Meir Kahane

Rabbi Meir Kahane

Meir David Kahane (Hebrew: מאיר דוד כהנא, Kahane being a variation on Cohen or "priest"; also known by the pseudonym Michael King) (August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990), was an American Orthodox rabbi, author, political activist, and eventually a member of the Israeli Knesset. On both sides of the Atlantic Kahane was known for his strong political and nationalist views, most apparent in his ideal of a theocratic "Greater Israel" but also evident in his clandestine work with the mafia, FBI, and Mossad. Kahane founded two controversial movements: the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in the United States and the Kach political party in Israel. The latter was declared a racist party by the Israeli government and in 1988 removed from the Knesset, and the former was formally listed as a terrorist organization by both the FBI and the U.S. State Department.

Ideology

Kahane's overall views have been called Kahanism. Kahane adhered to the belief that Jewish law contains directions for how to run a Jewish state. He pointed out that having a Jewish state with non-Jewish citizens is an inherent contradiction, since the non-Jewish citizens may then become the majority and vote to make the state non-Jewish. He, among many others, held that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people; that in fact the people who call themselves Palestinian are a mixture of disparate and unrelated Arab clans with no claim to a distinct ethnic identity. He also correctly pointed out that historically there is no example of Arab Moslems living peacefully with other groups. Thus Kahane proposed the forcible deportation of all Arabs from all lands controlled by the Israeli government. In his view, evicting most Palestinian Arab Muslims (even Israeli Arabs), was the only acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Kahane also believed that Israel should limit citizenship to Jews only, and adopt certain aspects of Jewish law (Halachah) in public life. He advocated that the Israeli government should pass theocratic laws such as banning the sale of pork, outlawing Christian missionary work in Israel, and not recognizing marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Critics have compared this measure to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws; however, supporters say Kahane was protecting Torah values and the integrity of the Jewish nation. See: Jewish view of marriage.

Early life

Kahane was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1932. He came from a family that adhered to Orthodox Judaism. His father, Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga Kahane, was born in Safed, Palestine in 1905 and studied in yeshivot in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Later he emigrated to America, where he served as rabbi of two congregations. Meir Kahane received rabbinical ordination from the Mir yeshiva in Brooklyn. He was fully conversant with the Talmud and Tanakh, and worked as a pulpit rabbi and teacher in the 1960s. Subsequently, he earned a degree in international law from New York University.

As a teenager he became an admirer of Zeev Jabotinsky, who was a frequent guest in his parents' home, and joined the youth wing of Revisionist Zionism called Betar. He personally led protests against Ernest Bevin the British Foreign Secretary who opposed the foundation of Israel on the grounds that Britain should side with the Arab Muslims' aspirations for an independent state. Kahane also organized and launched public demonstrations in the US against the Soviet Union's policy of persecuting Zionist activists and curbing Jewish emigration to Israel. He was a central activist in the "Free Soviet (Russian) Jewry" movement and is widely credited with the release of the Russian refuseniks to Israel.

During the 1960s, Kahane joined the FBI and worked undercover in COINTELPRO against anti-Vietnam war movements. He presented himself as Michael King, a Presbyterian journalist .

Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968, purportedly in response to threats made by the Black Panthers movement.

Kahane was also in contact with Joe Colombo, head of the Colombo mafia family, and was with him in 1971 when Colombo was shot dead by the Gallo family. Kahane confirmed his connections in an interview he gave to Playboy magazine in 1972.

In the 1960s Kahane was an editor of the largest Anglo-Jewish weekly, Brooklyn's The Jewish Press and was a regular correspondent for that paper until his death. He appeared often on American radio and television.

Israel

Meanwhile the JDL in the U.S. continued to branch out into terrorist activities, including the bombing of several buildings; the harassment, stalking and sometimes murder of prominent members of the JDL political and intellectual opposition; and the coordination of JDL activities with the Israeli Mossad (headed in the early '70's by Yitzhak Shamir). Consequently, police pressure began to build upon Kahane, and in 1971 he decided to leave the U.S.

In 1971 he emigrated from the United States to Israel (known as "making aliyah" in Judaism). He quickly moved to establish the Kach Party. In 1980 Kahane stood unsuccessfully for election to the Knesset, after which he was sentenced to six months in prison for plotting to attack the Al Aqsa mosque. In 1984 Kahane launched another election campaign, and successfully won a seat in the Israeli parliament. The Central Elections Committee had banned him from being a candidate on charges of racism, but the Israeli High Court found that the Committee did not have the legal power to do so.

It is notable that at his trial Kahane refused to accept the standard oath of office for the Knesset, insisting on adding Biblical quotations to it. In a later session, the Knesset Chairman demanded that Kahane repeat his oath, which he did.

Kahane's legislation proposals centered on revoking Israeli citizenship from non-Jews, and banning Jewish-Gentile marriages or sexual relations. To his detractors, Kahane defended his positions by unapologetically citing Jewish religious doctrine regarding the Jewish marriage.

