http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a13255/News/New_York.html Jewish Paramilitary ‘Prepares For The Worst’
The founders of Kitat Konenut say their new ‘emergency-response team’ is needed to protect Jews, but others find it alarming.
Protectors or vigilantes? Members of the paramilitary group Kirat Konenut during a training session in the Catskills. Courtesy of Kitat Konenut
by Doug Chandler
Special To The Jewish Week
They crawled through the high grass of the Catskills in the late-July heat, hiked for miles with loaded gear, and learned the proper posture for firing a gun. They received training in close-quarter combat, practiced the martial art known as Krav Maga and handled rifles and pistols. They also learned how to identify suspicious objects and how, if the need arises, to confront terrorists.
No, they’re not young Israeli recruits to the Israel Defense Forces, as you may have imagined, but 15 American-Jewish men who signed up for training this summer with Kitat Konenut, a Jewish paramilitary group formed three years ago. The trainees were all in their 20s, said one of the group’s founders, Scott Brown, and their instructors were all veterans
of the IDF, all with varying degrees of counterterrorism training.
The group, whose name in Hebrew means “preparedness team,” sounds like it could be another Jewish Defense League or Jewish Defense Organization, two right-wing organizations that have preached what they believe are the virtues of self-defense among Jews.
Indeed, with one or two minor exceptions, a brief article published in The New York Times in 1981 sounds like it could have described Kitat Konenut: “Secret training camps to teach Jews to protect themselves against anti-Semitic attacks will be established on the West Coast, New York and Michigan, a Jewish leader said today.” The group, of course, was the JDL, and the Jewish leader quoted in the article was Rabbi Meir Kahane, the JDL’s founder.
But the 44-year-old Brown, a resident of Borough Park, rejects any comparison to the JDL and insists his group has nothing to do with either right-wing extremists or vigilantes.
“As soon as you mention Jews and guns, the name Kahane comes up,” Brown said. “That drives me nuts.”
Brown and the group’s co-founder, Yonatan Stern, both said in a recent interview that their group takes no political stands and supports no political party, either in Israel or in the United States. Everything it does is aboveboard and legal, they said, and in Brown’s words, they’re “not asking members to be Rambos or roam the streets.”
Instead, the two envision their group as a rapid-response team, modeled after the “kitat konenut” squads in many Israeli communities, including kibbutzim and West Bank settlements. Those emergencies could include riots, hostage situations, acts of terrorism or even a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or storm, said Stern, 24, who lives in Los Angeles.
In fact, Stern continued, the group hopes to work with the New York Police Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and has loose connections with officials of both agencies. Another possibility, he suggested, involves joining the Community Emergency Response Team Program, in which private citizens form units in their own neighborhoods to prepare for disasters, respond to them and educate others about potential hazards. The program is managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which often trains CERT volunteers.
An assistant chief for the NYPD, Michael Collins, said in an e-mail that he was unaware of anyone in the department who is familiar with Kitat Konenut. Collins added that the NYPD works with many neighborhood and community groups to improve community safety, but that none of those groups are armed. Similarly, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department said he has never heard of the group, but his agency is a large one and one of its staff members may have been in touch with Kitat Konenut.
A spokesman for FEMA said that CERTs are involved in providing first aid and fighting fires — “that sort of the thing.” But no weapons are involved in their work, he said, and nothing on FEMA’s Website suggests that CERTs respond to acts of terrorism.
Although Kitat Konenut has yet to organize a New York City unit, the group does have a unit in Los Angeles — a team of about 12 members, including two officers with the city’s police department, Stern said. The two police officers, he added, have notified their supervisors of their involvement in the group, which trains throughout the year.
Meanwhile, despite the group’s claims of no political involvement, Kitat Konenut takes a strong position on what its founders consider the right to bear arms — a view that many people, whether they agree with it or not, would consider political. Part of the group’s MySpace page is also political, listing as heroes such figures as Zeev Jabotinsky, Yair Stern and Menachem Begin.
“We are pro-gun because it’s the only way to defend yourself in this country,” Brown said. “The only way to defend a neighborhood is with guns, because the bad guys have it; we don’t.”
Brown and Stern would like to have an armed member of their group on every block or in every city neighborhood with a large Jewish population, they said. Likening the group to Hatzoloh, the Jewish ambulance corps, Brown said that only an organization with deep roots in a community can respond to an incident with the speed that is often required. But he added that his group wouldn’t work at cross-purposes with the NYPD and, in fact, could even serve as their “eyes and ears,” giving them information once they arrive.
While citing episodes like the 1991 Crown Heights riot and the fatal 2006 shootings at Seattle’s Jewish federation, Brown said he doesn’t regard an outbreak of anti-Semitism or terrorist incidents in the United States as anything imminent. But he does believe that the anti-Semitic environment in this country is heating up, as it is around the world, and that it’s “a moral imperative to learn to defend yourself and your family.” Added Stern: “We hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
That sort of talk alarms many in the Jewish community, including officials at two organizations who spoke to The Jewish Week.
“We’ve said for a very long time that, in the United States, Jews should rely on the civilly constituted authorities” for protection, just as any other group does, said Marc Stern, general counsel at the American Jewish Congress. “The notion that Jews need to organize to protect themselves, or that there’s a need for some sort of flying rescue squad, strikes us as wrong.”
The creation of paramilitaries by any ethnic or interest group tends to transfer authority from the government to any and every group that wants to arm itself, the AJC’s Stern said. “You can just imagine what Crown Heights would look like if you had black and Jewish paramilitary groups marching around.”
Joel Levy, the New York regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that whether or not the group is a threat to New York’s fabric, “it’s pretty uncommon for a bunch of self-appointed guardians to go off into the woods with guns.” He also said the NYPD today is “very responsive” to Jewish concerns, which itself raises questions about the group. In Crown Heights today, for instance, “there’s a cop on every corner of the neighborhood.”
That was confirmed by Rabbi Joseph Goldstein, chairman of the community board covering Crown Heights for the past 29 years. If a riot broke out today, Rabbi Goldstein said, the “police response would be large, swift and overpowering. ... It’s a different world out there today.”
Whatever the outlook among community leaders, Adam Avraham Kessler, one of the 15 trainees this summer, is looking at this experience as “a starting point.”
Kessler, a 24-year-old resident of Flatbush, said he learned about Kitat Konenut after reading the group’s profile on Facebook, another social-networking site on the Web. He arrived at the group’s training site not knowing what to expect, but was “pleasantly surprised” by the group’s professionalism. Instructors not only taught how to fire various weapons, but they also emphasized safety and how to react in stressful situations, said Kessler, who never handled a gun beforehand. The training, also offered during the past two summers, lasted 10 days. Most of the participants paid $400 each for the training, which was heavily subsidized by Brown’s own money, Brown said.
A student at both a Far Rockaway yeshiva and Queens College, Kessler said much of his family lives on the West Bank, including the settlements Tekoa and Shiloh. History, he said, has taught him that “it’s almost a requirement” for every Jew to have a knowledge of self-defense.
“We don’t believe in turning the other cheek,” Kessler said. “There’s no sense in Jews sacrificing themselves for vain causes.”
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Topic: New Jewish para military group training in the U.S. (Read 2289 times)