Jehovah's Witnesses Seen As Threat To Judaism In Israel

HOLON, Israel - Josef Levi opened his front door, and before he reached for the light switch he sensed something different about his apartment. His nose picked up the scent of fresh paint. Then he turned on the light.

"Missionizer, you must die," was scrawled in black paint on one wall. On other mirrors and walls were the words "Christian Dog," "Traitor" and "Nazi." And a black swastika was sprayed on the white wall above the television. All over the house lay destroyed furniture and ripped-up books. A small can of gasoline sat on the floor.

"Maybe it was a warning," Levi said. "Next time we'll burn your house."

Levi is in no doubt as to why his apartment was vandalized. He is a Jehovah's Witness, and as a member of this Christian group that goes from door-to-door hoping to convert people to their faith, he is an unpopular presence particularly for religious Jews who object to the Witnesses' proselytizing.

Though by no means the first assault on the roughly 1,000 Jehovah's Witnesses living in Israel, the attack on Levi's home recently has caused the small Christian community increasingly to worry for its safety. Church officials and members said an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group called Yad Lachim is behind the attacks, something Yad Lachim officials vehemently deny.

The Witnesses also claim the Israeli police are making little effort to arrest the perpetrators of the numerous alleged assaults committed against the Witnesses. They say the police ignore the

hate crimes committed against this community, because to be seen siding with people trying to convert Jews would be politically unpopular. The police deny the allegation.

"It is true that there are around 160 (criminal reports) since 1994," said police spokeswoman Linda Menuhin, "but that makes around 30 a year, which is not grave. Nevertheless, the main problem is unknown suspects, which makes it hard to follow up. The police have increased their attention to the Jehovah's community, and they are in touch with the community on a daily basis to see what could be done better."

Levi and other members of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Israel - many of them, like Levi, native-born Israelis and converts to the faith from Judaism - are particularly angered by the attacks because of the Jehovah's Witnesses well-documented resistance to and persecution by the Nazis during World War II.

"The Jehovah's Witnesses suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis beginning at the start of the Nazis' ascension to power," said Jud Newborn, historian at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan.

"Jehovah's Witnesses were banned nationally in 1935. Because they refused to serve in the Nazi German army or give the Heil Hitler salute or indeed swear allegiance to Hitler at all, they were removed from their civil-service posts, denied the capacity to make livings. There are waves of arrests in 1936 and 1937, throwing most of the Jehovah's Witnesses into concentration camps, where they languished the longest of the many groups that languished in the camps."

Born a Jew, Levi cannot understand why, with this history, Israeli Jews would call him a Nazi and ransack his home.

"I ask the religious Jewish people, you know what it is to feel persecuted," Levi said. "You know what Hitler did. You know what it is to suffer. They're doing the same to other people, to us, now."

To Yad Lachim, the activity of the Witnesses is tantamount to the attempts by Hitler to wipe out the Jewish nation.

"The Nazis tried to make sure there would be no more Jews in the world," said Aaron Rubin, Yad Lachim's representative in Jerusalem. "What they want to do is convert all the Jews to their sect. That's a continuation of Nazi work by other means. They don't want to murder us or burn us, but they have the same goals as the Nazis. Only the means are different."

Rubin said his organization never uses violence in its acknowledged struggle against the Witnesses. The 1,000 Jehovah's Witnesses continue to proselytize to Israelis because they see it as their duty as members of their church and their legal right.

Levi, 47, and his wife Sima, 44, both born Jewish but now Jehovah's Witnesses, have lived in the town of Holon, a few miles south of Tel Aviv, for 20 years.

As active Witnesses who knock on people's doors and try to convert Jews to their faith, they are walking a legal tightrope in Israel, where it is lawful to proselytize but not to offer any form of material or financial incentives for conversion to any religion.

Israeli Witnesses spokesman Eric Miller, who originally is from New Hyde Park, N.Y., said the Witnesses in Israel never offer any kind of material inducement to potential converts.

The Witnesses' more challenging balancing act, however, is cultural. Even secular Israelis tend not to be too fond of Christian evangelists or any other missionaries.

Ruth Gavison, a professor of law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the country's leading authorities on civil and human rights, said Israeli Jews feel threatened by Witnesses trying to convert Jews.

"The feeling of threat is increased when they succeed, when a few families in a neighborhood can't resist the temptation to convert," Gavison said.

Rubin does not condemn Yad Lachim members who shout "Nazi" or "traitor" at Witnesses. He also points to a letter from the denomination's leaders in Germany to Adolf Hitler in 1933 that appears to raise the question of whether the Witnesses actually tried to cooperate with the Nazi leader before he started to send them to concentration camps.

In the letter to Hitler, the Witnesses write: "It has been the commercial Jews of the British-American empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations." The letter continues in a similar vein in several passages.

Newborn said the letter was a "fluke, a red herring" and did not represent the overall anti-Nazi perspective of the Jehovah's Witnesses in prewar Germany.

In spite of this apparent anti-Semitic attempt to curry favor with Hitler in the early years of his rule, the Jehovah's Witnesses soon changed their policy and became among the most vocal of Germany's Christians in their opposition to Nazism.