Social Activists &am; Union Leaders^©

Jewish Activism

"When it comes to helping someone in need, do not rely on prayer alone. Let the person in need pray, not you, your task is to help."

Elie Wiesel, Somewhere a Master (1981)

Abraham protested God's seeming indifference to the destruction of innocents in Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses protested the Pharaoh's treatment of Jews, unleashed Ten Plagues on Egypt, and led the Jews to the Promised Land. Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other of the prophets protested the backsliding of kings and fellow Jews, railed at their failures to properly honor Yahweh, and demanded that Jews dedicate themselves to righteousness and justice.

In focusing on deeds rather than beliefs, Judaism makes demands. Not only are there duties (mitzvoth), but also an obligation to pursue justice and charity (tzedakah), and to work to heal the broken world (tikkun olam). There is the presumption that by design or accident, the World was made imperfect and Jews were "chosen," or have otherwise inherited a duty to be proactive in correcting those imperfections and inequities.

If some Christians believe faith trumps action and deeds don't count, and some secularists prefer leisure in their spare time, Jewish activists, instead, will be at a rally or a protest. And while only a minority of Jews are outspoken public activists, a substantial percentage of outspoken public activists are Jewish. Perhaps apocryphal, Ernest Van den Haag is quoted in The Jewish Mystique as saying, "out of one hundred Jews, five may be radicals, but out of ten radicals, five are likely to be Jewish."

Paul Johnson notes in his A History of the Jews, that so called "non-Jewish Jews" (who rejected characterization as "Jews" because they considered it an archaic vestige of outmoded economic and political systems), "were prominent in every revolutionary party, in virtually every European country, just before, during and immediately after the First World War."

While there is no authoritative listing of the most important progressive, radical, and utopian causes over the last 150 years, any discussion of the better known movements, reveals Jews to be prominent in nearly every one.

Socialism: Modern Socialism was conceived in the early nineteenth century by non-Jews Comte Henri de Saint-Simon and Franois-Marie-Charles Fourier. With the Jewish emancipation and enlightenment then underway, it is not surprising that Jewish intellectuals and financiers were among their early supporters. In 1863, Jews Moses Hess, and Ferdinand Lassalle formed the first German workers' (socialist) party and in 1897, the Bund (General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia), was formed and it became a socialist political movement. In its time, the Bund was the most effective socialist organization in Russia. Later, it allied itself with Russia's Mensheviks and after the Bolshevik Revolution, most of its members became communists.

Never a widely popular movement in the United States, socialism attained notoriety in 1890, when Daniel De Leon, a Jewish Marxist joined the Socialist Labor Party and brought the movement to public attention in his work to build and shape it with elements from Marxism. Eventually, U.S. socialist leadership went to non-Jews, Eugene Debs, and later Norman Thomas. De Leon moved on to help found the International Workers of the World, more popularly known as the "Wobblies."

Kurt Eisner, a German Jew and member of the German Social Democrat Party, led a November 1918 overthrow of the Bavarian government declaring Bavaria a socialist republic. He was assassinated less than four months later.

Socialism was always part of Zionist planning for Israel. Over its first thirty years, socialism dominated the Israeli economy until the Likud party took control from Labor in 1977 and began moving economic policy to the right. Even today, however, as much as 40 to 50 percent of Israel's economy is state owned or run by cooperatives affiliated with Histadrut, the Israeli trade union organization. Perhaps, the best known manifestation of Socialist Zionism is the kibbutz which remains part of Israel's farming landscape to this day.

Communism: Karl Marx has had an enormous impact on world history with his (and non-Jew Frederick Engels') 1840's conception of Communism. Their views were reportedly influenced by Moses Hess (see above) who converted them to the concept of historical materialism, a critical underpinning of communism.

