Meir Kahane
|
| “ | There is no greater anti-Semite that the Jewish one, and none hates the Jewish people more than the Jewish traitor and apostate. | „ |
| ~ Meir Kahane, 1972 |
Meir Kahane (born Meir David HaKohen Kahane, August 1st, 1932 – November 5th, 1990) was an American born Israeli ordained Orthodox rabbi and writer who coined the phrase "Never Again" in the Jewish community and founded the militant Jewish organization Jewish Defense League in 1968 and Kach in 1971 which advocated an extremist form of Jewish ultranationalism that perpetrated segregation and discrimination against Non-Jews in Israel and abroad. He is also credited with the creation of the Kahanism ideology.[1]
Biography edit
Martin David Kahane was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1932 to an Orthodox Jewish family. His father, Yechezkel (Charles) Kahane, the author of the "Torah Yesharah", studied at Polish and Czech yeshivas, was involved in the Revisionist Zionist movement, and was a close friend of Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Irgun.
As a teenager, Kahane became an ardent admirer of Jabotinsky and Peter Bergson, who were frequent guests in his parents' home. He joined the Betar (Brit Trumpeldor) youth wing of Revisionist Zionism. He was active in protests against Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary who maintained restrictions on the immigration of Jews, even Nazi death camp survivors, to Palestine after the end of World War II. In 1947, Kahane was arrested for throwing eggs and tomatoes at Bevin, who was disembarking at Pier 84 on a visit to New York. A photo of the arrest appeared in the New York Daily News. In 1954, he became the Mazkir (Secretary) of Greater New York City's 16 Bnei Akiva chapters.
Kahane's formal education included elementary school at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, and he attended high school at both Abraham Lincoln High School and the Brooklyn Talmudical Academy. Kahane received his rabbinical ordination from the Mir Yeshiva, in Brooklyn, where he was especially admired by the head Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, and he began going by his Hebrew name, Meir. He was fully conversant in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), the Talmud, the Midrash and Jewish law. Subsequently, Kahane earned a B.A. in Political Science from Brooklyn College, a Bachelor of Law - LL.B. from New York Law School, and an M.A. in International Relations from New York University.
In 1958, he became the rabbi of the Howard Beach Jewish Center in Queens, New York City. Although the synagogue was originally Conservative, rather than strictly Orthodox, the board of directors agreed to Kahane's conditions, which included resigning from the Conservative movement's United Synagogue of America, installing a partition separating men and women during prayer, instituting traditional prayers, and maintaining a kosher kitchen.
At the Jewish Center, Kahane influenced many of the synagogue's youngsters to adopt a more observant lifestyle, which often troubled parents. He trained Arlo Guthrie for his bar mitzvah. When his contract was not renewed, he soon published an article entitled "End of the Miracle of Howard Beach". That was Kahane's first article in The Jewish Press, an American Orthodox Jewish weekly for which he would continue to write for the rest of his life. Kahane also used the pen name David Sinai, and the pseudonyms Michael King, David Borac, and Martin Keene.[2]
In his attempt to fight for Jewish rights, he committed acts of extreme threatening behavior against Communistic forces such as attempting to acquire and grow biological weapons to use on a Soviet military installation, leading the 1971 bombing on the Soviet United Nations mission and injuring two officers, and advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Occupied Territories.[3] Kahane sanctioned Jewish violence against Arabs as part of a theological challenge to the commonly read view of the Torah, which repeatedly commands the Israelites not to oppress the stranger, because they themselves were strangers in Egypt.
Kahane's fanaticism led to him experiencing multiple arrests for acts of dissent against Arabs such as Palestinians. While he was serving in the Knesset in the mid-1980s, Kahane proposed numerous laws, none of which passed, to emphasize Judaism in public schools, do away with Israel's bureaucracy, forbid sexual relations between non-Jews and Jews, transfer the Arab population out of Israel (essentially supporting ethnic cleansing of Arabs), revoke Israeli citizenship from non-Jews, and end cultural meetings between Jewish and Arab students. His policies led him to becoming the first candidate in Israel to be barred from election for racism after the passing of the Basic Law of Israel and Anti-Racist Law of 1988.[4]
In 1990, while giving a speech in New York to an audience of mostly Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn to immigrate to Israel before it was "too late", Kahane was assassinated by Egyptian-born U.S. citizen El Sayyid Nosair disguised as an Orthodox Jew.[5][6] Despite his death, Kahane's ideology and political party continue to perpetrate acts of terrorism against non-Jews[7], such as the case with Baruch Goldstein, a longtime friend and supporter of Kahane's who carried out the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, leeaving 29 people dead, several as young as twelve, and 125 wounded.[8]
References edit
- ↑ Kach, The Israel Democracy Institute
- ↑ Brooklyn ‘jewish Press’ Denounces Defense League’s Rabbi Kahane, Former Editor, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
- ↑ Kahane Means Terror to Arabs, He Says in L.A., The Los Angeles Times
- ↑ Israel Bans Kahane Party From Election, The New York Times
- ↑ Israeli Militant Meir Kahane Shot to Death in New York Hotel, AP News
- ↑ 1990: Meir Kahane Is Gunned Down, Haaretz
- ↑ How some of extremist rabbi, onetime MK Kahane’s ideas entered Jewish mainstream, The Times of Israel
- ↑ Who Was Meir Kahane, and Why Is His Racist Legacy Relevant Again, Haaretz