Jewish Defense Organization

The Jewish Defense Organization (JDO) is a militant Jewish organization in the United States.

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 either killed or committed suicide in jail in 2002. It is one of two United States offshoots of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) after 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 Anti-Defamation League states that:

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, notes that "terrorist organizations almost without exception now regularly select names for themselves that consciously eschew the word 'terrorism' in any of its forms." He cites the JDO as an example of an organisation that has chosen such a name.

The JDO is right-wing in its stance on Israeli defense and foreign policy issues. Its positions on issues of Jewish concern in the US 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. It has worked with both left-wing and right-wing Jews on problems involving bigotry. The JDO has targeted Jewish organizations that it deems to be insufficiently supportive of Zionism.

...
Wikipedia