Communism became a force throughout Europe, but particularly in Russia where, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it competed with the socialist Bund and other movements for influence. Many Jews were counted as members of the competing Menshevik (democratic communism) and Bolshevik (professional revolutionaries) parties. Jews were the clear majority of the Menshevik party and were prominent among the Bolsheviks, albeit as a minority. (Experts disagree about the actual percentages but Stalin has said Jews were a minority of the Bolsheviks.)

In any case, Leon Trotsky was effectively number two when Lenin was in power, many leading Bolsheviks were Jews (Kamenev, Yaroslavsky, Sverdlov, Kaganovich, Zinoviev, etc.), and Jews held senior positions in the post revolutionary Soviet Union leadership and in the Cheka (secret police). Their prominence, however, was short lived. After Stalin took charge, in 1924, he systematically purged nearly every one of them.

In Germany, the first prominent Jewish communist was the Russian, Rosa Luxemburg, who moved to Berlin to co-found and lead the Spartacus League. It was a Social Democratic Party offshoot which became a revolutionary communist movement. Luxemburg was murdered in January 1919 in the midst of the Spartacus Revolt.

Bela Kun was briefly the Communist dictator of Hungary until he too was murdered in 1918.

In the United States, the heyday of communism was the 1930s when the U.S. economy was weak, Hitler was in control of Germany, and the Soviet Union was ascendant. Many experts have noted that at the time, a third or more of the membership of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) was Jewish. But Communism was never widely accepted by Americans, and for Jews, the Aug. 23, 1939 Nonaggression Pact between Hitler and Stalin, marked the beginning of their disaffection with Communism. Later, when Stalin's anti-Semitism became known, Jewish participation in CPUSA plummeted, as did that of non-Jews with the advent of the Cold War.

Finally, there was Joe Slovo, the Lithuanian-born Jew who headed the South African Communist Party and was active in the African National Congress.

Anarchism: Not particularly well known or popular today, this was a utopian vision of a human reasonableness so self capable that government would be unnecessary. Its roots date back to classical antiquity, but it became a contemporary movement after 1840 when the French non-Jew, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon named and described it. Though its early promoters (such as Proudhon, William Godwin, Robert Owen, Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Dropotkin) were not Jewish, in Europe and the United States, emigrant Jews soon became forceful anarchist leaders.

By the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, however, anarchism was no longer "reasonable." It became radical and violent. Anarchists carried out numerous assassinations including: King Umberto I of Italy, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, President Carnot of France, President William McKinley of the United States, General Simon Petliura, a former leader of Ukraine, and Antonio del Castillo of Spain. The assassinations were purportedly necessary to "inspire and unleash the masses." Among the assassins, French Jew, Samuel Schwartzbard was directly responsible for the death of General Simon Petliura.

London's East End was home to the Federation of Jewish Anarchists, a group larger than England's native anarchist movement. In the United States, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were driving figures in a movement with many Jewish members. Berkman attempted to assassinate Henry Frick (Andrew Carnegie's manager) and was sent to jail. Later, Goldman was indirectly implicated in McKinley's death when the assassin told authorities that she was the last person he spoke with before he shot McKinley. Finally in late 1919, Goldman, Berkman, and other Jewish anarchists were deported to Russia (which they soon discovered was not the "worker's paradise" they had hoped).

Never particularly popular in the United States, anarchism had to grapple with the inherent problem of "how one organizes a group of anarchists." And in Europe the movement essentially died out after 1920 when the Communists, Nazis and Fascists took power. Today a few prominent anarchists remain (such as Noam Chomsky), but they are a marginal group on the world stage.

Labor unions: Jews have been at the forefront of the U.S. labor movement for more than a century. They were a particularly vital force during the early years (from 1880 to 1950) when many unions openly espoused progressive political ideologies such as socialism, communism, and anarchy.

