‘Hate’ groups

Re: Do We Have To Do This Every Year?, Jonathan Kay, June 12. The Jewish Defense League that is allowed to march in the annual Walk with Israel, was declared by the FBI a “right-wing Jewish terrorist group.” The U.S. State Department designated the JDL’s Israeli affiliates, the Kahane Chai and the Kach as “foreign terrorist organizations” — a decision upheld by a U.S. Appeals Court. Kach member Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians praying in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

In 2001, the JDL’s leader, Canadian Irv Rubin and member Earl Krugel, were convicted of planning a terror attack in California against an Arab American congressman. Why is this violent group welcome in Toronto, while Queers Against Israeli Apartheid stirs a hornets’ nest of opposition?

Scott Weinstein, Montreal. Re: In Support Of The Jewish Defense League, June 16. Letter-writer Jonathan Usher takes issue with my alleged use of the word “strident” to describe the Jewish De- fense League (JDL). In fact, it was the National Post that substituted the phrase “stridently right-wing” for my original description of the JDL as a “hate group.”

Perplexingly, the Post allowed Mr. Usher to describe Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) with the very phrase they would not permit me to use for the JDL despite the fact that it is the JDL, not QuAIA, which, according to both the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, has a long history of hate crimes and terrorist acts stretching back to the 1970s. Accordingly, it is the height of hypocrisy that the same groups and individuals, including several city councilors, who try to get QuAIA banned from the Pride parade have no problem participating in the Walk with Israel alongside the JDL and have no trouble with city funds being used to police the event and clean up afterwards.

Morris Cohen, Toronto.