Militant N.Y. Jewish Leader Fires on Rival

A confrontation between the leaders of two militant Jewish organizations erupted into gunfire in New York’s Greenwich Village Thursday, resulting in the wounding of a 69-year-old bystander.

Police arrested Brooklyn-born Mordechai Levy, 27, chairman of the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO), for firing a semiautomatic assault rifle at Los Angeles resident Irv Rubin, national director of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), and two others.

Police said Levy fired “numerous” shots from the roof of a four-story brownstone apartment, missing Rubin and his companions, but hitting Dominic Pinelli, 69, in the left knee as he sat in a green van parked on the street. Pinelli was hospitalized in stable condition.

Surrenders to Police

Scores of officers responded to a sniper call shortly after noon and stood by as a hostage negotiator talked to Levy, who surrendered to police about 2 1/2 hours later. Police found several rifles in his room, investigators said.

“He was afraid that people were coming to kill him,” said Police Chief Robert J. Johnston Jr. “We got him to surrender by essentially telling him that we would take care of everything.”

Levy was taken to the 9th Precinct House and later charged with four counts of attempted murder and one count each of first-degree assault and criminal possession of a deadly weapon.

According to Johnston, Rubin, private investigator Steve Rombom and a process server, whose identity was not immediately known, went to Levy’s house and office at 6 Bleecker St. at midday to serve a legal paper in connection with a lawsuit.

Rubin had accused Levy of libel in a suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court late last month. Rubin is seeking millions in damages on behalf of himself and his wife, Shelly, for statements Levy purportedly made on a radio station KFI talk show, hosted by Tom Leykis, on June 2.

The action charges that Levy falsely accused Rubin of drug dealing, extortion, and money laundering and wrongly claimed that Shelly Rubin had once tried to commit suicide while she was pregnant.

Rubin and Levy have been in dispute for years, according to NYPD Lt. David Nadel, a police liaison officer with the Jewish community.

“Levy left the JDL about 7 or 8 years ago. . . . He formed his own organization, the JDO, and they’ve been at odds with the JDL since then,” Nadel said. “Mordechai had a following of a couple dozen people, that’s all. Levy claimed the JDO was more activist than the JDL.”

Levy, the self-proclaimed enemy of “skin heads” and Nazis, runs a Jewish survival camp in the Catskills, where he teaches people how to fire weapons.

Robert I. Friedman, author and writer from the Village Voice who is working on a story about the Jewish militant movement, told New York Newsday:

“There is a bitter personality dispute between Mordechai and Irv, and Mordechai and Irv’s wife, a feud that has been continuing bicoastally for three or four years. . . . They have been harassing each other for years. It’s not political. It’s personal.”

Rubin could not be reached for comment Thursday, but in Los Angeles, Jan Tucker, who described himself as a JDL investigator, said: “We’ve been warning law enforcement groups that this guy (Levy) was as dangerous as a heart attack for years.”

Times staff writer David Treadwell contributed to this story from New York.