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Terror Label No Hindrance To Anti-Arab Jewish Group

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December 19, 2000, Section A, Page 1Buy Reprints
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About 350 Jews are scheduled to have dinner in a rented hall in Brooklyn tonight with Binyamin Kahane, the son of Rabbi Meir David Kahane, the radical Brooklyn Jew and Israeli politician who was assassinated in a Manhattan hotel 10 years ago.

Entry will cost $100 a person. The money will go to the Rabbi Meir Kahane Memorial Fund, which supports Binyamin Kahane's political and religious activities in Israel and a host of other pro-Kahane causes.

It is hardly unusual for Jews in Brooklyn to raise money destined for Israel, but in this case the people behind the event -- and the featured guest himself -- have been associated with terrorist groups and have been carefully running one step ahead of the law.

The Kahane political organizations, Kach and Kahane Chai, were outlawed in Israel in 1994 as terrorist groups because of their Arab-hating doctrines, though members of the group are still seen organizing anti-Arab demonstrations and handing out literature. The next year, they were designated foreign terrorist organizations by the United States government, which made it a crime to support them with money or other means. The crackdown followed a series of violent attacks on Palestinians and other Arabs, including the killing in 1994 of 29 Muslims by Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born Jew and Kahane adherent, who shot the Muslims to death while they were praying in a West Bank mosque.

But a core group of the rabbi's followers, working from their homes and a converted martial arts studio in Brooklyn, have thumbed their noses at the terrorist designations. They have reinvented themselves as Internet content providers, magazine publishers, community center operators and fund-raisers, all promoting Rabbi Kahane's contentious quest for the restoration of the biblical state of Israel, including the wholesale expulsion of Arabs.

Their numbers are small -- estimates range from a few dozen to a few hundred people -- but their determination is great.

''If we can't be Kach or Kahane Chai we will be simply Kahane,'' said Michael Guzofsky, an American who moved back to Brooklyn from Israel after Rabbi Kahane's assassination in 1990 to help lead one of the banned groups. ''We operate openly and have nothing to hide. Ultimately, various organizations that did the same thing were put on the terrorist list, but people that believe in something generally don't run away even if it becomes dangerous to speak.''

With the recent turmoil in the Middle East, their rallying cry for support has been simple and righteous: ''Rabbi Kahane was right.'' Posters bearing that slogan have been plastered across Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens by a small patrol of Kahane volunteers on bicycles, including a three-wheeler that hauls a bucket of homemade paste.

Other literature distributed at the Hatikva Jewish Identity Center on Coney Island Avenue, the former martial arts studio run by Mr. Guzofsky that has become their headquarters, openly solicits donations for causes with names that have been altered to sidestep the government restrictions.

When the law catches up with them, as it has from time to time, the Kahane faithful just put on a new face and find a new name. The memorial fund is among their latest incarnations, a tax-exempt charitable organization registered two years ago with the Internal Revenue Service (the registered version uses the spelling Kahana). They also run a Web site, www.kahane.org, a youth center and a mail order business for products that include jewelry and videotapes.

''Your support for our vital work is more important than ever,'' Eric Greenberg, chairman of the memorial fund, said last month at a service in Brooklyn marking the 10th anniversary of Rabbi Kahane's death.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, described the Kahane activities as subterfuge and said they should be stopped. In 1995, the league issued a report on the Kahane movement, concluding it was ''a cult of violence and racism'' that had ''violated both the substance and spirit of Jewish tradition.''

Mr. Foxman said the Kahane movement had lost most of its support in the United States, in both money and followers, since the main organizations were designated terrorist groups, first by executive order in 1995 by President Clinton and later by the State Department.

Mr. Foxman said the Kahane activists were ''on the fringe of the fringe,'' but he warned that they could still be dangerous.

''The threat is always there,'' Mr. Foxman said. ''We have learned from the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City that you don't need hundreds of people to act. It just takes one or two. Numbers don't tell all the story.''

In recent months, graffiti proclaiming ''Kahane Was Right'' have appeared in Israel and the West Bank, and group members are believed to be responsible for recent smashing of windows of Arab cars and homes and the occupation of an Arab home in the West Bank town of Hebron.

Ian S. Lustic, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on extreme Jewish groups, said the Kahane movement also had few followers in Israel aside from some die-hard loyalists.

But Mr. Lustic said the Kahane followers in Brooklyn, by continuing their work in part as a charitable organization, have been able to draw donations from mainstream Jews who were probably not aware of the terrorist connection.

