Allan C. Brownfeld
Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an
American Jewish Radical
By
Shaul Magid,
Princeton University Press,
276 Pages,
$33.72
When Shaul Magid, professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, began work on this study of the life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survival, he may have thought he was writing history. Instead, Meir Kahane’s militant voice is echoed increasingly in contemporary Israel, though he died by assassination in 1990.
Kahane, well known as the founder of the Jewish Defense League, immigrated to Israel in 1971, where he founded KACH, an ultranationalist and racist political party. It was eventually expelled from the Knesset as “racist.” An example of how much Israel has changed can be seen in the fact that a disciple of Meir Kahane, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is now Israel’s National Security Minister. Until recently, Ben-Gvir had a portrait of Meir Kahane hanging on his living room wall. Professor Susannah Heschel, a colleague of Shaul Magid at Dartmouth, notes that, “One of the great scholars of Judaism in our day presents one of the most despicable characters to emerge in postwar Jewish life.”
This book, writes Magid, “…has two objectives. The first is to critically examine the outlook of one of the most divisive Jewish figures of the second half of the twentieth century. The second is to explore the way some of Kahane’s ideas, which were shunned and rejected by much of the Jewish world, inadvertently seeped into the Jewish mainstream, certainly in Israel but also in America.”
Contempt For Liberalism
Kahane’s contempt for liberalism is explained by Magid this way, “As one committed to the survival of the group at all costs.Kahane regarded liberalism as the enemy of the Jews. The Jews’ commitment to liberalism, against their own collective interest, was in his view an act of repugnant self-hatred that was rooted in anxiety but sparked resentment. Liberalism sought to ameliorate resentment by claiming that the social and political system should not focus on groups but individuals when it came to rights, goods, and services. Yet when group identities feel threatened and unstable, when power shifts from one group to another, when a group feels disenfranchised and ignored,and when communities feel under siege, very often liberalism itself is attacked because its focus on the individual is assumed (rightly or not) to be the very source of these social changes.”
For Kahane, the religious freedom provided by the American society represented a threat to Jews. In Magid’s view, “Kahane’s radical critique of liberalism…applied equally to the American Jewish program of assimilation or ‘Americanization’ that he felt was robbing a generation of Jews of any positive sense of Jewishness …he believed American Jewry was being threatened from within (through assimilation) and from without (through the ever present antisemitism that he believed would invariably raise its head). By the early 1970s Kahane had ostensibly given up on America, believing that Israel was the only possible solution for Jewish survival.”
A brief look at Kahane’s life is instructive. He was born in Brooklyn in 1932 and grew up as a member of a youth group affiliated with Revisionist Zionism, founded by Zeev Jabotinsky in 1925. The Revisionists were the more militant wing of the Zionist movement, insisting that its rivals in the Labor movement were too passive in efforts to establish a Jewish state in all of the land of biblical Israel.
A Racial and Ethnic Powder Keg
In the late 1960s, New York City was a racial and ethnic powder keg in the aftermath of a racially charged teachers strike that set African American parents against a largely Jewish teachers’ union. Kahane at this time decided to form the Jewish Defense League (JDL) which would soon fixate on alleged examples of black antisemitism. Kahane wanted Jews to embrace “Jewish power,” modeled after the Black Panthers. Kahane equated Black Power groups to Nazis. He called it “self-defense,” while critics charged that it was “vigilantism.”
Magid notes that, “What mattered for Kahane was Jewish interest alone; if their interests coincided with the interests of others, fine, but only if the interests of the Jews and their community took precedent. In this sense, Kahane’s radicalism of the same period, and it is not a coincidence that before 1967 some black militants called their movement ‘Black Zionism,’ was a throwback to an earlier movement among American blacks.”
The JDL also became involved in the campaign in behalf of Soviet Jewry. In 1971, the JDL firebombed a Soviet attaché’s car. In July, 1971, Kahane stood trial for violating the Federal Fire Arms Act of 1968, entered a guilty plea and was placed on five years federal probation. Two months later, he and his family immigrated to Israel.
