304	The Story of the Jewish Defense League

bmeans throwing Jewish patriots into jail and betraying the binterests of Jews threatened by danger.

b“This is why what is happening between me and the bJewish State is so important. It is not merely one more bcriminal case, as the authorities would wish to paint it. What bis happening here is, rather, a question of the same sin and bsame crime of the Jewish community of thirty years ago, brepeated again by the Jewish State. It is the rot of bassimilation—and let no one be deluded into thinking that bIsrael cannot be the victim of assimilation—and one sees it bstrangling and perverting the state before our very eyes.

b“The State of Israel, for years prior to the Six Day War, battempted to persuade Soviet Jewish activists who would bcome to the embassy in Moscow that agitation and public boutcry would only harm their cause. This was a lie, and the bIsraelis knew it. What most concerned them was not the effect bactivism would have on the Soviet Jews, but rather that bJewish agitation might jeopardize relations between Israel band the USSR. This took precedence over Soviet Jews, and bthere is not a scintilla of difference between the attitude of bIsrael in the sixties and that of the American Jewish Estab- blishment in the forties. Both fearfully contemplated ac- btivism on behalf of threatened Jews and both asked the same bquestion: How will it affect us?

b“And even after relations had been broken, Israel con- btinued to hope for friendship and thus continued to dis- bsuade Soviet Jews from loud protests. In 1969 two leading bSoviet Jewish activists, Dov Sperling and Yasha Kazakov, bwere persistently ‘rumored’ by government leaks to really be b‘Soviet agitators.’ When they arrived in America for a speak- bing tour to arouse the public, the Israeli Embassy and its bconsulate in New York succeeded in getting a number of btheir speaking dates cancelled. When Kazakov fasted at the bUnited Nations in 1970 to protest Soviet failure to release bhis family, I sat with him and he showed me the telegram he bhad received from Golda Meir reading, ‘Please stop. You bare hurting Soviet Jewry.’ What Mrs. Meir really meant was: byou are jeopardizing the possibility of Soviet-Israeli brapproachment—and that took precedence over Soviet bJewry.