The memorial fund, in Cedarhurst on Long Island, reported income of $107,000 in 1998, the first year it claimed tax-exempt status, according to the I.R.S. A solicitation letter for the fund states that it supports ''all of the programs founded by Rabbi Kahane,'' and papers filed with the I.R.S. list his son, Binyamin, as its honorary chairman.

''It is so easy to become a tax-deductible organization and so hard to get the government to examine a case and say this doesn't qualify,'' Mr. Lustic said. ''It doesn't surprise me that they could keep one step ahead of the government on that particular issue.''

Not that it has been particularly difficult for the Brooklyn group to fend off the authorities. Mr. Guzofsky said law enforcement officials usually regard them as ''nice people'' and have left them alone. The group's closest brush with the law in recent years came in March, when about two dozen supporters from Brooklyn and Queens protested near the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, N.Y. The police kept the protesters at arm's length and arrested no one. The Clintons were not at home.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which enforces the State Department's ban on the activities of designated foreign terrorist organizations, would not comment on the monitoring of the Kahane movement. An official with the Treasury Department, which tracks the financial dealings of the listed groups, said it was unclear whether investigators were aware of the memorial fund and the other Kahane manifestations.

''We keep the list under review all of the time,'' said Joe Reap, a spokesman for the State Department's counterterrorism section.

But Mr. Guzofsky could not help chuckling a bit when he was queried by a reporter about the Kahane movement's e-mail publication and its monthly print magazine, both known as The Judean Voice.

The publications were included on the list of designated foreign terrorist organizations because The Judean Voice was found by the State Department to be a new name for Kahane Chai. The designation made it illegal to provide money or weapons to the organization. Twenty-nine groups are on the department's list, including the militant Palestinian movements Hamas and Hezbollah, which have also used other names.

But the print and electronic versions of The Judean Voice have continued uninterrupted under another name, The Voice of Judea. So little has changed that an advertisement in the November/December magazine referred to the publication by its outlawed name.

''It magnifies the absurdity of all of this to name a magazine as a terrorist organization,'' Mr. Guzofsky said. ''All of this name changing and evolution of groups comes about because you need some vehicle to express yourself.

''How else can Mike Guzofsky, who believes in the Kahane philosophy, exercise free speech in America when his speech is considered to be terrorism? When you declare a magazine to be terror because of its views, then you have destroyed the justification for calling yourself a democracy.''

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice would not say if investigators were aware of the magazine's reincarnation.

''There is a process of adding to the list, including new aliases, but until something is added, we can't comment on what might result from ongoing investigations,'' said Chris Watney, the spokeswoman.

Last month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent Muslim-American advocacy group, asked the F.B.I. to detain Binyamin Kahane, who was visiting New York for the service marking the 10th anniversary of his father's death. Mr. Kahane was the leader of Kahane Chai when it was banned in Israel in 1994, and his biography posted on www.kahane.org identifies him as ''the recognized leader'' of his father's movement. Last month, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld his conviction on a sedition charge for distributing a poster that advocated violence against Arabs.

Also last month, Baruch Marzel, the leader of Kach, the party founded by Rabbi Kahane, was traveling across the United States and Canada on a speaking tour. Mr. Marzel is expected to attend the dinner tonight in Brooklyn.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not respond to the inquiries about Mr. Kahane from the Islamic group, according to Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman in Washington. A spokesman for the F.B.I., called by a reporter, said there were no grounds to detain the men because they had not been charged with a crime.

''It is inconceivable that they are not on some terrorist watch list,'' Mr. Hooper said. ''Can you imagine the outcry if both the head of Hamas and Hezbollah went on a speaking tour of America? It appears some people are O.K. terrorists and others aren't.''

A spokesman for the State Department would not say how or why the two men have been allowed to enter and leave the United States periodically in the last few years. A government official said Mr. Kahane carries an American passport. Mr. Marzel, the official said, renounced his American citizenship in 1988.

The Kahane followers say the Muslim outcry about their activities is both humorous and telling. They have long said the Kahane groups do not belong on the same terrorism list as Hamas and Hezbollah. The followers have started a petition campaign to have the Kahane groups removed from the list, saying the designations are anti-Semitic.

''The funny thing is they raise money for their charities and they kill, and we sit here trying to spread the truth and they try to have us arrested as terrorists,'' Mr. Greenberg, the memorial fund chairman, said of the Muslim advocacy groups last month. ''That's America.''

A correction was made on 
Dec. 21, 2000

An article on Tuesday about a visit to New York by Binyamin Kahane, the son of Rabbi Meir David Kahane, misspelled the surname of a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was interviewed about the Kahane movement. He is Ian S. Lustick, not Lustic.

How we handle corrections

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