As his political career progressed, Kahane became isolated in the Knesset. His speeches were boycotted by Knesset members and were made to an empty parliament, except for the duty chairman. Kahane's legislation proposals (and motions of no-confidence against the Government) were all rejected by his fellow Knesset members. Kahane often called the other Knesset members "Hellenists" (in Hebrew; this is a historical term glommed from Jewish religious texts for ancient Jews who assimilated into Greek culture after Judea's occupation by Alexander the Great. Jewish religious books assert that "Hellenists" were responsible for weakening the Jewish relationship to God.) In 1987 Rabbi Kahane opened his Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea (Yeshivat Haraayon Hayehudi) in the Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood of Jerusalem where he would regularly give lessons. Rabbi Avraham Toledano was the Mashgiach Ruchani, and other Rabbis included Yehuda Kroizer, the Chief Rabbi of Mitzpe Yericho, and Rabbi David Bar Hayim.

In 1985 the Knesset passed an amendment to Israel's Basic Law, barring "racist" candidates from standing for election. It was pointed out by his supporters that the Jews are not actually a race, but that the Knesset Committee was using the term "racism" to harrass political movements it opposed. The Committee applied it to Kahane nonetheless, who appealed against the decision to the Israeli High Court. This time the Court found in favor of the Committee, declaring Kahane to be unsuitable for election. Kahane asserted that the reason for the Kach party ban was that polls showed it about to become the third largest party in Israel.

Essentially what this amounts to is that one must get the permission of the Israeli government to run against it, and that they may ban any party outright, only having to utter the word "racist". Kahane supporters have pointed out that this represents a continuous erosion of civil liberties in Israel, which already has no writ of habeous corpus, and no grand jury.

Assassination

While concluding a speech in Manhattan New York, Kahane was murdered by El Sayyid Nosair, a member of an Arab terrorist cell operating in New York in 1990. According to prosecutors, a man named Wadih el Hage purchased the .38 caliber revolver used by Nosair. El-Hage was told by a man named Mahmud Abouhalima to buy the gun. Nosair was acquitted of murder because no witness had actually seen him pull the trigger, but was convicted on gun possession charges.

Nosair later stood trial as a conspirator of the blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Both of them received life sentences for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, conspiracy to blow up several Brooklyn bridges, and plotting to assassinate several U.S. politicians. Nosair actually received life plus 15 years of imprisonment^[1]. Since it was ruled that Kahane's death was part of the total "seditious conspiracy," Nosair was later convicted of killing Kahane^[2].

Political legacy continued

Following Kahane's death, no charismatic leader emerged to fill the void, and Kahane's radical ideology declined in popularity among Israelis. However, two small Kahanist factions later emerged: one under the name of Kach and the other Kahane chai (Hebrew: כהנא חי, literally "Kahane lives [on]"). In 1994 following the massacre in the Cave of the Patriarchs by a Kach supporter, the Israeli government declared both to be illegal terrorist organizations^{[3]^{^[4]. The U.S. State Department has also added Kach and Kahane Chai to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
Providing funds or material support to these organizations remains a criminal act to this day, both in Israel and the U.S.}}

In autumn of 2000, after Yasser Arafat rejected an Israeli proposal to create a Palestinian state, and led his people in a violent uprising against the Jewish State, Kahane supporters spray painted graffiti on hundreds of bus shelters and bridges all across Israel. The message on each target was identical, simply reading: "Kahane Was Right".

Son killed

Meir Kahane's son, Kahane Chai leader Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane, along with his wife Talya were shot dead in a Palestinian Arab Moslem machine gun attack on December 31, 2000, as they were driving with their children from Jerusalem to their home in Kfar Tapuach. The attackers later commented that they were targeting random Israeli settlers, and 'got lucky' by hitting Binyamin Kahane.

Publications

(Partially under pseudonym Michael King; with Joseph Churba) The Jewish Stake in Vietnam, Crossroads, 1967
Never Again! A Program for Survival, Pyramid Books, 1972
Time to Go Home, Nash, 1972.
Letters from Prison, Jewish Identity Center, 1974
Our Challenge: The Chosen Land, Chilton, 1974
The Story of the Jewish Defense League, Chilton, 1975, 2nd edition, Institute for Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane, (Brooklyn, NY), 2000
Why Be Jewish? Intermarriage, Assimilation, and Alienation, Stein & Day, 1977
Listen, Vanessa, I Am a Zionist, Institute of the Authentic Jewish Idea, 1978
They Must Go, Grosset & Dunlop, 1981
Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews, Lyle Stuart, 1987
Israel: Revolution or Referendum, Barricade Books (Secaucus, NJ), 1990
Or ha-ra'yon, English title: The Jewish Idea, n.p. (Jerusalem), 1992, translated from the Hebrew by Raphael Blumberg, Institute for Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane (Jerusalem), 1996
On Jews and Judaism: Selected Articles 1961–1990, Institute for Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane (Jerusalem), 1993
Perush ha-Makabi: al Sefer Devarim, Institute for Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane (Jerusalem), 1993, 1995
Perush ha-Makabi: al Sefer Shemu'el u-Nevi'im rishonim, Institute for Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane (Jerusalem), 1994
Listen World, Listen Jew, 3rd edition, Institute for the Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane (Jerusalem), 1995
Kohen ve-navi: osef ma'amarim, ha-Makhon le-hotsa'at kitve ha-Rav Kahana (Jerusalem), 2000

Also author of Numbers 23:9: "... lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations," I. Block, 1970s. Contributor—sometimes under pseudonym Michael King—to periodicals, including New York Times. Editor of Jewish Press, 1968.

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