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bmilitant students, and college officials had always shied away bfrom asking them in. But never before had they been faced bwith a counterthreat of violence, so that this time they could bno longer seek shelter from responsibility. At 5:00 PM police barrived on the Brooklyn College campus and forcibly bcleared the president’s office. bThreats of violence and violence by the JDL for Jews and bJewish causes continued. During the annual Salute to Israel bDay on June 1, as thousands of Jews watched the parade of bJewish groups, JDL also took part—the organizers had re- bfused to allow us but we marched anyhow. A number of bmembers of the neo-Nazi National Renaissance Party ap- bpeared, carrying various signs including one that read “Gas bthe Jews.” Fuming JDL members attacked the Nazis and bsent eight to the hospital, bringing down the wrath of the bparade committee, which vowed that “next year JDL will not bmarch” (we did) and the fury of other groups, which bclaimed that we had (1) marred the parade and (2) unneces- bsarily attacked a small, unimportant group of Nazis who bwere protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of bfreedom of speech. bTo the first argument we replied that during a parade bhonoring Israel, it is the Jew who does not respond to bAuschwitz-seeking Nazis who mars the day. The second ar- bgument we saw as a more important one, one which sym- bbolized a philosophy of the Jewish Establishment with which bwe were at total variance. “Nobody is going to carry those bsigns in this city,” I told Esquire magazine in August 1970. bWe disagreed emphatically with those who claimed that bsince a group was small it should be ignored, pointing to the bclear historical fact that all horrors began small and that the bHitler era began with twelve people. There is no such thing bas a little bit pregnant and there is, similarly, no such thing bas a little bit Nazi or a little bit of Nazi danger. Had Hitler bbeen disposed of at the beginning, how many millions would bhave been saved and how much suffering the world spared! bAs for the incredible liberal attitude toward free speech, bwe had made it clear from the outset that this was a concept bthat was not a sacred cow for us, in its present form which b
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