Kahane Founds a Political Party
Once in Israel, Kahane founds a political party called JDL-Israel that he soon renames KACH (“Thus”). In 1973, Kahane and KACH win some 13,000 votes or 0.8%, not enough for a Knesset seat. In the 1971 and 1981 elections the total drops to less than 5,000 votes. But by 1984, Kach receives nearly 26,000 votes, or 1.2%—-enough for a seat in the Knesset. Then, in June 1984, Israel’s Central Elections commission votes to ban KACH from participating in the election. It cites KACH’s call for deportation of Arab and Druze citizens and Kahane’s characterization of Israel’s Declaration of Independence as a “schizophrenic document.” It is, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, “The first time in Israel’s history that a Jewish political faction was banned from an election.”
KACH then appealed to the Supreme Court,arguing that a political faction can be barred only if it poses a danger to the existence of Israel. Kahane called the ruling political bias. The Court ruled that KACH could participate in the election. KACH’s platform was essentially that Israeli citizenship was for Jews only and that Arabs should be expelled from the country and from the territories controlled by Israel. KACH and Kahane also wanted to ban marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews and demanded Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
Mayor Teddy Kollek of Jerusalem told Knesset members that Kahane undermined “the basic moral tenets of the state.” Knesset members boycotted Kahane’s speeches. A month after his election, Kahane tried to visit the Israeli Arab village Ukim El-Fahm to “encourage” its inhabitants to immigrate. Israeli police blocked him from entering and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called the effort “negative, dangerous and damaging.” Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir warns Knesset members in November 1984 that it is “shameful, disgusting, dangerous.”
Kahane Is Suspended
In July 1988, Kahane is suspended from the Knesset for threatening an Arab member with a noose. A few months later, KACH is banned from competing in the elections that year. (In 1985, a year after KACH is allowed to run and Kahane is elected, the Knesset passed an amendment to the Basic Law, Israel’s not-quite constitution, barring “parties engaged in incitement to racism.” This includes KACH. Polling at the time shows the party winning some 100,000 votes—-3 or 4 seats. In October 1988 Kahane appeals to the Supreme Court. His appeal is rejected and the election ban stands.
Followers of Kahane have had a major impact upon Israel. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a U.S.-born JDL and KACH member, gunned down dozens of worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in the occupied West Bank. He became a hero to Israel’s right-wing and prominent rabbis presided at his funeral.
Kahane’s racism is examined extensively by Magid. In May 1981, for example,he took a full,page ad in the Israeli daily Maariv. Entitled, “She is a daughter of Israel. Perhaps Your Sister, Your Daughter or Granddaughter,”. The ad, he points out, “spelled out some of Kahane’s proposals for the upcoming Knesset election. These included (1) a law forbidding the ‘abomination of assimilation and communion with goyim’ (in this case, Arabs), (2) a mandatory prison sentence for any Arab who had sexual relations with a Jewish girl or woman, and (3) a law restricting United Nations forces from engaging in any type of relations with the Jewish population. In addition, Kahane later declared that if elected he would strip all Israeli Arabs of their citizenship and work toward expelling any who refused to relinquish it. Kahane actually submitted such a bill—-called the ‘three tolls bill’—-to the Knesset in late 1985.”
Similar To Nazi Legislation
At this point, in the face of legislation which was similar to laws adopted by Nazi Germany, Israeli legislators took the drastic action of amending the country’s basic laws to bar “racist parties and candidates” from running in Israeli elections. Known as article 7a of the Basic Laws, this amendment rendered KACH illegal and Kahane and his party were removed from the Knesset.