The first great Jewish labor leader, however, was a pragmatist who focused on improving wages and working conditions. Born in England to Dutch Jewish parents, Samuel Gompers was not interested in the Jewish religion, nor was he steeped in the czarist oppression of the Russian Pales - a historical phenomenon that shaped most early twentieth century Jewish labor leaders. Only twelve years after his 1863 emigration to the United States at age thirteen, Gompers was president of a cigar maker's local. By 1881 he was President of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, and by 1886 he was head of its successor, the American Federation of labor (AFL). Except for one year (1895), Gompers headed the two unions for forty-two consecutive years until 1924, when he retired from the then three million member AFL.

It was during Gompers' early years as an American labor leader that millions of Eastern European Jews entered the United States. Most arrived with a fervent hatred for the oppressive racist political and economic system they left behind in Czarist Russia. Many were (or would soon become) radical socialists, communists, or anarchists. Moreover, most who immigrated between 1880 and 1924 began life in America as laborers. It would be a generation or more before their offspring gravitated into the professions and entrepreneurial roles which leave very few Jews as union members today.

The United States provided a freedom they had never experienced before, but that did not keep them from spotting inequities, promoting their ideologies and organizing their fellow workers. And in that era of child labor, unsafe working conditions, enforced thirteen to fourteen hour work days, and low wages, there was plenty to be angry about, organize against and strike for. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 workers, most of them young Jewish women, was just one notorious example of the horrific unsafe conditions of the times. Rose Schneiderman, a young radical dubbed by her critics, the "Red Rose of Anarchy," memorialized those deaths in a speech to the Women's Trade Union League, saying,

"I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. . . I can't talk fellowship . . . Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working class movement."

An ardent suffragist, she was an organizer for the United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers Union, served as President of the Women's Trade Union League, and New York Women's Trade Union League, became a close friend of Eleanor, and later Franklin Roosevelt, and served on that Administration's Labor Advisory Board.

Clara Lemlich (Shavelson) agitated for a 1909 strike which grew to 20,000 female shirtwaist makers. The strike was followed a year later by another of 60,000 cloak-makers. Together, the two strikes established the struggling International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), earned (with help from Lewis Brandeis and Jacob Schiff) ILGWU recognition, and won higher wages for its members. Even in retirement at the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles, Lemlich helped unionize the orderlies and arranged for the Home to honor the United Farm Workers boycott of grapes and lettuce.

Pauline Newman, organized New York's largest rent strike in 1907/8, ran on the Socialist ticket for New York's Secretary of State, campaigned for women's suffrage, and became the first female organizer for the ILGWU, where she worked for seventy years.

Morris Hillquist, a leader of the American Socialist Party and member of the Socialist Labor Party, ran twice for congress, helped organize the United Hebrew Trades and took on the International Workers of the World, arguing the socialist base should be established within the existing AFL trade union rather than as part of the more radical, communist oriented, "Wobblies."

Ben Gold, an avowed communist and organizer for the Fur and Leather Workers Union, became its president in the late 1920s and ran the union for forty years.

Bessie Abramowitz led a 1910 walkout from Hart, Schaffner, and Marx which grew into a strike of some 8,000 workers, resulting in union recognition and higher wages. She then helped lead her fellow workers to bolt from the conservative United Garment Workers and join the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, on whose Executive Board she later served.

Abramowitz married Sidney Hillman, a Lithuanian with roots in the social democratic and Russian Jewish Bund movements. Hillman helped organize the union at Hart, Schaffner, and Marx and shortly thereafter, became President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. He was a close associate of Franklin Roosevelt and, with David Dubinsky, and Max Zaritsky, he organized the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

In 1909, then seventeen year old David Dubinsky escaped from a train taking him to a Siberian prison. He found his way to the United States, began as a clothing cutter, and rose to become President of the ILGWU in 1932. In that job, he followed two Jews, Benjamin Schlesinger and Morris Sigman. They had led the ILGWU through a tumultuous 1920s power struggle when communist run New York ILGWU locals forced a disastrous and failed strike which called in local gangsters (Arnold Rothstein), lasted seven months, and nearly bankrupted the Union. Sigman ousted the communists, and then, at Dubinsky's suggestion, returned the reigns to Schlesinger. When Schlesinger died in 1932, Dubinsky was left in charge.

