While most leaders of New Jersey's Jewish organizations are abandoning moves to prevent the pro-Palestinian group New Jersey Solidarity from holding an October weekend conference at Douglass College in New Brunswick, the copresident of the state Senate continues to press Gov. James E. McGreevey to rescind permission for the meeting.

But his chief critic charges his stand is more of a "political than a moral gesture."

State Sen. John Bennett (R-Dist. 12) last week aligned himself with an angry group of protestors from Amcha, the Bronx-based Coalition for Jewish Concerns, demanding that no public funds be spent for a group "that chooses to spread a message condoning murder."

But his Democratic rival, Ellen Karcher, who is Jewish, suggested that her rival's position is driven by what both candidates call "the fight for Bennett's life."

They will face each other in November in a Monmouth County election.

In their district, Democrats and Republicans have about an equal number of registrants, and one half of the electorate are independent voters.

The senator stood side-by-side with Amcha members in a Statehouse meeting room July 24 in Trenton, urging that the Oct. 10-12 Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement be held off-campus so that it "not happen with the support of any taxpayer or public dollars."

Douglass is the all-women's branch of Rutgers, New Jersey's state university.

"I don't care if it is only 50 cents of the taxpayers' money," Bennett told NJ Jewish News. "This group is talking about the Palestinians using 'any means necessary.' We should not be paying for them to speak. They're talking about mass murder. If a group was talking about killing all Palestinians or all Belgians, I'd feel the same way."

But Karcher, president of the Marlboro Township Council, questioned Bennett's commitment to conserving tax dollars, noting that the Republican leader is under investigation for double-billing her town for more than $8,000 in legal work done by his former law firm.

Bennett, a Little Silver resident, has denied any wrongdoing.

"He says he is concerned about spending the taxpayers' money," Karcher observed. "But he wasn't concerned about the taxpayers' money in Marlboro when it was going into his pocket, and the Jewish community is offended at that."

Bennett disputed her analysis. "I am in the fight of my political life, but it isn't me against Ellen Karcher. It is me against me. It is John Bennett the elected official who has served the public against the John Bennett who has been unfairly depicted in the newspapers."

Since March, Asbury Park Press has run a series of investigative reports on Bennett's law practice.

As Bennett presses for NJ Solidarity's conference to be relocated off-campus, Karcher argues that her opponent is "out of touch with his constituency. For them, freedom of speech is sacrosanct. We cannot interfere with it. But we can expose the hate-mongers for what they are." Noting that she is a "Jewish mother with a son in high school," Karcher said she is "not happy about the conference either. People don't expect to have their children exposed to this kind of situation when they go off to college."

But, she added, "if it has been irrevocably decided, then it is time to move forward and have a dialogue of positive speech to counter the hate-mongering."

In a July 21 meeting at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, leaders of five NJ Jewish federations and other Jewish organizations  agreed to focus their battle against NJ Solidarity toward a counter-programming effort with an intense pro-Israel message. It would be led by Rutgers Hillel in the days and weeks before the conference.

Unlike the senator, the groups have abandoned a public fight against holding the conference on state property.

Bennett said he was disappointed at that decision. "I've been somewhat surprised that the NJ Jewish community has not really spoken up more. The rank and file have. But the leadership has not followed their growing concern.

"I am not opposed to an alternative educational program. I'd be very supportive," he said. "I don't dispute anyone's right to a soapbox. I just don't want to pay for the soapbox."

Bennett said that it was not "time to move on," likening the current case to the dispute over Amiri Baraka's role as New Jersey's poet laureate. By an overwhelming vote, the state legislature abolished the post after months of public debate over a Baraka poem alleging the Israeli government had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I don't think it's time to move on," said Bennett. "Look at the poet laureate. Obviously, he was appointed after he wrote that poem, but when it all began, people said he had a right to say what he wanted. But it shouldn't have been paid for by the state of New Jersey. This situation is very similar."

McGreevey's press secretary, Micah Rasmussen, told the New York Jewish Week the two cases are quite different. "It's a legal issue," he said. "With Baraka, we had the ability to act," but not so in the Rutgers dispute.

"The law is very clear with the First Amendment," said Rasmussen.

The senator denied any partisan motivation to his stand against the conference. "This isn't about John Bennett or John Bennett's politics. My resume is strongly pro-Israel from the beginning of my career. I have a B'nai B'rith Man of the Year award. In 1996, I sponsored legislation to commemorate Kristallnacht every year by having the lights in the Statehouse kept on. We must speak out against hatred and violence anywhere in the world. If we don't speak out now against this conference, aren't we allowing the start of another journey of this kind of hate? Silence is inappropriate — and I'm not even Jewish."

Robert Wiener can be reached at .