“The reason given by the Knesset,” writes Magid, “was that Kahane and his followers were ‘inciting racism and endangering security.’ This law was clearly legislated for Kahane and KACH alone, it was never successfully invoked again. In many ways it was a final blow to Kahane’s political career in Israel. He appealed the ruling to Israel’s Supreme Court, and the court upheld the Central Elections Committee’s decision thereby barring him from running in the 1988 and 1992 elections. Although Kahane remained popular, he knew his political career would be a zero-sum game: either he would take over the direction of the country or he would be rejected by it…The question of race is crucial to understanding Kahane’s entire life and work, from the time he entered the public stage in the mid-1960s to his later career in Israel. It stands at the very center of his political agenda.”
A year after the Knesset passed its “Racism Law” in 1986, Kahane wrote an essay with the title, “I Hate Racism.” In this essay, writes Magid, Kahane claims “his positions are wholly in line with Jewish law. A ‘religious Jew,’ he notes, believes that Jewish distinction is one thing only: divine election. There is nothing inherently distinct, certainly not unique, about the Jews other than the fact that God chose them. And divine election assumes, for him, a belief in a transcendent deity who communicates its will to the Jews at Sinai.” Kahane addresses those Jews he describes as “not religious”—-and here he names a number of Reform rabbis and other Jewish supporters of Israel such as American neoconservatives——with this message: “Let us pity them, those who call me racist, but who are the real Jewish racists, the ones who—-deep in their hearts—-know that their ‘Jewishness’ their ‘Zionism’ their ‘cultural tradition,’ their insistence about being part of a separate group, is sterile and barren tribalism at best, noxious and obnoxious racism at worst.”
Refuse To Accept Divine Election
As Kahane saw it, Magid points out, “Jewish liberal secularists want to cling to the idea of Jewish difference but refuse to embrace it in terms of divine election because they do not believe in the divine nature of Torah. In light of this, Kahane asks, what is the basis of Jewish difference? What sets the Jew apart that would justify a ‘Jewish’ state on land where others already reside? For Kahane the secular Jew can find ground for Jewish exceptionalism only in ethnic or racial factors. Kahane thus turns the charge of racism back on those he sees as embodiments of the liberal Jewish establishment. They are racists because they have no definition of Jewish exceptionalism other than ethnic difference. And that ethnic difference justifies chauvinism toward another minority; what can be more racist than that?”
In 1975, the United Nations adopted Resolution 3379 which declared that, “Zionism is racism.” This is a subject to which Meir Kahane gave much thought. He declared that, “If you define what Meir Kahane says as ‘racist’ and then ban it, you will legitimize the U.N. Resolution that delegitimize Zionism.” Magid provides this assessment: “Kahane equates his own views with Zionism rightly understood…The equation of Zionism with racism was was so shocking to Jews in part because it associated their national movement with something (racism/anti-Semitism) they had been victims of for centuries. Kahane claims that the attempt to counter this equation by asserting Israel’s ‘Jewish and democratic’ character is incoherent, dishonest and undergirded by a racism that Jewish secularists claim to abhor…Kahane’s point is sobering. It suggests that a true democracy is impossible in a Jewish state, which must, to ensure its own survival, assign non-Jewish individuals and communities, that is, Arabs, a second-class status….”
Kahane had contempt for the idea of democracy in Israel, a contempt echoed by his admirers in Israel’s far-right contemporary government. Magid writes that, “Kahane’s focus was on Zionism’s alleged veneration of democracy above the value of Jewish exclusivity, dominance and power. By promoting the equality of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, he considered, Israeli democracy could undermine the survival of a true Jewish state. Kahane believed in democracy everywhere but in Israel. Israel had a different calling…The core of Kahane’s Zionism was that Israel’s right to the land should be viewed as a divine mandate and conquering it as a religious obligation…”
For Kahane, Secular Zionism Is “Wrongheaded”
Kahane’s view, Magid argues, appears similar to that of David Ben-Gurion who, in his address to the World zionist Conference in August 1957, stated that there were three components of Zionism: attachment to the ancient homeland, the Hebrew language and the messianic promise of redemption. “For Kahane, however,” notes Magid, “Ben-Gurion’s secular Zionism was a wrongheaded and destructive force. It may have had its use in persuading Jews to settle in the land of Israel, but it was incapable of sustaining Jewish life in the Holy Land over the long term. Thus, Kahane’s Zionism was at war against the Zionism upon which the state was founded….the Zionism of Ben-Gurion, for Kahane, produces Hebrew-speaking goyim, gentilized Hebrews.’ And a liberal Hellenistic state of the Jews. A state run by such Jews is a tragic mixed opportunity.”
