Militant Jewish group in the U.S. Founded in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1968, the JDL was originally organized to protect Jews in poor neighborhoods from physical attacks. Later, under the leadership of Meir Kahane, who was assassinated in New York by an Arab in 1990, and using the slogan “Never Again” with reference to the Holocaust, the JDL engaged in sometimes violent demonstrations and employed physical force to draw public attention to the plight of Jews in Soviet Russia and in Arab lands and to the precarious situation of the State of Israel.