Supporters Praise Kahane as a Martyr : Reaction: Local Jewish Defense League members say the murder of the radical rabbi will energize their cause. Others say he represented only a fringe group.

Hours after the death of Rabbi Meir Kahane, teary-eyed followers of the one-time Brooklyn sportswriter gathered in anger inside a North Hollywood synagogue Tuesday and vowed to try harder to realize his dream of an Arab-free Israel.

At a press conference in the synagogue’s sanctuary, where two photos of Kahane’s stern, bearded visage were displayed next to a cabinet that held biblical scrolls of the Torah, Rabbi Dov Aharoni, former national chairman of the Jewish Defense League, said that the slain rabbi was a martyr.

“There were those who would say that he was a fringe element, but take a look at people like me, who kept his picture on the wall in my closet,” said Aharoni. “Now we are coming out.”

Kahane was shot Monday night just after he finished addressing a group of supporters at a New York hotel. The alleged assasin, Egyptian-born El-Sayyid A. Nosair, 34, was charged in the murder Tuesday. He is in critical condition after being shot by a U.S. Postal Service guard while fleeing.

Aharoni predicted that as a result of Kahane’s assassination, “the Arab population of Israel, if not today then 10, 20, 40 years from now, those Arabs will go,” he said.

Rabbi Chaim Braverman, Southern California coordinator of Kach International, the fund-raising wing of Kahane’s Israeli political party, claimed to have 5,000 supporters throughout the region who are ready to spread more leaflets, write more articles and deliver more talks at synagogues and private homes.

“This act of violence and terror, by an Arab, only confirms the accuracy of Rabbi Kahane’s views,” Braverman said.

Irv Rubin, who replaced Kahane as national JDL chairman in 1985, said nothing specific about whether the movement would return to its violent past, which traces back to the 1972 bombing of concert impresario Sol Hurok. Three members of the organization faced criminal charges in that attack. The charges were later dropped.

Rubin said the group plans to step up its patrols of Jewish neighborhoods, offer more training in the martial arts and turn out more demonstrators to counter Arab protests against Israeli policies.

The group suffered its greatest blow in 1985, when federal authorities said that several JDL associates were suspected of planting a bomb that killed Alex Odeh, the western regional director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Rubin, who was not named as a suspect, said at that time: “I have no tears for Mr. Odeh. He got exactly what he deserved.”

Rubin, who was shot last year, said that his group has about 2,500 members in Southern California and 13,000 nationwide. Mordechai Levy, leader of the Jewish Defense Organization, a breakaway wing of the JDL, faces trial on charges of wounding Rubin.

Rubin acknowledged that the group’s operations in New York, where Kahane founded the JDL in 1968 to attack muggers with baseball bats, are dormant and will have to be “revitalized.”

Others in the Southern California Jewish community countered those claims, saying that Kahane never managed to win more than a few hundred adherents despite the wide publicity given his controversial views, symbolized by the JDL’s clenched-fist emblem.

“They’re a fringe,” said Rabbi Laura Geller, executive director of the American Jewish Congress.

“What they’ve been for the last 15 years is essentially a paper organization with very little following,” said David Lehrer, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League. “It works in newspapers and on TV, but in reality there’s been virtually no constituency and no real membership.”

Kahane was to speak in Los Angeles next week in his capacity as international director of Kach International, and, typically, his expected coming was controversial. After leaders of Congregation Beth Jacob, an Orthodox synagogue in Beverly Hills, turned down his request to speak, Kahane declared himself “saddened and appalled.” Kahane said he would appear on the sidewalk.

In the end, B’nai David-Judea, a synagogue on Pico Boulevard, agreed to give Kahane the pulpit Tuesday night.

Instead, the temple will become the scene of a memorial service.

“There were a lot of issues that he forced the Jewish community to confront, and he has to be appreciated for doing that,” said Rabbi Simcha Weinberg of B’nai David-Judea. “Hopefully, now that he is no longer the issue, the questions he raised can be dealt with on a calmer level.”