Despite his socialist roots Dubinsky was strongly opposed to communist efforts to take over the U.S. labor movement. In the late 1930s, when he saw renewed communist involvement in the CIO, he pulled the ILGWU out, returning it to the AFL. Meanwhile, he formed the strongly anti-Communist Liberal Party and supported the United Auto Workers efforts to keep communists out of that union as well. Dubinsky finally stepped down as head of the ILGWU in 1966.

Over last fifty years, nearly all U.S. unions, including those headed by Jews, have returned to Gompers' more pragmatic approach. The politics may be Democrat, or occasionally Republican, but there is less focus on radical ideologies and more energy devoted to improving wages and working conditions.

Since Dubinsky, the ILGWU has merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (headed for a time by Murray Finley), and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. Today, it operates as "Unite Here," represents 450,000 workers and 400,000 retirees, and is headed by Bruce Raynor.

In 1983, Jackie Presser took over as President of the Teamsters. Earlier, in 1966, he had formed a Teamsters local and built it to 6,000 members. His five years as Teamster's President are a mixed record. He garnered substantial political capital from the Union's endorsement of Ronald Reagan, and he followed that up by leading the Teamsters back into the AFL-CIO. But it was later revealed his effort to become Teamsters President had been supported by New York's Genovese crime family and an out of court settlement, after his 1988 death, resolved Federal charges of corruption against him.

Since 1985, Morton Bahr has headed up the 700,000 member United Communications Workers of America (CWA) and he will reportedly be succeeded by CWA Executive Vice President, Larry Cohen. Albert Shanker served as President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and as head of the New York local for the United Federation of teachers (UFT). In 1997, he was succeeded at the AFT by Sandra Feldman, who led the 1.3 million member union until 2004. Meanwhile, Randi Weingarten is UFT President. Victor Gotbaum was head of the State and Local Government Employees Union from the late 1960s to the early 80s and Andrew Stern now heads the 1.8 million member Service Employees International Union.

Jews are but a small fraction of today's unionized labor force in America, but they continue to be a major part of its leadership.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): IN 1909, the NAACP was founded in the home of Joel Elias Spingarn, (a Jewish Columbia University professor of comparative literature who was also a founder of the publisher, Harcourt Brace). Among the NAACP's six to eight founders (sources vary) was also Henry Moscowitz. Joel Spingarn served as NAACP's Chairman of the Board from 1913 to 1939 and as its President from 1929 to 1939. He also established the Spingarn medal for outstanding achievement by an African American.

Following Spingarn in office was Arthur Spring who served as the NAACP President from 1939 to 1966. He, in turn, was succeeded by Kivie Kaplan, President from 1966 to 1975. Jews thus headed up the NAACP for nearly all of its first sixty-six years. Since 1975, the NAACP presidency has been held by blacks.

Blacks Schools in the South: As covered more fully in the chapter on philanthropy, over 5,000 schools for blacks were built throughout the Southern United States at the behest of Julius Rosenwald.

Black Voting rights in the South: The commitment of young Jews to the cause of Black civil and voting rights was manifested in the murder of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They lost their lives with black, James Chaney, on June 21, 1964. The three were looking into the bombing of a Meridian, Mississippi church that was to be used for voter registration when, after trumped up charges of involvement in the bombing, they were taken to awaiting Ku Klux Klan members who beat and murdered them.

Native American rights: Winona LaDuke was born to a Jewish mother and Chippewa father. After graduation from Harvard, she became a Native American rights activist, particularly in the cause of lands taken unfairly from the tribes. She has written two books on Native American rights, appeared in numerous documentaries on the subject, was named 1997 Woman of the Year by Ms Magazine, and ran as Ralph Nader's Vice Presidential running mate on the 2000 ticket.

