Steven Siesser

Jewish Defense League Steven Siesser

The use of violence to extract political gains is not a new phenomenon in American society as some of our leaders would have us believe. Our history is coated with incidents of violence: The treatment of Native Americans, the enslavement of blacks, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Civil War draft riot in New York, the post-civil war treatment of blacks, the Pullman Strikes, the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam and the resulting on-campus student rebellion and, more recently, white supremacists, radical environmentalists and the Occupy Wall Street movement, just to cite a few, With so many of our citizens engaging in various forms of group conflict to achieve their political agendas, it is time to take a fresh look at the role group conflict and political violence plays in affecting the issues involved and determine the members participating in the conflict. Most alarmingly, gun ownership and the right to bear arms has become its own political movement over the past twenty-five years. Similarly, the pro and anti-abortion movement has many examples where activists have resorted to group conflict and violence to achieve their political agendas. While there are many other examples to choose from, I believe it was an ethnic conflict that began in New York City in 1968 that ignited the shifting of the paradigm from labeling group conflict and political violence as deviant behavior to an atmosphere where such actions were to be expected because of the gains achieved. Racial tensions and strife reached a boiling point during the 1968 New York City teacher's strike. Out of this turmoil emerged Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense League, standing up against anti-Semitism and shouting, "Never Again."