Jewish Terrorist Groups in the United States

The Jewish Defense League

The Jewish Defense League (JDL) was founded in 1968 by Meir Kahane, an orthodox Brooklyn rabbi. The group's original function was to protect elderly Brooklyn residents from street attacks. Kahane, however, was outspoken, even strident, and the JDL soon became known for its confrontational style.

Focusing mainly on the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union, who were often jailed and refused exit visas, the JDL decided that violence was necessary to draw attention to the plight of Soviet Jewry. The goal was to strain U.S.-Soviet relations, for Kahane reasoned that Moscow would need to respond to the pressure by allowing more Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel.

The JDL began a series of demonstrations against Soviet offices and personnel in 1969, including physical attacks and harassment. While the majority of JDL members participated in peaceful political demonstrations, Kahane later publicly admitted that some members “bombed the Russian mission in New York, the Russian cultural mission here [Washington] in 1970, and the Soviet trade offices.”

JDL members were also implicated in two high-profile murders. Jerome Zeller was indicted for the 1972 bombing of the office of agent Sol Hurok, which killed his receptionist and injured 12 others. In 1992, Kahane admitted that he too had had a part in that attack. Two other JDL members, Robert Manning and his wife Rochelle, were indicted for the 1985 bombing death of Alex Odeh, the regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in Santa Ana, California.

According to a 1985 Justice Department report, the FBI also suspected Manning and several other JDL members of being involved in a yearlong series of violent incidents that year. These included the August house-bomb slaying of Tscherim Soobzokov, a suspected Nazi war criminal, in Paterson, New Jersey; the August 16 attempt to bomb the Boston offices of ADC, in which two policemen were severely injured; the September bombing at the Brentwood, Long Island, home of the alleged Nazi Elmars Sprogis, in which a 23-year-old passerby lost a leg; and setting fire to the ADC office in Washington, D.C., on October 29.

Manning and his wife were arrested in Israel on March 24, 1991, and charged in a separate suit involving the 1980 letter-bomb murder of Patricia Wilkerson, a secretary in California. Manning was extradited to the United States on condition that he not be tried in the Odeh murder and the other cases, because the events occurred after he became an Israeli citizen. However, on October 13, 1994, Robert Manning was found guilty of complicity in the Wilkerson murder.

A 1985 Justice Department study of terrorist acts in the United States between 1981 and 1984 found that of 18 incidents initiated by so-called “Jewish terrorist elements,” 15 were perpetrated by the JDL. In a 1986 study of domestic terrorism, the Department of Energy concluded: “For more than a decade, the Jewish Defense League (JDL) has been one of the most active terrorist groups in the United States.”

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