Kahane Plans Legal Action

Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League, said today that he plans to take legal action against Matthew Walsh, director of the Westside Community Treatment Center where the rabbi is serving a one-year sentence, for reducing the time he is allowed to spend outside the center.

Kahane told a press conference at Gefens Restaurant in Manhattan’s garment center that for the past three weeks Walsh has disobeyed court orders by reducing his time outside the center from the court-allowed seven-and-a-half hours to four-and-a-half hours a day. Federal Judge Jack Weinstein issued an order last May that allowed the rabbi time outside the half-way detention house to pray and eat at kosher restaurants.

Kahane said he felt his time outside the center was being reduced as a result of his recent activities against the Ford Administration’s policies toward Israel. He and the JDL have been working on a campaign to protest what they feel are “Ford’s general foreign policy of choking Israel into concessions.” Kahane said, “It was only when the government saw that my presence in New York enabled me to meet legally with people and plan activities against the Ford-Kissinger Administration that orders were given to Walsh to crack down.”

U.S. Attorney David G. Trager yesterday asked the Court of Appeals to transfer Kahane to the federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa. while the issue of whether Jewish prisoners should be allowed kosher food is being resolved. Trager said that Kahane has shown disregard for the regulations of the half-way house. Walsh supported in court papers that he reduced the 43-year-old rabbi’s time outside the center because of his repeatedly late arrivals. Kahane has served almost five months of a one-year sentence for parole violations in 1971. (By Mindy Yochelson.)