Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

With the 1979 dismissal of criminal charges by a federal grand jury and immigration fraud charges by OSI, Soobzokov became a target. Violence against him and other alleged enemies of Israel began to escalate across the country:

• JDL members regularly picketed Soobzokov’s home, carrying signs that read: “Death to Soobzokov—JDL… Nazi Murderers Have No Rights.” Members of the local Circassian community pelted the demonstrators with stones under the watchful eyes of the Paterson police.

• Soobzokov received anonymous threatening letters. “Soobzokov—you are a Nazi butcher of men, women and infants,” one said. “You will die and when you are dead, you will eternally suffer for the crimes you have committed.” The handwritten letter was signed, “A child of a survivor.” Another letter read: “Unless you drop your court suits, we will kidnap your [three] children one by one. Then we will assassinate you, you pig…. Okay?”

• The FBI received a warning letter: “What happened [package bombs] is nothing like what is going to happen. And although we’re sure every Nazi headquarters is being watched, we possess now the membership records of every Nazi group in the country. Every Nazi is a target. The only rights Nazis have is [sic] for burial. Never Again!”

• A twenty-year-old member of the JDL infiltrated Nazi and white supremacy groups in New Jersey and Delaware. She supplied the JDL with membership lists—names, addresses, telephone numbers, photos, places of work—as well as organization plans. But she got caught. The head of the New Jersey KKK and a leader in the Delaware National Socialist Liberation Front lured her to a motel in Vineland, New Jersey, on the pretext of holding a meeting. They cuffed her hands behind her back and repeatedly raped her as punishment. In the process, they broke her right wrist.

• The house of a Forest Hills, Queens, businessman who sold Nazi books and paraphernalia was firebombed with a Molotov cocktail.

• A man representing himself as a reporter stabbed a guest in the home of Boleslavs Maikovskis in Mineola, Long Island, then fled. The assailant later identified himself to the media as a member of Jewish Executioners With Silence (JEWS). He said that Maikovskis had been his target. After that incident, vigilantes lobbed Molotov cocktails at Maikovskis’s house several times. A year earlier, in 1978, several shots had been fired into his home, seriously injuring him.

• In the Venice section of Los Angeles, a vigilante planted a bomb at the Fox Theatre, which was featuring a series of Russian films. The bomb was discovered and no one was injured.

• Three months before the Soobzokov bombing, a pipe bomb exploded at the front door of George Ashley’s home in Los Angeles. Ashley, a nationally known Holocaust denier, was sleeping at the time and no one was injured. The letters “JDL” were spray-painted in dark blue on the walkway leading to his house. The JDL denied responsibility for the bombing.

• A week before the Soobzokov bombing, twenty-five young Jews gathered in a Paterson area synagogue to hear Mordechai Levi speak. Levi was the leader of the Jewish Defense Organization, a radical JDL splinter group. During his high-octane speech, Levi singled out Soobzokov as an enemy of Israel. “One doesn’t ignore Nazis,” he railed. “One doesn’t debate Nazis. One destroys Nazis.”

• Two days before the Soobzokov bombing, a tan station wagon tried to run him over as he crossed a street near his home.

• The day after the Soobzokov bombing, a Boston police officer was disarming a twelve-inch pipe bomb discovered in front of the building that housed the Massachusetts chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The bomb accidentally detonated. Two officers were injured.

• A week after the Soobzokov bombing, a Paterson police officer working on the case received an anonymous letter. “You better not mix up in our case into Mr. Soobzokov,” the handwritten note said. “You are a Nazi…. We will get you.”

• A few days later, the Passaic County sheriff received an anonymous, typewritten letter. “You are barking up the wrong tree in the Soobzokov case,” it said. “One of his own committed this crime. Many of his friends hated him with a passion. Others were deeply jealous of him. As having Circassian-Jordan (ARAB) background, these people may relegate [sic] to murder for revenge. He was not a ‘highly respected leader’ as stated. Soobzokov was wealthy and loaned money out as a Shylock. Maybe a debtor tried to do him in. Who but this circle of ‘friends’ had knowledge of his new car? His arrogance and superior attitude among his following is not tolerated by all. This group of pesty [sic] Jews are not the ones your [sic] looking for.”

A week after the Paterson bombing, doctors gave the police permission to interview Soobzokov if they promised to ask only yes-and-no questions. Soobzokov had agreed to answer with a nod of his head.

Did you see or hear anything during the night prior to the explosion, investigators asked.

Yes, Soobzokov nodded.

Was the JDL responsible for the bombing?

Yes!

Do you know who was directly responsible for placing the bomb at your doorstep?

Yes!

Do you have any additional information for us?

Yes!

Before he was strong enough to actually speak to the police, Soobzokov died of a massive heart attack. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. The violence didn’t stop with the last beat of Soobzokov’s heart.

At 4:30 A.M. on September 6, 1985, a man walking down a street in Brentwood, Long Island, saw flames leaping up the right side of the home of Elmars Sprogis. The passerby ran to the front door to warn the family.

Sprogis was a seventy-year-old former Latvian policeman accused of arresting Jews, transporting them to killing sites, guarding them until they were shot, and then looting their homes. OSI had filed immigration fraud charges against him but couldn’t make them stick because all eyewitnesses were dead. A federal judge found Sprogis not guilty of lying on his visa application, and dropped the charges.

The man trying to warn the Sprogis family triggered a pipe bomb. He suffered severe burns and his right leg had to be amputated. “Listen, carefully,” an anonymous caller told Newsday the next day. “Jewish Defense League. Nazi war criminal. Bomb. Never again.”

A month later, Alex Odeh, the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was assassinated by a pipe bomb planted outside his office door in Santa Ana, California. The night before his assassination, Odeh had appeared on television defending Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

During a press conference shortly after the Odeh murder, the FBI announced that the bombings of Soobzokov, Sprogis, and Odeh were related, and it attributed the terrorist acts to the JDL. The announcement provoked an angry response from Irv Rubin, who had succeeded Rabbi Kahane as JDL leader.

“It’s absolutely absurd, obscene, and outrageous that the FBI would release to the media a statement saying there may be a link between the death of Odeh and the league,” Rubin said. “It’s now time to put up or shut up. Instead of making libelous and slanderous statements, the FBI should make an arrest.” Rubin himself had been acquitted of solicitation-to-murder charges after he allegedly offered to pay anyone who killed or maimed American Nazi Party members in Chicago.

There were no FBI arrests. After more than ten years of forensic examination of the bombs and bomb fragments, bomb parts manufacturers, fingerprint analyses, phone call and car rental traces, and hundreds of interviews, the FBI closed its parcel bomb and pipe bomb investigations. The bureau was unable to find enough evidence to file charges against any members of the JDL, which every major U.S.Jewish organization condemned.