Kahane had contempt for the idyllic view of Israel presented to Americans in the 1958 book “Exodus” by Leon Uris, followed by the Otto Preminger film in 1961. Kahane’s book “Never Again!,” in Magid’s view, “..gives an alternative history. Its Jewish heroes are not the pioneers farming in malaria-infested swamps and hot deserts but instead people like Shlomo Ben-Yosef. A member of the Irgun terrorist group found guilty of attacking an Arab bus in April 1938 and hanged by the British, he was the first Jew to be hung for terrorism in the Mandate period. Or Eilyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet-Zuri, the assassins of Lord Moyne (the anti-Zionist British politician Walter EdwardGuinness) in Cairo in 1944. Kahane presents the Ben-Yosefs and Eliyahu Hakims of history as the heroic revolutionaries of the Jews—-like Jewish Eldridge Cleavers and Che Guevara, except that they also fulfill the dream of the hapless zeyede who bore the weight of exile on his shoulders…Kahane refers to Zionism as the ‘Jewish National Liberation Movement’…an obvious gesture to the various liberation movements that were attracting the attention of the young idealists of the period.”
Kahane had contempt for the classical Zionist goal of “normalcy,” establishing Israel as a normal nation-state that becomes part of the family of nations. Instead, Magid shows, “Just as Jews are a chosen people, the Jewish state is also divinely chosen. As chosen and thus exceptional, the state cannot and should not follow the dictates of the unchosen gentiles.” In Kahane’s words, “The state of Israel is not a western one or an eastern one; it is not a ‘secular state’; it is not one to be modeled after ‘the nations.’ It is a Jewish state with all the uniqueness that this implies…Any idea that a Jewish state must be dependent on non-Jewish allies is an error in understanding the core of Zionism: Indeed, , there are no allies and the United States itself will cut its bonds to Israel as its interests dictate. In the end, Zion and Zionism stand alone with the Almighty G-d who created them.”Kahane’s point here is to challenge the very normalcy of the state as an aspiration.
Kahane Targets The Concept of Democracy
After he and his party were expelled from the Knesset, Kahane published the book “Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews” in 1987. Here, Magid writes, “Kahane…targets the concept and practice of democracy itself. Democracy arguably served as the political spine of the modern Zionist movement just as socialism was its prevalent economic theory early on. Yet the oft-repeated description of Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state was not part of its original Declaration of Independence. Rather, ‘democratic’ was added in a later amendment to the Basic Laws passed in 1985 (Amendment 9, clause 7A). This may be why Kahane spent so much time on democracy in Uncomfortable Questions…he viewed this amendment as undermining Israel’s ‘Jewish’ character as codified in the 1948 Declaration of Independence…One rhetorical question posed early in this book, which strikes ‘terror in the heart of the Jew,’ is: ‘Do the Arabs in Israel have a right to quietly, peacefully, democratically equally become the majority?’ If not, Kahane contends, Israel cannot call itself a democracy.”
When it comes to violence, on Feb. 25, 1994, the Jewish holiday of Purim, Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish physician
who lived in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, woke up before dawn, got dressed in his IDF reserve uniform, and with a supply of firearms traveled to the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron where hundreds of Muslims were engaged in morning prayers. He entered the mosque, took out his automatic weapon, opened fire and murdered twenty nine men and boys before he was beaten to death by surviving worshippers. The event shook the foundations of Israeli society.”
