Jews vow to fight back as Brooklyn bias crimes spur a Jewish Power movement

Vandals torched three cars in anti-Semitic attack on Ocean Parkway and Avenue I in Midwood on Nov. 11.

The recent hate crimes against Jews across Brooklyn has ignited a movement pushing them to toughen up and learn how to fight back.

Groups like the Jewish Defense Organization, based in Midwood, and Bnai Elim, an off-shoot of the infamous Jewish Defense League based in Brighton Beach, are promoting combat classes and weapons training for the Torah reading crowd.

“We have hand-to-hand combat training in Midwood and legal gun training in Long Island,” said JDO spokesman Jeff Klein calling the “movement...a Jewish self-defense renaissance.”

Klein said the classes, held in secret locations in Midwood and on Long Island, have been around for years.

Last week the JDO posted fliers on its website and email blasted members saying “WANTED JEWS WITH GUTS” “to help guard synagogues and Jewish areas from neo-Nazis-KKK terror attacks...by any means necessary!”

The promotion is in response to the recent wave of hate crimes against Jews, especially the torching of three cars on Ocean Parkway last week follow by swastikas sightings near the smoldering scene and in Borough Park, Klein said.

Klein claimed that 500 people have signed up for the classes since the hate crimes, but refused to allow a reporter to interview any of them or attend one of the classes.

Police have not made any arrests. Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Borough Park) said the reward for their capture has climbed to $56,000.

The JDO is organizing a rally Sunday at the Gravesend home of Allen Rouse, who last year described himself as a “white nationlist” to a local paper.

The group held a rally at Rouse’s home in 2010, claiming he runs a local chapter of the white supremacist group Stormfront.

Rouse refused to talk to a Daily News reporter.

While neighbors on the heavily Jewish block in Gravesend said they had never seen or heard of Rouse, his landlord Joseph Sardar said Rouse is moving out next week.

He is going to move out,” Sardar told The News. "Too many people are bothering him."

JDO’s resurgence is a throw-back to New York during the 1970’s and 1980’s when bombings, building takeovers, and threats were frequently tied to Jewish nationalist groups.

Brooklyn Rabbi Meir Kahane, founded the JDL in 1968, using “Never Again” as his slogan, arguing Jews needed to fight back when under attack to prevent the possibility of another Holocaust.

Today, about 200 Brooklyn Jews call Kahane their “rav,” or spiritual leader, calling themselves congregates of the 5-year-old group Bnai Elim.

“We changed JDL to ‘Bnai Elim’ because a lot of people get freaked out when they hear JDL.” said Bnai Elim’s national chairman Gennadiy Baruch Faybyshenko. “We won’t start a fight. But we will do what we have to do.”

Bnai Elim sends followers to Kitat Konenu, Hebrew for rapid response team, a camp upstate where ex-Israeli soldiers teach combat fighting and how to fire guns.

It’s better to have the training, and not use it, then need it, and not have it,” said Kitat Konenu cofounder Scott Brown, 48, from Borough Park about his $700 two-week program.

“We are looking to take the See Something Say Something to a much deeper level.”