Meir Kahane

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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.

Contents

Ideology

Kahane's overall views have been called Kahanism. Kahane adhered to the belief 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 ethnic identity, and that all native Palestinian Arabs seek the genocide of the Israelis. Thus Kahane proposed the forcible deportation of all Arabs from all lands controlled by the Israeli government. In his view, evicting all Palestinians (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 become a theocracy governed purely by orthodox Jewish law known as the Halakha. He hoped that the Israeli government would pass laws, including ideas such as a ban on all sexual relations 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 of the 1960s.

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

Image:Rav1.jpg
Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Meanwhile the activities of the JDL in the U.S. continued to branch out into unqualified terrorism, 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. Upon his release, in 1984 Kahane stood again for election to the Knesset, and was finally successful. The Central Elections Committee 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 lengthened Kahane was more and more shunned 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 in the Government) were all rejected by vote, until the Knesset modified its charter to outlaw legislation proposals, not requiring rejection by vote. Kahane himself 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: The Knesset banned "racist" candidates from standing for election. The Committee applied it to Kahane, who appealed against the decision to the Israeli High Court. This time the Court found in favour 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.

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 actually saw him pull the trigger, but he was convicted of gun charges.

Nosair was later convicted as part of the trial of the blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Both of them received life sentences for the World Trade Center bombing and an overall conspiracy to blow up the World Trade Center, several Brooklyn bridges, and to assassinate several 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 finally convicted of killing Kahane.[2]

Political legacy continued

For a while Kach and Kahanism seemed to have disappeared, but several small factions reemerged, 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, the Israeli government declared both to be terrorist organizations. Details can be found at [3] and [4].

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, title in English is 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.


Son killed

Meir Kahane's son, Kahane Chai leader Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane, along with his wife Talya were murdered in a Palestinian machine gun attack on December 31, 2000, as they were driving with their children from Jerusalem to their home in Kfar Tapuach. It is unknown if the attackers knew that they were in fact attacking Binyamin Kahane (making him the victim of a political assassination like his father) or if the younger Kahanes happened to be victims of an ambush perpetrated by ongoing Palestinian Terrorism at the time.

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