Meir Weinstein

Meir Weinstein (born August 18, 1957 as Marvin Weinstein and also known as Meir Halevi) is the national director of the Canadian branch of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) and since 2017 has claimed to be the leader of the JDL in North America.

Weinstein has been leader of the Canadian JDL since the late 1970s, but formerly used the pseudonym "Meir Halevi". He joined the JDL, at the age of 20, after reading Meir Kahane's book Never Again. Previously an assimilated Jew, Weinstein began attending synagogue regularly, began studying Jewish texts and became more involved in the Jewish community as a result of reading Kahane's book. He founded the Toronto JDL branch in 1979. He told the Jewish Press in 2008: "I will always be a loyal disciple of Rabbi Kahane. Our ideology is based on the Jewish Idea as taught by Rabbi Kahane." Under his leadership, the Canadian JDL has held annual commemorations honoring Kahane's life and ideas.

In the 1980s and early 1990s Weinstein and the JDL were involved in identifying alleged Nazi war criminals living in Canada as well as neo-Nazi activity. The group became dormant until Weinstein revived it in 2006 in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The revived JDL has focussed on opposing what it views as growing radical Islamic influence and anti-Israel activity.

Weinstein is a trained bodyguard and served in the Israel Defense Forces.

In the mid-1980s, Weinstein travelled to Alberta on several occasions in an attempt to organize the Jewish community against antisemitic activity in the province - particularly, against the activities of Aryan Nations organizer Terry Long. He received national media attention in 1986 when he picketed "AryanFest" when it was held on Long's Alberta compound. The previous year, Weinstein had held meetings in Edmonton in an attempt to organize a JDL branch there. During one of the meetings he shouted down Rabbi Haim Kemelman, leader of Edmonton's Beth Shalom synagogue, after he criticized the JDL's methods and called Weinstein a "carpetbagger" and alleged he was trumping up a non-existent crisis of antisemitism in an attempt create an Edmonton JDL branch. "Those kinds of rabbis, those kind of Jews, in the end they dig a grave for Jews," said Weinstein who accused the rabbi of being "rude and extremist". "You see, I am silenced," the rabbi was reported as saying to a reporter after the incident, adding, "that is the JDL."

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