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Jewish Defense League (JDL)

The JDL was organized in September, 1968, by Rabbi Meir D. Kahane, who proclaimed that violence is necessary to accomplish the objectives of the JDL. Meir Kahane, who would soon gain an international notoriety as a right-wing rabble rouser, was living in Rochdale in Queens at the time of the 1968 teacher's strike, rabbi to Rochdale's orthodox congregation, and leading the newly founded Jewish Defense League. There were many residents from Rochdale who fit into the "New Deal Jews mugged by the 1960s, turn conservative" narrative.

Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League and then immigrated to Israel and established the Kach party, which was banned from his country's parliament in 1988 because of its blatant racism-the group advocated, for example, the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Headquartered in New York City, the JDL was composed primarily of young Jewish-American extremists who consider themselves to be protectors of "Jewish rights" and supporters of the state of Israel. Chapters of the JDL were located in several of the larger metropolitan areas of the United States. Many JDL members were trained in self-defense and the use of firearms. By means of their terrorist activity, the JDL attempted to publicize the poor treatment received by Jews in the Soviet Union.

In 1970 the Soviets concluded a trial viewed in the U.S. as having anti-Semitic overtones, involving a group of accused airplane hijackers. Even as two of the Soviet Jews charged with the crime appealed their death sentences, the first ever levied for hijacking in the USSR, the Jewish Defense League undertook a campaign of bombing Soviet installations and intimidating Soviet personnel in New York and Washington. On 04 January 1970, Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin delivered a note to the State Department accusing the American Government of "connivance" in these hostile acts and warned that the Soviet Government could not guarantee the safety of American officials and businessmen in Moscow.

Sometime in 1973, an Israeli expatriate named Reuven Lev-tov attended a meeting of the Washington Chapter of the JDL held at the home of Dr. Perl. By all accounts, Reuven Lev-tov was and is a shadowy and intriguing figure. After ten years in the Israeli Navy, where he was a member of its elite "special forces," Lev-tov joined the Israeli foreign service and was assigned duty at the Israeli embassy in Washington as chauffeur and apparent bodyguard to the ambassador. In 1965, he married an American citizen and shortly thereafter was dismissed from service at the Israeli Embassy. In 1968, he returned to Israel for a three-year period before settling permanently in this country in 1971. On February 19, 1983, a pipe bomb exploded in front of the Soviet Aeroflot Airline office in Washington, DC, causing minor damage. Although no person(s) or group claimed responsibility for this bombing, it was attributed to the JDL based on their bombing of the same Aeroflot office on February 19, 1982, utilizing an explosive device of similar construction.

The Jewish Direct Action (JDA) first emerged on February 23, 1984, when it claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Soviet residential complex in Bronx, New York. The goals of this group were initially un-defined. On February 23, 1984, three high-explosive devices detonated at the Soviet residential complex, Bronx, New York, causing damage to a vehicle on which one of the devices landed. A telephone call was received from a person who claimed credit for the bombings on the behalf of the Jewish Direct Action.

On November 5, 1990, El-Sayyid Nosair rushed toward the podium in the Morgan D Room of the Marriott East Side Hotel and assasinated Kahane. At trial, the jury could not be convinced that it was Nosair who shot Kahane. He was convicted on two counts of assault, first-degree coercion (for his treatment of the cabbie), and a weapons charge and packed off to the state prison at Attica. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others were later indicted for conducting against the United States a war of urban terrorism that included, among other things: the 1990 murder of Meir Kahane (the founder of the Jewish Defense League), the first attack on the World Trade Center, which was bombed on February 26, 1993, plots to murder prominent political and judicial officials, and a conspiracy to carry out what was called a "Day of Terror" - simultaneous bombings of New York City landmarks, including the United Nations complex, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels (through which thousands of commuters traverse daily between lower Manhattan and New Jersey), and the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building that houses the headquarters of the FBI's New York Field Office (a plot that was thwarted).

A Jewish Defense League official blamed Jews 24 December 1976 for not backing the six members of the League who were sentenced to long terms for transporting arms and attacking building occupied by Soviet and Iraq officials. College student Jeffrey Weingarten and three other JDL members were sentenced to jail for terms as long as six years. Thomas Macintosh, a convert to Judaism, was given a probated sentence for turning state’s evidence. The other three were Russel Kelner, former JDL operations officer, Steven Ehrlich and Stephen Rombom, a high school student. Bonnie Pechter, national JDL director, said that the “greatest tragedy is that when Jews are in trouble, other Jews do not come to their aid."

Kelner, a member of the Jewish Defense League, was convicted under a federal statute for threatening to assassinate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who was to be in New York for a meeting at the United Nations. Kelner argued that without proof he specifically intended to carry out the threat, his statement was political hyperbole protected by the First Amendment rather than a punishable true threat. (United States v. Kelner, supra, 534 F.2d at p. 1025.) The narrowly crafted "true threat" under the Circuit Court standard articulated in United States v. Kelner was later abandoned. The Second Circuit added a gloss that, to be a “true threat,” the statement must be sufficiently “unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution.” Ibid. (quoting United States v. Kelner, 534 F.2d 1020, 1027 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1022 (1976)).

Meir Kahane was murdered in New York, 05 November 1990, by El Sayyid Nosair, who was later convicted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

On 31 December 2000 Binyamin Zeev Kahane, the son of the late right-wing leader Meir Kahane, and his wife, Talia, were killed when Palestinian snipers opened fire while they were driving on the Ramallah bypass road.

On December 11, 2001, Irving David Rubin and Earl Leslie Krugel were arrested by the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force for conspiring to build and place improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California, and the local office of Congressman Darrell Issa. Rubin and Krugel were subsequently charged with conspiracy to destroy a building by means of an explosive, as well as possession of a destructive device during and in relation to a crime of violence. Rubin and Krugel were active members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a violent extremist Jewish organization. Statements by Rubin and Krugel indicated that they had planned the attack against the mosque to demonstrate the militancy of the JDL. Krugel further indicated that the attack was planned to provide a “wake up call” to the Muslim community. It was determined that Rubin and Krugel had already acquired the necessary components to build an IED, including pipes, fuses, and smokeless powder.