Southfield, Mich. (Jewish Renaissance Media) — The federal government charges that the chairman and another member of the Jewish Defense League plotted a pipe bomb attack on a Los Angeles mosque and the offices of a U.S. representative of Middle Eastern descent.
If the charges are proved, Irving D. Rubin and his associate, Earl L. Krugel, deserve the stiffest sentence that can be meted out. And if the incident proves yet another nail in the coffin of the organization that the late Rabbi Meir Kahane founded, so much the better.
But it would be wrong to rush to judgment about the two men’s criminal guilt. The case appears to rest on the testimony of a JDL member who has admitted committing other criminal acts for the league in the past.
Rubin’s lawyer naturally suggests that his client was set up with the help of law enforcement officers — a pattern of behavior with some precedent. Rubin won an undisclosed amount of money from Los Angeles in 1987 after suing the city for planting an undercover agitator in the JDL ranks.
Furthermore, it would certainly look good for the federal government, which is seeking to allay fears that its war on terror is actually a war on Islam, to be able to prosecute a terrorism case that has a Jewish suspect and Arab or Muslim intended victims.
The trial courts will have to sort out who is telling the truth about what, and whether Rubin and Krugel are guilty of a felony. What is clear, however, is that — whether they instigated the pipe bomb plot or were improperly lured into it — their apparent willingness to be party to an act of domestic terror makes them the antithesis of the goal they profess to serve: defending Jews.
If Rubin and Krugel truly wanted to defend what Judaism stands for, they would have rushed to the prosecutor the minute they heard any suggestion of attacking the mosque and the offices of U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa. Instead, they have given an opening to those around the world who want to believe that Jews would happily injure and possibly kill Muslims.
It is one thing to understand that the peace process in the Middle East is dead and that the right wing may be right about Palestinian intransigence. It is quite another to behave like an Islamist terrorist filled with blinding hatred. Even before Sept. 11, that attitude is unforgivable. Shame on Rubin. Shame on Krugel.
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