Rabbi Meir Kahane was never accepted by the mainstream Orthodox Jewish rabbinical authorities, and was always considered by them as a troublemaker. I know more about him than many other people do. When I was a teenager, he was my group leader (madrich) in the Borough Park chapter of Bnai Akiva, a religious zionist youth movement. When he first formed the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in New York, its prime purpose was to protect Jews against young hoodlums in NYC who would regularly beat up Jews. His finest hour was during the Ocean Hill Brownsville conflict, when he stood up to the Black militant, James Foreman who was trying extort money out of Jewish synagogues. However, once he went into the international arena, he lost all support of the Rabbinnical authorities. His first international cause was the plight of Soviet Jewry. While many of our leading rabbis were negotiating secret, behind the scenes deals with Soviet leaders to allow more Jews to emigrate, Kahane upset the entire apple cart, with his violent public demonstrations which included beating up Soviet diplomats. His actions only served to slow up the process of emigration. I was personally victimized by him. The JDL chartered 20 buses from me for a Soviet Jewry demonstration in Washington, D.C. The check bounced and I never got paid, because he used the money to post bail for his followers who got arrested that day. When I tried to go after him for my money, he told me that it was my contribution to the cause of Soviet Jewry, as involuntary as it may have been. This was in l970 and as a young man who had just gotten married and started my own business, this nearly bankrupted me. After Soviet Jewry, he started to get involved with Israeli politics, and his goons (Chaya Squad as he called them), started beating up Arab diplomats in NYC. He then formed his famous alliance with the Colombo crime family to terrorize Arab diplomats living in NYC, and was present at the rally when Joe Colombo was assasinated. When he finally moved to Israel to get involved in politics there, both, the US government as well as the American Jewish community were glad to be rid of him. Both, Boruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir were followers of his, and frankly were not in their right mind when committing murder, which is clearly prohibited by Jewish law, and no Rabbi has the authority to change that law. The inscription on Goldstein's tombstone was done by Kahane's followers, and had no official sanction for either the Israeli government or the Rabbinate.
As far as Rabbi Hecht goes, he never made those statements that were atributed to him. I know his entire family personally. His daughter and son in law live in our community, only 2 blocks from me. He is a regular visitor and has on numerous ocassions denounced the actions of both, Goldstein and Amir. It is true that I do not know all of the Imams in the Muslim world, but I am sure the press would have reported if any of them had made statements condemming the 9/11 attacks. SOL ZELLER