Peruvian Indian (Sendero Luminoso) rights: One of South America's most controversial and dangerous political movements of the 1980s and early '90s was the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). A Maoist guerrilla faction of perhaps 10,000 militants, it was responsible for an estimated 30,000 deaths before its founder, and probable non-Jew, Manuel Ruben Abimael Guzman Reynoso, was captured in 1992.

In 1995, Lori Berneson was arrested and tried for complicity in Shining Path and for heading a counterpart insurgency called MRTA. After two trials, she is now serving a twenty year sentence in a Peruvian jail. On the Web site of the Committee to Free Lori Berenson, they write "Lori Berenson is a social activist. . .a firm believer in the need to work for a better world for all, for a world in which everyone's fundamental human rights are respected."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): The ACLU is prominent in a wide range of progressive or liberal causes. Among them: free speech, racial justice, reproductive freedom, lesbian and gay rights, drug policy, disability rights, the death penalty, women's rights, voter rights, police practices, and many others.

ACLU has a long history of strong Jewish presence. Among those instrumental in its 1920 creation were co-founder Stephen Wise, (who also co-founded the NAACP) and Felix Frankfurter. For twenty-three years, from 1978 until September 2001, Ira Glasser led the ACLU and during his tenure he tripled the organization from a staff of thirty-five attorneys to one with one hundred. Following his resignation, the Executive Director slot was turned over to Anthony D. Romero, a non-Jewish openly gay Latino who reports to the current president, Nadine Strossen (one-forth Jewish). Stoessen's bios typically describe her as the granddaughter of a Buchenwald survivor. For fifteen years, from 1985 to 2000, the New York ACLU was headed by Norman Siegal and a few years ago, an ACLU poll reportedly found 21 percent of its membership and 27 percent of its leadership were Jewish.

Student protests and the Free Speech movement: The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was America's most strident student movement of the 1960s and 70s. It spawned an even more radical sibling, the violent Weather Underground. In 1979, Arthur Liebman wrote his influential Jews and the Left, one of several scholarly books written by Jews to explore the disproportionate representation of Jews among leftist student activists. Liebman concluded that Jews were 46 percent of the delegates at the 1966 SDS convention. They were equally important in the movement's leadership including Richard Flacks, Al Haber, Robb Ross, Steve Max, Mike Spiegal, Mike Klonsky, Todd Gitlin, Kathy Boudin, Bettina Aptheker, and Mark Rudd, (who came to national prominence as leader of the student takeover of the President's office at Columbia University.) Between 1960 and 1970, five of the nine SDS presidents were Jewish (Haber, Gitlin, Spiegel, Klonsky and Rudd.)

Liebman also concluded that the majority of the Free Speech Movement steering committee at University of California, Berkeley, was Jewish, as were 50 percent of the California Peace and Freedom party, according to David R. Schweitzer and James Eden.

The most radical group was the Weathermen, so named for Bob Dylan's line "You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." The name was later changed to Weather Underground. In today's terms the Weather Underground would be classed as "terrorist." Frustrated by the Viet Nam War, disaffected by failures in the civil rights movement, and opposed to capitalism, the group intended to take over the government. They freed Timothy Leary from jail, bombed two dozen public buildings, including the Capital Building and Pentagon, and lost three of their members to a premature bomb explosion in Greenwich Village. One member was also later implicated in the death of two police officers as the result of a Brinks truck robbery. Among its leaders were, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Naomi Jaffe, David Gilbert, Laura Whitehorn and Brian Flanagan. Of the seven, only Ayers and Flanagan are not Jewish.

Meanwhile, in France, a similar level of Jewish activist leadership led to the 1968 takeover of the Consistory building in Paris, "a symbol of traditional French political culture."

Today, student activism is much less inflamed but typing the words "Jewish student activism" into a Google search will yield 347,000 hits, many with references to tikkun olam and the goal of "healing and repairing the world."

