to Sudan. Warning that his ultimate plan might be to seek exile in the United States, the Cairo embassy asked its colleagues to pass along any information they might learn about his activities on Sudanese soil. What did U.S. officials already know about Abdel Rahman in 1990? As the 9/11 Commission would later determine, they knew that he had been arrested repeatedly in Egypt...

Four Jewish Defense League members were arrested on Wednesday, according to Agence France Presse, in connection to last week's attack on a Paris bookstore. Judicial officials were quoted in the report as saying that the shop is run by pro-Palestinian activists, and has fallen victim to several such attacks.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The chairman of the Jewish Defense League were arrested in connection with a failed bombing plot, federal authorities said. Irv Rubin, 56, and a member of the militant group, Earl Krugel, 59, were booked early Wednesday at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, detention center spokeswoman Donna Davis said. The arrests late Tuesday were in connection with a bombing plot, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office. He would not describe the alleged scheme except to say, "The bombing was not carried out." Criminal charges should be filed later Wednesday, Mrozek ...

(Los Angeles) -- Will Smith may be upset with some Web gossip sites. But the Jewish Defense League is hot with him over the comments he made in a Scottish newspaper about Adolf Hitler. The JDL rips into Smith in a release posted on its Web site on Christmas Eve. After quoting Smith's comments, the group says what the actor says is "ignorant, detestable and offensive." It goes on to say that Smith's words "spit on the memory of every person murdered by the Nazis" and "stick a knife in the backs of every veteran" who fought against the Nazi...

When a wave of rioting erupted across France last fall, a Jewish youth group swung into action to guard synagogues and community centers from possible anti-Semitic spillover violence. Many Jews feel that such a reflex is needed these days in France, home to the largest population of both Jews and Muslims in western Europe and sporadically simmering with tensions. As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was greeted with a red-carpet welcome in Paris on Wednesday, he faced a France where anti-Semitic attacks have tumbled from a high in 2004, despite several dramatic incidents. Olmert called President Jacques Chirac "one of...

  On November 4, 2005, Jewish Defense League (JDL) member Earl Krugel was murdered in an Arizona prison.  It was only his third day into a 20-year sentence at the Federal Correction Institution in Phoenix.  The 62-year old Navy veteran and former dental technician was exercising when another inmate came up behind him and hit him over the head with a concrete block, killing him instantly.  Why a loose cement block was just hanging around the exercise yard is still unknown.  Authorities have been fairly tightlipped so far, but the investigation has reportedly focused on a white supremacist inmate.   While this...

A deafening silence overcame the Jewish community this month after Jewish Defense League member Earl Krugel was murdered in an Arizona prison. The 62-year old Navy veteran and former dental technician — three days into a 20-year federal sentence — was exercising when another inmate came up behind him and hit him over the head with a concrete block, killing him instantly. Why a loose cement block was just hanging around the exercise yard is still unknown. Authorities have been fairly tightlipped so far, but the investigation has reportedly focused on a white supremacist inmate. Despite all the questions surrounding...

LOS ANGELES - A Jewish Defense League activist imprisoned for his role in an alleged plot to bomb a California mosque and the office of a Lebanese-American congressman was killed at a federal prison in Phoenix. Earl Krugel, 62, of Reseda, who was sentenced in September to 20 years in prison in a plea bargain, was killed Friday in what his wife said she was told was an assault by another inmate, who hit him from behind with a concrete block. "Earl never saw it happening," Lola Krugel said. "He was exercising." Krugel's sister, Linda Krugel said her brother had...

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5 -- A Jewish Defense League activist imprisoned for his role in a plot to bomb a California mosque and an office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who is a Lebanese American, was killed at a federal prison in Phoenix, an FBI spokesman said Saturday.snipKrugel, a former dental assistant, and JDL leader Irv Rubin were arrested in 2001 and charged with conspiring to bomb the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City and a field office of Issa. Rubin died in 2002 after what authorities called a suicide bid in jail.

A leader of the Jewish Defense League who admitted his role in two criminal conspiracies to manufacture and detonate bombs at a mosque and a Congressman's field office was recently sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, the statutory maximum for his two counts of conviction. Earl Leslie Krugel, 62, of Reseda, California, was sentenced by United States District Judge Ronald S.W. Lew. In sentencing the JDL member, Judge Lew recognized that Krugel's actions contributed to an atmosphere of ethnic hatred in the period following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Krugel pleaded guilty in 2003 to conspiring to bomb...

LOS ANGELES - A Jewish Defense League member was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison for his role in a plot to bomb a mosque and a Lebanese-American congressman's office. During the hearing, Earl Krugel, 62, apologized and said he was a changed man. But U.S. District Judge Ronald S.W. Lew described Krugel's actions as "promoting hatred in the most vile way" and sentenced him to the maximum under Krugel's plea agreement. Lew said Krugel had failed a polygraph test five times during the investigation. "You are not that changed a person. You have more to give," the judge...

Police in Gush Katif swooped down on youths in the middle of the night, including a Katif resident, and stranded them outside Katif. At least one of them had no shoes or money; another is aged 12. The group of 11 youths, including a boy aged only 12, were talking to soldiers peacefully outside the community of Gadid, in Gush Katif, at approximately 2:30 AM. A force of Border Guard police fell upon them, grabbed them up, and threw them onto a bus. They took them to a dark junction outside Gush Katif, and stranded them there to fend for...

WASHINGTON -- A handful of people at Democratic National Headquarters distributed material critical of Israel during a public forum questioning the Bush administration's Iraq policy, drawing an angry response and charges of anti-Semitism from party chairman Howard Dean on Friday. "We disavow the anti-Semitic literature, and the Democratic National Committee stands in absolute disagreement with and condemns the allegations," Dean said in a statement posted on the DNC Web site. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, organized the forum on Thursday at the Capitol to publicize and discuss the so-called Downing Street memo....

NEW YORK - Columbia University president Lee Bollinger plans "specific steps" soon in response to allegations that professors and lecturers at the Ivy League university made vitriolic and malicious comments against Israel in classes. Bollinger made the pledge in a Wednesday phone call to Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman. Bollinger didn't detail the character of the steps, but emphasized "the matter will be handled immediately." New York's Columbia University was recently embarrassed by reports that Middle Eastern professors are exploiting their academic standing to express extreme political views on Israel, using slanderous and defamatory statements. The allegations against the...

In reaction to a new film on academic bias and harassment of Israel-sympathetic students at Columbia University, the school's president, Lee C. Bollinger, has decided to have the charges raised by the documentary investigated. The short video, which shows students describing instances of intimidation and hostility by faculty members of the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, is the latest in a series of efforts by students and some Columbia community members to get the word out that the school has a problem of anti-Israel bias. They allege that the school's Middle East classes are unbalanced and...