While much of Israeli society shunned Goldstein’s murderous act, vocal groups of Kahane supporters viewed him as a hero. Magid notes that, “Goldstein himself had a relationship with Kahane and viewed himself as part of his circle of disciples. The continued sanctification of Goldstein, small as it is, is evident in numerous places in contemporary Israel. For example, his tombstone at his grave in Kiryat Arba, which some view as a holy site, bears the inscription, ‘He gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land’; the grave is located, not accidentally, adjacent to Kahane Park. A book praising his alleged heroism, Barukh ha-Gever (Baruch the hero), a play on the verse from Jeremiah 17:7, was published in his memory in 1995.”
Violence As Sanctification
While Goldstein’s act may be singular, Magid shows that the attitude that motivated it is not. The idea of violence as sanctification is part of the modern eschatology of the later work of Goldstein’s mentor Kahane, appearing especially in his 1982 book entitled “Forty Years” that he wrote in Ramle Prison where he faced charges of sedition and playing a role in a plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock. The violence called for in Kahane’s vision, is not only or exclusively directed against the Arab enemy but against anyone who desecrates God’s name. Kahane, Magid shows, “becomes a self-appointed prophet of doom who foresees the destruction of the Zionist project—-unless he and his political allies attain the power required to stop it.”
Throughout his later writings, Kahane argued that the Judaism of the Diaspora is tainted by the explicit experience and its having absorbed “alien culture.” For example: “Today, people have risen up to destroy us who are smitten with the alien culture. Tragically, these include even Torah scholars and learned Jews who have pronounced that, halakhically speaking, there is no state of war between us and the Arabs in our land, hence we are forbidden to treat them as enemies.” He further states that anyone who renders a halakhic ruling that Jews are obligated to treat the Arab mercifully is a rodef (one who attacks with the intent to kill) “who collaborated with the gentile in the killing of Jews.”
Kahane, Magid shows us, makes clear his contempt for such Western values as democracy and equality. In “Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews,” there are two long chapters on democracy: “A Jewish State versus Western Democracy” and “Judaism versus Western Democracy.” Each, Magid declares, “is marked by what is arguably Kahane’s most sarcastic, caustic, and vicious prose defending himself against the secular-Zionist enterprise that was trying to eject him from the government. Later in the book, Kahane’s critique of Israeli democracy…moves from a political argument to a theological one.”
Democracy and Jewish Values At Odds
In Kahane’s view, liberal democracy and Jewish values are clearly at odds with one another. He writes: “The liberal west speaks of the rule of democracy, of the authority of the majority, while Judaism speaks of the Divine truth that is immutable and not subject to the ballot box, or to majority error. The liberal west speaks of the absolute equality of all peoples while Judaism speaks of a spiritual status, of the chosenness of the Jews from and above all other peoples, of the special and exclusive relationship between G-d and Israel…But, above all else, Judaism differs from liberal and non-liberal western values in that the foundation upon which it rests is that of ‘the yoke of Heaven,’ the acceptance of God’s law and values and concept of truth, without testing them in the fires of one’s own knowledge , choice, desire and acceptance.”
For Kahane, the goal is not only removing Arabs from Israel, but democracy as well. Both the presence of Arabs and the existence of democracy, Magid explains, makes impossible the achievement of Kahane’s ideal Jewish state: “Each prevents the process of purification required for the coming end-time. In Kahane’s estimation democracy is the best form of government for a ‘normal’ country but not for Israel, which needs to embrace its ‘abnormality’ to fulfill its destiny. Here he twists the anti-Semitic trope of Jews abnormal by conceding the point and then using it to justify why Israel could not be a democracy…”
Following his assassination on Nov. 5, 1990 in New York City, after he gave a talk to a group of mostly Orthodox Jews, kahane received what seemed to be something of an official state funeral in Israel. Magid writes that, “Despite his pariah status in Israel after his expulsion from the Knesset, his funeral was one of the largest in the country’s history, attended by almost 150,000 people. He was eulogized by many respected figures of the time such as Rabbi Moshe Tendler of Yeshiva University, the Sephardic chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and popular singer Shlomo Carlebach. This occurred well after he was deemed racist by the Israeli government and his political party declared illegal.”