The Chicago Seven: One high water mark of the tumultuous late 1960s was the riot at Chicago's 1968 Democratic National Convention. It came after the Viet Cong had mounted the Tet offensive, draft cards were being burned, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, and the Democrats were poised to nominate Hubert Humphrey to succeed Lyndon Johnson - this despite the peace movement's efforts to have Eugene McCarthy nominated instead.

Two groups, the National Mobilization to End the War (MOBE) and Youth International Party (YIPPIES) organized joint demonstrations to effect the nomination. What may have begun as peaceful and fun, ended up violent, with almost 25,000 police, Army and National Guardsmen trying to control thousands of demonstrators. Curfews were violated, the police used force, and the demonstration's leaders made public comments, such as non-Jew Tom Hayden's, "Make sure that if blood is going to flow, let it flow all over the city," and Jerry Rubin's "Kill the pigs! Kill the cops!"

After the riots, a Chicago grand jury indicted eight rioters and eight police officers. The rioters included: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. Seale was later removed from the case and it became the Chicago Seven. Through it all, there was a decidedly disproportionate Jewish involvement. Of the seven defendants, three: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Lee Weiner were Jewish, as was the presiding Judge, Julius Hoffman, and two of the lead defense attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass (both of whom received multiple contempt citations from Hoffman).

Together with the 159 contempt citations issued by Hoffman, the jury found five of the seven defendants guilty. Ultimately, however, every one of those verdicts was overturned on appeal and all of the police officers were acquitted or had their charges dismissed.

Gay, Lesbian and Transgender rights: Harvey Milk was named one of Time's "100 Most Important People of the Twentieth Century." He was the first self-acknowledged homosexual to win high local office in the United States when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. His first piece of legislation was a gay rights bill which San Francisco adopted and which, in its passage, led tragically to Milk's assassination by former supervisor Dan White.

Two years earlier, Bella Abzug had sponsored the first gay rights bill in the U.S. Congress, and that, together with Milk's opening of the closet door, led to a string of Jewish lesbian and gay activists. Barney Frank was elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Larry Kramer, an Academy Award nominee for his screenplay of D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love," was a co-founder of both the Gay Men's Health Crises and ACT UP. After her election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Roberta Achtenberg moved on to serve the Clinton Administration as Assistant Secretary of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, and as Senior Advisor to HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.

Leslie Fienberg is the editor of the Marxist Workers World and is a leading transgender activist and author of Transgender Liberation and Stone Butch Blues. Among the founders of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) was Arnie Kantrowitz. Its Treasurer is William Weinberger, its Secretary, Judy Gluckstern, General Counsel, David Huebner and at least three of the twenty directors are Jewish. The Human Rights Campaign, which bills itself as the largest gay and lesbian organization, is similar with a likely five of thirty-seven directors Jewish. Finally, The gay magazine Advocate was owned by David Goodstein from 1975 to 1985 and it is now led by Senior Vice President and Corporate Editorial Director, Judy Wieder.

Women's suffrage and feminism: Though Jews such as Rose Schneiderman, Ernestine Rose and Aletta Jacobs were leaders in the early twentieth century suffrage and women's rights movements in Europe and in the United States, it is in the contemporary feminist movement, starting in the 1970s, where Jews have been the most prominent leaders. Nearly any article chronicling that history will identify Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem as seminal figures.

Bella Abzug first showed her independence by reciting Kaddish (something only men were supposed to do in her Orthodox temple) for a year after her father's death in 1933. She went on to practice civil rights law before becoming the first Jewish woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, and co-founded and served as first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Gloria Steinem founded Ms. Magazine, wrote four books and helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.

Among other leading feminists, Robin Morgan now serves as editor of Ms. Magazine, Andrea Dworkin was an outspoken, often shrill lesbian feminist, Naomi Wolf wrote The Beauty Myth and was active in the 2000 Gore campaign, Rebecca Walker (half Jewish) founded Third Wave Direct Action Corporation, and Susan Faludi won a National Book Critics Circle Award for her essay, "The Undeclared War Against Women."

