subject: Meir David Kahane : One Of The Most Active Politicians In Israel [print this page] Martin David Kahane also known as Meir Kahane (and by the pen-names Benyac and David Sinai and the pseudonym Michael King, David Borac, and Martin Keene 1 August 1932 , 5 November 1990) was an American Israeli rabbi and ultra-nationalist writer and political figure. He was an ordained Orthodox rabbi and later served as a member of the Israeli parliament or Knesset.
Kahane was known in the United States and Israel for political and religious views that included proposing emergency Jewish mass-immigration to Israel due to the imminent threat of a "second Holocaust" in the United States, advocating that Israel's democracy be replaced by a state modeled on Jewish religious law, and promoting the idea of a Greater Israel in which Israel would annex the West Bank and Gaza strip. In order to keep Arabs, whom he stated would never accept Israel as a Jewish state, from demographically destroying Israel, he proposed a plan allowing Arabs to voluntarily leave Israel and receive compensation for their property, and forcibly removing Arabs who refused.
Kahane founded both the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in the USA and Kach ("This is the Way!"), an Israeli political party. In 1984 he became a member of the Knesset when Kach gained one seat in parliamentary elections. In 1988, the Israeli government banned Kach as "racist" and "undemocratic" under the terms of an ad hoc law.
In 1994, following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre perpetrated by a Kahane follower, Kach was outlawed completely. Kahane was assassinated in a Manhattan hotel in 1990, after concluding a speech warning American Jews to emigrate to Israel before it was "too late." The assassination occurred shortly after 9 p.m., following a speech to an audience of mostly Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn; as a crowd of well wishers gathered around Kahane following the speech in the second floor lecture hall in midtown Manhattan's Marriott East Side Hotel. El Sayyid Nosair fatally shot Kahane in the neck.
Kahane was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York in 1932 to an Orthodox Jewish family. His father, Rabbi Yechezkel Sharaga Kahane, was born in Safed, Ottoman Palestine (in present day Israel), in 1905, and went to study in Polish and Czech yeshiva religious schools.
As a teenager, he became an ardent admirer of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Peter Bergson, who were frequent guests in his parents' home, and joined the Betar (Brit Trumpeldor) youth wing of Revisionist Zionism. He was active in protests against Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary who blocked the immigration of Nazi death camp survivors to Palestine and opposed Israel's independence in favor of creating a Hashemite Arab monarchy dependent on British power. In 1954, he became the mazkir (director) of Greater New York sixteen Bnei Akiva chapters.
Kahane formal education included elementary school at the Yeshivah of Flatbush and high school at the Brooklyn Talmudical Academy. Kahane received his rabbinical ordination from the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, and earned a B.A. in political science from Brooklyn College. He was fully conversant with the Talmud and Tanakh (Jewish Bible), and worked as a pulpit rabbi and teacher in the 1960s. Subsequently, he earned a J.D. from New York Law School and an L.L.M. from New York University Law School.
Following Kahane's death, no charismatic leader emerged to replace him in the movement, although the idea of transferring populations gained traction in Israel. Two small Kahanist factions later emerged; one under the name of Kach and the other Kahane chai (Hebeu, literally "Kahane lives [on]"), lead by his younger son, Binyamin Zeev Kahane.
In 1994, following the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre of Palestinian Muslim worshippers in Hebron by Kach supporter Dr. Baruch Goldstein, in which 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers were killed, the Israeli government declared both parties to be terrorist organizations. The U.S. State Department also added Kach and Kahane Chai to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Providing funds or material support to these organizations is a crime in both Israel and the USA.
In late 2000, as bombing attacks on Israel during the Al-Aqsa Intifada began, 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".
On December 31, 2000, Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane and his wife Talya were shot to death as they returned from Jerusalem to their home in the Israeli settlement of Kfar Tapuach, and their children wounded. Palestinian gunmen fired more than 60 machine-gun rounds into their van.
