Spurred by Anti-Semitic Acts : JDL to Patrol Troubled Neighborhoods

The Jewish Defense League this week will begin patrolling two San Fernando Valley neighborhoods that have been the scene of recent anti-Semitic incidents, JDL leader Irv Rubin said Tuesday.

Rubin said that the activist Jewish organization decided to start the patrols after the burglary and vandalizing last month of a Van Nuys Hebrew school and the recent painting of swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on the Panorama City home of Russian-Jewish immigrants.

Rubin said the JDL has printed hundreds of flyers offering a $1,000 reward for information about the vandals who broke into Emek Hebrew Academy at 15365 Magnolia Blvd., causing an estimated $12,000 in damage. According to Michele Geffen, a secretary at the junior high school who discovered the damage on June 3, the school has been broken into eight times in a year.

Items Stolen

“This is the first break-in since I’ve been here that had racial overtones,” Geffen said. Windows were broken, a typewriter and other items stolen, and equipment and ritual objects destroyed. Swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans, including, “Kill Jews,” had been written on the school walls, she said. Police investigated the incident but made no arrests, according to Los Angeles Police Detective Michael Kellerman.

The JDL flyers said the group would be patrolling the school’s neighborhood “with our good friends, Smith & Wesson, promising swift justice for the attackers of Jewish property.” Smith & Wesson is a gun manufacturer. The flyers also contain a warning to “Nazi punks” to keep “hands off Jewish property, or no hands!”

Similar flyers are being distributed to the neighbors of Alex Zitser, 37, and his family, Russian-Jewish immigrants who live on Katherine Avenue in Panorama City. Zitser said he awoke June 25 to find a sign reading “Russian pigs” and “Hitler was right” affixed to one of his trees. A swastika had been burned into the lawn. “It’s still visible,” said Zitser, who said he had lived in the neighborhood three years without incident. He found more anti-Semitic slogans on his property July 3.

According to Rubin, anti-Jewish graffiti have been appearing recently on walls and stop signs near Zitser’s house. “The Jew-hater seems to concentrate on bright green paint,” Rubin said. “My conclusion is that it’s one individual.”