Local News in Brief : JDO ‘Training Camp’
The militant Jewish Defense Organization will open a “training camp” in the Santa Clarita Valley this week to teach Jewish youths the basics of self-defense and the use of firearms, the group’s founder said Monday.
“It’s not that guns are a good thing, but they are sometimes a necessary thing,” JDO founder Mordechai Levy told a press conference upon his arrival at Los Angeles International Airport. “It’s high time that Jews learn to defend themselves.”
Los Angeles was selected as a site for the training--a similar camp is in New York--because of the upsurge of Neo-Nazi activity in Los Angeles by “skinheads” and other racist groups, he said.
Levy would not divulge the location of the training camp, except to say that it is “50 miles north of Los Angeles, in the Valencia area.”
The three-week camp, scheduled to open Thursday, will include instruction on handguns and rifles with live ammunition, karate and other training by former U.S. and Israeli combat veterans, Levy said.
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