Meir Weinstein

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

He announced on July 9, 2021, that he was leaving the JDL.

Weinstein had been leader of the Canadian JDL since 1979, used the pseudonym "Meir Halevi" into the 1990s.

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.

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.

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."

In 1986, an editorial in The Globe and Mail criticized Weinstein (under his pseudonym of Meir Halevi) for claiming that the Alberta government was aiding neo-nazi Terry Long: "to say, as Mr. Halevi does, that this group exists with the assistance of the provincial government is simply a lie. And to advocate, as he does, any means legal or illegal to destroy the Aryan Nations group is irresponsible."

In 1994, in his capacity as Canadian spokesman for the banned Israeli political party Kach, Weinstein, using his pseudonym of Meir Halevi, commented on the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre committed by Kach member Baruch Goldstein in Hebron saying "[o]ur organization does not condemn the attack. It condemns the Israeli government for not providing adequate protection for settlers."

He added that Kach does not advocate physical attacks on Palestinians but that it wants all members of terrorist organizations expelled from Israel.

In May 1995 Meir Weinstein and US JDL leader Irv Rubin were caught and apprehended by police while trying to break into the property of Ernst Zündel, a Holocaust denier.

No charges have ever been laid in the incident.

In 2002, during the Canadian JDL's inactive period, Weinstein organized another group called the United Israel Action Committee which organized two demonstrations outside of Palestine House in Mississauga, Ontario.

At the second demonstration the pro-Palestinian counterdemonstrators were joined by 20 children.

Palestine House president Rashad Saleh said the demonstrators "should be the ones who should be ashamed. (They) are coming here and terrorizing our little children."

Weinstein argued that the children had been brought out as "pawns" by Palestine House and claimed that the organization his group was picketing used its charitable status to fund the Palestine Liberation Organization.

"The people standing across the street are those who support the murders of Jews," said Weinstein to a reporter.

The group became dormant until Weinstein revived it in 2006 in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

The revived JDL has focused 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.

Professionally, Weinstein owns a window-installing business.

In 2007, Weinstein helped organize a town hall session to raise questions about the connections of a mosque in Newmarket, Ontario with Zafar Bangash.

The controversial imam has promoted sharia law and vigorously defended Iran's fundamentalist regime and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.

The mosque spokesperson denied that Bangash will have anything to do with the day-to-day running of the mosque.

The meeting was criticized as "one-sided" because no officials from the mosque were invited.

John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, was one of the featured speakers at the town hall.

He told the Toronto Star that he was invited by Ron Banerjee, one of the organizers, but would have "called in with the flu" had he known Weinstein would be there because of his association with the JDL.

Weinstein found himself on the defensive at the meeting, according to the National Post, after he implied that a town councillor had accepted a bribe.

Newmarket resident Brian Patterson said of Weinstein: "I don't think he has any credibility at all. To suggest at a public meeting that any public official in this town has taken a bribe without any evidence of that is outrageous."

In his arguments against the mosque, Weinstein told the audience of about 30, "[i]f, God forbid, an Islamic state ever came to fruition in this country, we would be doomed. Is that what you want in this country?"

A 2007 demonstration against Paul Fromm while he was on his way to a disciplinary hearing at the Ontario College of Teachers resulted in the arrest of two JDL activists who were accused of assaulting the controversial far-right figure.

Weinstein, himself, was not reported to have been involved in the incident.

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.