Jewish Defense League - JDL's Five Principles

JDL's Five Principles

The JDL upholds five fundamental principles, which as of July 2007 were listed on its website as:

• "LOVE OF JEWRY, one Jewish people, indivisible and united, from which flows the love for and the feeling of pain of all Jews."
• "DIGNITY AND PRIDE, pride in and knowledge of Jewish tradition, faith, culture, land, history, strength, pain and peoplehood."
• "IRON, the need to both move to help Jews everywhere and to change the Jewish image through sacrifice and all necessary means—even strength, force and violence."
• "DISCIPLINE AND UNITY, the knowledge that he (or she) can and will do whatever must be done, and the unity and strength of willpower to bring this into reality."
• "FAITH IN THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, faith in the greatness and indestructibility of the Jewish people, our religion and our Land of Israel."

The JDL encourages, per its principle of the "Love of Jewry", that "...n the end...the Jew can look to no one but another Jew for help and that the true solution to the Jewish problem is the liquidation of the Exile and the return of all Jews to Eretz Yisroel -- the land of Israel." The JDL elaborates on this fundamental principle by insisting upon an "immediate need to place Judaism over any other 'ism' and ideology and...use of the yardstick: 'Is it good for Jews?'"

The JDL argues that, outside of Jews, there are historically no people corresponding to the Palestinian ethnicity. Writing on its official website, the JDL claims: "he first mention of a "Palestinian people" dates from the aftermath of the 1967 war, when the local Arabic-speaking communities...were retrospectively endowed with a contrived "nationhood"...taken from Jewish history..." and that "Clearly, since Roman times "Palestinian" had meant Jews until the Arab's recent adoption of this identity in order to claim it as their land." On this basis, the JDL argues that "Zionism under no obligation to accommodate a separate "Palestinian" claim, there being no historical evidence or witness for any such Arab category," and considers Palestinian claims to be "Arab usurpation" of proper Jewish title.