Background and Ideology
The JDO was founded in the early 1980s by Mordechai Levy after a violent feud with the Jewish Defense League's former leader Irv Rubin, who was killed or committed suicide in jail in 2002. It is one of two United States offshoots of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) after a breaking with the JDL's former leader Meir Kahane.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the JDO is a branch of Kahanism. The JDO opposes the ADL and believes that ADL head Abe Foxman obtained a pardon for Marc Rich after Rich made a contribution to the ADL. The JDO views itself as a Jabotinskyite organization.
The Kahanist movement – comprising the Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO) in the United States, the Kach (Hebrew for "thus" or "this is the way") Party in Israel, and the Kahane Chai ("Kahane Lives") group, founded after Kahane's murder and operating both in Israel and in the U.S. – has spanned 26 years, reflecting a consistent agenda of hate, fear-mongering and intimidation.
Rand Corporation terrorism authority Bruce Hoffman, noting that "terrorist organizations almost without exception now regularly select names for themselves that consciously eschew the word `terrorism' in any of its forms," includes the JDO as an example.
Read more about this topic: Jewish Defense Organization
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