Meir Kahane

Meir David Kahane (pronounced: "Kaa-Haa-Naa" in Hebrew - meaning Cohen or "priest) (August 1st, 1932 - November 5th, 1990) was a rabbi, leader of the Kach political party in the Israeli Knesset, and the founder of the Jewish Defense League in the USA.

Ideology

His overall views have been called Kahanism. Kahane believed that the Palestinians sought the genocide of the Israeli Jews, and therefore he proposed the population transfer and even forcible deportation of all Palestinians from Israel including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In his view this was the only acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kahane also believed that Israel should become a theocracy governed purely by Jewish law known as the Halakha. He hoped that the Israeli government would pass laws, including a ban on marriages between Jews and non-Jews, in accordance with the traditions of Orthodox Judaism. Critics have compared this measure to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Laws.

Early life

Kahane was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1932. He came from an Orthodox Judaism rabbinical family. Kahane was an ordained rabbi, but he did not enjoy the thought of being a communal or pulpit rabbi. He was fully conversant with the Talmud and Tanakh. He subsequently earned a law degree from New York University.

He became an admirer of Zeev Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism as a teenager and joined its youth wing Betar. He personally led protests against Ernest Bevin the British Foreign Secretary who was visiting New York in the 1940s. Kahane was also the earliest to organize and launch public demonstrations in the US against the Soviet Union's policy of suppressing Zionism and curbing Jewish immigration to Israel by its Jews. He was a central activist in the "Free Soviet (Russian) Jewry" movement.

During the 1960s, Kahane joined the FBI and acted against anti-vietnam war movements, undercover. He presented himself as Michael King, a presbyterian juournalist from South Africa.

Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968 in response to threats of violence against Jews by the Black Panthers and members of the Black Power movement of the 1960s.

Kahane was also in contact with the Joe Colombo, head of the Colombo mafia familiy and stood by him on 1971 when Colombo was shot dead by the Gallo familiy. Kahane confirmed his connections on an iterview he gave on playboy magazine in 1972.

Rabbi Kahane was a powerful orator and a gifted book writer, journalist wrting for the largest Anglo-Jewish weekly, Brooklyn's The Jewish Press. He appeared often on American radio and television expounding his views to anyone who wanted to hear them.

Israel

In 1971 he emigrated to Israel. He established 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 Islamic buildings on the Temple Mount which Muslims consider to be holy and which Jews view to be built on the holiest site in Judaism. 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.

Banned by the Knesset

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.

The Israeli government declared Kach and several other Kahanist groups to be terrorist organizations. Details of their alleged terrorist activities can be found at and .

Assassinated

Kahane was assassinated in 1990 after giving a speech at a New York City hotel, by El Sayyid Nosair from Egypt. Nosair was part of a terrorist cell involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and which has also been connected to the planners of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Kahane's son Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane and daughter-in-law were murdered in 2000 when Palestinians opened fire on their car near the West Bank settlement of Ofra.

See also: Jewish Defense League, Kahanism , Jewish Task Force.