Jewish Defense Organization
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The Jewish Defense Organization is a militant Jewish organization in the United States. It is right-wing in its stance on Israeli defense and foreign policy issues (see [1]for editorial statements exemplifying its stance), but its positions on issues of Jewish concern in the United States are more nuanced and it has criticized both right-wing and left-wing manifestations of what it sees as anti-Semitism and racism with equal rhetorical fervor (see [2] and [3] for criticism of Patrick Buchanan and Ramsey Clark, respectively).
The JDO takes no stance on most domestic U.S. issues unless they relate directly to the fight against anti-Semitism; one exception is gun control, which the group strongly opposes. It has worked with both left-wing and right-wing Jews (see [4]) on problems involving bigotry.
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[edit] JDO's fight against anti-Semites
The JDO's security team has occasionally patrolled Jewish neighborhoods in the aftermath of anti-Semitic incidents, and has urged other Jewish groups to do likewise (Robert Fleming, "Jews Begin Patrol," New York Daily News, Jan. 4, 1988; "Jewish Militant Group Urges American Jews to Arm After Attempted Massacre of Jewish Children by Neo-Nazi Group," Jewish Press, Aug. 20, 1999.) JDO members attempted to help provide security in Crown Heights during the 1991 anti-Jewish riots (Jonathan Mark, "Crown Heights: A Deadly Confrontation," Jewish Week, Aug. 23, 1991).
The group has engaged in violent altercations with Neo-Nazis and racist skinheads in Las Vegas and other cities; see Joe Schoenmann, "White Fright: Is Las Vegas seeing an influx of skinheads?" Las Vegas Weekly, June 28, 2005 at [5] and "Call to Arms Overreach," editorial, Las Vegas Review, March 29, 1989. It has also demonstrated, although without incident, against Louis Farrakhan in New York City ([6]; also see "Protesting the Million Man March," King's Courier, Brooklyn, NY, Oct. 23, 1995). The JDO often gives its demonstrations pseudo-military names such as "Operation Klan Kicker" or "Operation Nazi Kicker" (see[7] and [8]).
In 2004, the JDO gained much media attention after holding rallies at an apartment house on Manhattan's Upper West Side where a neo-Nazi activist and aggressive Holocaust denier ran his operation (Julie Satow, "Protestors Call for Eviction of Holocaust Revisionist," New York Sun, Oct. 25, 2004).
The JDO has also called for boycotts on occasion. In 1989, it attracted major attention in the music and entertainment press by launching a boycott of the rap group Public Enemy in response to anti-Semitic remarks by Professor Griff, its self-styled Minister of Information (see Powell, Catherine T., "Rap Music: An Education with a Beat from the Street," 1991 Journal of Negro Education 60(3):245-259 quoted in [9]; for examples of Griff's statements, go to [10]). As a result of the media controversy, Griff was kicked out of the band, and Public Enemy apologized for his remarks.
The JDO has also adopted a tactic of pressuring hotels and other public facilities to cancel meetings sponsored by anti-Semites such as David Duke.[11]
In early 2004, the JDO waged a phone-in campaign to pressure a Florida company to remove billboard messages sponsored by the National Alliance, an organization widely regarded as neo-Nazi (Jacob Ogles, "Neo-Nazis' Billboard to Come Down," Orlando Sentinel, Jan. 15, 2004; see [12]).
[edit] Mordechai Levy
Mordechai Levy is the founder and current leader of the JDO. He spends much of his time promoting the JDO's Camp Jabotinsky, which provides self-defense and gun training for young Jews at a facility in the Catskills. Levy is an avid follower of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, after whom the camp is named, and often repeats Jabotinsky's motto: better to know how to shoot and not need to, than to need to and not know how. [13]
[edit] Levy's research on hate groups
Levy, helped by JDO supporters, collects information on neo-Nazis, the KKK and Arab terrorist support networks. Over the years he has developed a reputation among journalists and with law enforcement for his ability to ferret out obscure information. A 1989 Village Voice article on Jewish militants reported:
His [Levy's] uncanny ability to track down KKK members and neo-Nazis astounded federal officials. "Levy does appear to possess membership lists of neo-Nazi groups and KKK members across the U.S.," a confidential FBI memorandum reported. (See [14] (Robert I. Friedman, "Oy Vey, Make My Day," Village Voice, Aug. 22, 1989).)
After the massacre of five left-wing anti-Klan demonstrators by Klansmen and neo-Nazis in Greensboro, N.C. in 1979 (see Greensboro massacre), Levy came forward with information to help the victims in their attempt to win justice, although he did not agree with their Marxist politics. Paul Bermanzohn, one of the survivors of the neo-Nazi attack, recalled the efforts to establish in court that the FBI had possessed advance knowledge of the plot:
Most incriminating of all was an affidavit from Mordechai Levy of the Jewish Defense Organization. When Levy got his FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act, he found an entry dated November 2, 1979, the day before the massacre. In it, the FBI reported that Levy told one of their agents, "I have information that Harold Covington of the National Socialist Party of America is up to heavy illegal activity. Covington has been training in the Jefferson County area with illegal weapons. He and his group have plans to attack and possibly kill people at an anti-Klan gathering this week in North Carolina." (See Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.)
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[edit] Levy versus David Duke and Lyndon LaRouche
In 1989, Levy traveled to Louisiana in an attempt to encourage a community effort to stop David Duke, the former Klan leader, from being elected to the state legislature. (Kim Chatelain, "Militant Jewish Leader Calls Duke a Small Time Hitler," New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb. 9, 1989.) When Duke was elected, Jewish community leaders, who had remained silent in the face of the threat, at first tried to blame it on a backlash from Levy's tiny meeting (which in fact had received considerable television coverage). But as Duke's support continued to grow, the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans joined with civil rights activists and mainstream politicians in November 1989 to found the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, which started doing on its own initiative much of what Levy had called for. As a result in large part of the coalition's efforts, Duke was defeated in his back-to-back attempts to win election as governor and U.S. senator in the early 1990s. (See[15] and also see "Why Levy Was Wrong, Why Levy Was Right" (editorial), Community (weekly of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans), March 3, 1989.)
In 1980-84, Levy infiltrated the Lyndon LaRouche organization on a part-time basis as a security consultant. He provided valuable information to journalists and law enforcement that helped to eventually bring about the criminal convictions of LaRouche and several of his followers. He also ran a one-man disinformation campaign that convinced at least some of LaRouche's security staffers of vast plots against their leader. An amusing account of Levy's experiences with the LaRouchians is contained in pp. 243-251 of Dennis King's Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism at [16].
The LaRouchians ruefully concluded in 1984, after Levy had gone public against them, that he had been an "agent of chaos" (a designation taken, appropriately, from the title of Norman Spinrad's classic science fiction novel about a weird anarchist conspiracy).
Levy has provided his own account of his anti-LaRouche activities at [17].
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