Jewish Defense League

The Gaza cruise

ATHENS —“Oh my god Jesse, you’ve got to come, it’s a Mediterranean cruise to Gaza,” filmmaker and social justice activist John Greyson said to me, tongue partly in cheek, a while back.

 He was trying to convince me that I should get on board a boat of Canadian activists and report on their voyage to Gaza as part of a flotilla of ships bringing supplies and running Israel’s blockade.

Ten days later I find myself on a cramped flight to Athens, sandwiched between Toronto’s contingent on the Canadian boat. After watching the latest rendition of Gullivers Travels starring Jack Black,  Greyson chats with me about how his involvement in the struggle against South African apartheid, desire to tackle tough issues in the Queer community and the influence of his progressive Jewish friends has put him on a collision course with Israel’s siege.  

He, along with the other Toronto activists flying out had received a less than warm send off by members of the far right nationalist, Jewish Defense League (JDL), who protested their planned voyage at the airport, accusing them of supporting terrorism. Most notable at the protest was a biker with sunglasses and beard rivaling Santa Clause, pacing back and forth with a yellow and black sign that poorly attempted to combine “Hamas,” and “assholes” into one word.

For the flotilla activists, the struggle is as much about forcing a local debate on alternatives to Harper’s  mideast policy as confronting Israel’s continued oppression of Palestinians. 

“Our government is not going do anything so we have to make some changes,” says Kate Wilson, a member of the feminist organization Code Pink (a group planning the flotilla).

Activism is not new to Wilson. Like Greyson, she is a veteran of the South African struggle, living in Botswana for three years during white rule in South Africa and supporting the liberation struggle there and in Canada.

There is a strong culture of security upon arriving at the hotel in Athens, and information is given on a need to know basis. Departure dates, locations and contingency plans are kept strictly under wraps. 

Most of the flotilla organizing happens inside two hotels where chatter about the extent of covert Israeli diplomatic pressure is everywhere. People are apprehensive about the mossad (Israel’s spy agency) sabotaging boats before they depart, as was suspected to have happened to two boats before the first flotilla last year, that resulted in Israel commandeering six ships and the death of nine Turkish activists .

FBI: Jewish Defense League Extorted 2Pac - by Marc Tracy > Tablet ...

Newly released FBI files about Tupac (“2Pac”) Shakur reveal that he and Eazy-E, another ‘90s-era gangsta rapper associated with the West Side camp, were extorted by Meir Kahane’s militant Jewish Defense League. Specifically, the Jerusalem Post reports , the JDL issued death threats against 2Pac and then sent intermediaries to demand protection payments. The files do not offer evidence that the JDL was responsible for 2Pac’s 1996 murder in Las Vegas, though undoubtedly that question will now be raised.

What the files do conclusively show, however, is which side won a very big battle. You see, 2Pac, though born in Harlem and raised in Baltimore, was based at Los Angeles’s Death Row Records, along with acts such as Dr. Dre (who founded the pioneering N.W.A. with Eazy-E) and Snoop Dogg. And, led by 2Pac, Death Row feuded with Notorious B.I.G. and his Bad Boy cadre (Notorious was killed about a year after 2Pac was, in what is widely seen as an act of retaliation). Biggie, of course, was no West Side-r: He proudly hailed from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn—not too far from where the JDL itself was based. So while 2Pac may indeed (as he bragged on the legendary dis track “Hit ‘Em Up” ) have enjoyed relations with Biggie’s wife, these new revelations demonstrate that he would not have lasted in the neighborhoods that Notorious called home. I think we can declare a victor, and it ain’t the West Side. Sorry, man: Hard to creep them Brooklyn streets.

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