Anti-Arab Jewish Group Outsmarts Law

December 19, 2000

Source: The New York Times

On December 19, 2000, The New York Times reported on the Rabbi Meir Kahane Memorial Fund, which was established in memory of "the radical Brooklyn Jew and Israeli politician who was assassinated" 10 years ago. The fund supports the "political and religious activities in Israel" of Kahane's son Binyamin, who has "been associated with terrorist groups." Members of the Kahane political organizations "are still seen organizing anti-Arab demonstrations and handing out literature." In 1995, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith concluded the Kahane group was "a cult of violence and racism." The U.S. government designated these groups as terrorist following the killing of 29 Muslims by one Brooklyn-born Kahane adherent. Since being designated terrorists the group has lost support, but it is still dangerous: "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." Kahane's followers have stayed one step ahead of the law. They "have reinvented themselves as Internet content providers, magazine publishers, community center operators and fund-raisers" and continue to push for "the restoration of the biblical state of Israel, including the wholesale expulsion of Arabs." The memorial fund is one of the Kahane group's "latest incarnations." The small group advertises in Brooklyn and Queens. By calling themselves a charitable organization, the group has gotten funds from unaware mainstream Jews. The memorial fund reported an income of $107,000 in 1998. "Law enforcement officials usually regard them as 'nice people' and have left them alone." After the State Department designated its email publication and monthly print magazine as terrorist, the group changed the name from The Judean voice to The Voice of Judea and continued to publish. A Kahane adherent declared, "When you declare a magazine to be terror because of its views, then you have destroyed the justification for calling yourself a democracy." "Last month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent Muslim-American advocacy group, asked the F.B.I. to detain Binyamin Kahane," but a spokesman said the F.B.I. had "no grounds to detain the men because they had not been charged with a crime....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."