Jewish Defense Organization
By the mid-1980s, Levy had left the Jewish Defense League to form the Jewish Defense Organization. After a bomb at the California offices American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee killed its West Coast director, Alex Odeh, both the Jewish Defense League and the Jewish Defense Organization came under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Two weeks earlier, according to the New York Times, The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's New York office appeared on a list entitled "Enemies of the Jewish People" handed out in Washington, DC by Levy. Levy was quoted in a UPI report denying responsibility for the murder: "We had no hand in this, but this man deserved what he got." Asked about the attacks by the New York Times, Levy said "We aren't claiming credit, but it couldn't happen to better people, more deserving people. They're getting a taste of their own medicine."
Levy was charged with four counts of attempted murder and other charges after he opened fire on late JDL leader Irv Rubin in 1989, hitting an innocent bystander. Rubin was attempting to serve a subpoena on Levy. Levy was acquitted of all charges except one count of felony assault with a deadly weapon, for which he served 18 months of a 4½ year sentence. Levy pleaded guilty in 2000 to unrelated charges that he assaulted a 12 year-old boy in New York State.
Levy collects information on neo-Nazis, the KKK and Arab organizations. A 1989 Village Voice article on Jewish militants reported:
His 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.
Read more about this topic: Mordechai Levy
Famous quotes containing the words jewish, defense and/or organization:
“The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass. Armenian refugees, Jewish refugees, refugees from Franco Spain. But a political leader or artistic figure is an exile. Thomas Mann yesterday, Theodorakis today. Exile is the noble and dignified term, while a refugee is more hapless.... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Unless a group of workers know their work is under surveillance, that they are being rated as fairly as human beings, with the fallibility that goes with human judgment, can rate them, and that at least an attempt is made to measure their worth to an organization in relative terms, they are likely to sink back on length of service as the sole reason for retention and promotion.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)