One further measure of the role of Jews as leaders among women is found in the Ladies Home Journal's "100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century." (Exhibit 22a) Twenty of the one hundred women, ten times what would be expected, are of Jewish heritage.

Greenpeace: Rex Wyler is credited by Greenpeace for writing the "definitive book on Greenpeace." Though they were not the only founders, Wyler begins his story with Irving and Dorthy Stowe. They are "Jewish-American Quaker pacifists (who) moved to Vancouver in 1966, and co-founded the Don't Make a Wave Committee," which later became Greenpeace. Wyler then tells of the 1970 meeting which made plans for sending a boat to protest nuclear tests off Amchitka Island. At that meeting, "Stowe flashed the 'V' sign and said 'Peace,' Bill Darnell, who had been recruited by Stowe, replied, "Make it green peace." Though Irving Stowe has since passed away, 1960s Jewish student revolutionary, Todd Gitlin, now serves as one of the six Greenpeace directors.

Earth First!: One of the more radical environmentalist groups is Earth First! and among its seven founders, acknowledged in Susan Zakin's book, Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement, is Judi Bari, who is also credited with leading the campaigns against redwood logging and the use of tree spiking as a tactic. Bari died of breast cancer in 1997, but to this day, she is the subject of an unresolved mystery concerning the identity of the party who placed the pipe bomb, which exploded on May 24, 1990, under the seat of her car.

Community Organizing: Saul Alinsky created the idea of community activism in 1930's Chicago. Originally focused on neighborhood action, he took it to black neighborhoods and was an inspiration for the mid 1960s Community Action Agencies (CAA's) established as part of Lyndon Johnson's Poverty Program. Ever the radical, Alinky found the CAA's to be too "establishment," and he advocated more direct action to get results. He also decried mainstream liberals, feeling they were impotent pacifists. So influential was Alinsky in his prime that non-Jew Hillary Clinton wrote her undergraduate thesis on him.

Other Activists: Among other Jewish activists in service to other causes:

• Henry Spira founded Animal Rights International
• Daniel Ellsberg protested the Vietnam war by releasing the Pentagon Papers
• Bernard Low earned a Nobel Prize, with non-Jew Dr. Evgueni Chazov of the Soviet Union, for establishing the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Kahanist/settler movement: Perhaps the single most controversial and radical movement in Israel involves followers of the assassinated father, Rabbi Meir David Kahane, and son, Binyamin Kahane. They, and others with a similar outlook, have used violent means to promote not just more settlements, but also the expansion of Israel. In their view, Israel must include land from the Nile to the Euphrates rivers, encompassing Jordon, Lebanon, and parts of Egypt and Iraq. These radicals see such expansion, and the creation of a theocratic state, as a religious duty under the Covenant. Many of them see war as necessary to expel the Arabs and expand Israel so Jews can be "redeemed" with the coming of the Messiah. For them, the plans of Ariel Sharon and the majority of Israelis (whom Kahanists derisively call Hellenized Jews), to permit a Palestinian state and to return most or all of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians, must be halted at any cost.

Among the terrorist acts committed by this group are Dr. Baruch Goldstein's massacre of twenty-nine praying Muslims on Feb 25, 1994, Yigal Amir's assassination of Itzak Rabin, various murders of Palestinians, and a failed attempt to bomb a Muslim girls school and hospital. Like Hammas, Islamic Jihad, and other Islamic terrorist groups, these people believe they have a religious duty to God to be violent.

Anti-Zionism and Palestinian rights: Perhaps fitting, this Chapter ends where it began. Noam Chomsky, Tim Wise, and other prominent Jews, not only decry the Settlers' movement, they are activists against the way Palestinians have been treated by the Israeli government. Some, such as Chomsky, are completely opposed to the existence of the State of Israel. They hearken back to the early debates before Israel's founding and believe the only proper form of Zionism would be one in which Palestinians and Jews share political power in a combined state.