Mordechai Levy
Mark "Mordechai" Levy is the founder and leader of the JDO, and the only JDO member to receive substantial notice in the press. 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."
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Levy had an antagonistic relationship with Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defense League. The two of them nearly came to blows during a Los Angeles press conference in 1989, and later that year Levy was charged with four counts of attempted murder, one count of first-degree assault, and one count of criminal possession of a deadly weapon after shooting at Rubin from a rooftop in New York City. Rubin was attempting to serve Levy with a subpoena in a slander suit. The rooftop was that of the apartment dwelling of JDO activist A. J. Weberman, also known for his activism in the Youth International Party (Yippies). Levy and Weberman, along with JDO, were successfully sued for libel more recently and fined $850,000. 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 of assaulting a 12-year-old boy in New York State after the boy attempted to set fire to a hotel where the JDO was holding a meeting.
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