Sharply Antiliberal Mindset
Israel has changed dramatically since Meir Kahane arrived in 1971. He brought with him a sharply antiliberal mindset which, Magid shows us, was largely absent from Israel at that time: “…the country’s now robust religious right was nowhere in sight; it would emerge soon after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 with the founding of Gush Emunim. At the time, Israel was largely left-leaning social-democratic, struggling to come to terms with occupying a large Palestinian population after 1967. What radical movements existed in the country were almost all of the left.”
When Kahane emigrated to Israel, Magid points out, “…he did not settle there to integrate into the country that existed but rather to transform it. His intention was to found an international JDL in Jerusalem that never materialized. His contentious political aspirations emerged almost immediately…He took the radical politics of the American streets in a more religious direction, developing in his final years an apocalyptic, militant political theology targeting not only Arab Israelis but all of secular Israel.”
Although this book was written before Kahane supporters became leading members of Israel’s current far-right government, the influence of this group was already evident. Kahane, writes Magid, “built an ideational infrastructure that outlived the now-outlawed Kahanist organizations. We see the effects of this neo-Kahanism…among settler youth who go by various names: ‘price-taggers,’. ‘hilltop youth,’ the Lahava (Prevention of Assimilation in Israel) movement…Kahane’s demise did not erase his legacy…He constructed his own counter cultural Judaism…He often said , ‘I don’t hate Arabs, I love Jews.’ But that was not true; in some macabre sense, he hated both. He was his own worst enemy, but his influence remains.”
Kahane’s Influence Has Grown Dramatically
Since this book was published in 2021, the influence of Meir Kahane has grown dramatically in Israel as his disciples are an important part of the new far-right government. State Department spokesperson Ned Price in Nov. 2022 slammed Israeli Cabinet member Itamar Ben-Gvir for praising Kahane at a memorial event. “Celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent,” declared Price. “There is no other word for it—-it is abhorrent. And we remain concerned about the legacy of Kahane Chai and the continued use of rhetoric among violent right-wing extremists.” Kahane Chai remains on the Treasury Department’s list of “specially designated global terrorists.” Israeli media outlets reported that Ben-Gvir lauded Kahane, saying on Nov. 10, 2022 that the late rabbi was about “love for Israel without compromise.”
On May 9, 2023, the European Union (EU) canceled an event in Israel at which Ben-Gvir planned to speak. Ben-Gvir had not been invited but volunteered to speak at the event celebrating Europe Day. Rather than permit him to speak, the EU canceled the event. EU officials asked him not to attend because, an embassy spokesman said, “many of his previous statements and views contradict the values the EU stands for.” The embassy still held an event for the Israeli public. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (May 6, 2023), “Nearly all ambassadors reportedly opted to cancel the event, save for those of Hungary and Poland which, like Israel, have right-wing governments.”
Israel has endured a history of right-wing terrorists but, until now, advocates of terrorism were not leading members of the government. The mindset of these right-wing extremists can be seen in the beliefs of Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In their book “Murder In The Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin” (1998), authors Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman describe the thinking of Amir: “There is only one guideline for fixing the borders of the Land of Israel: the Divine Promise made to the Patriarch Abraham: ‘To your descendants. I give this land , from the River of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates’ (Genesis 15:17). Today these borders embrace most of the Middle East, from Egypt to Iraq…zealots read this passage as God’s Will, and God’s Will must be obeyed, whatever the cost. No mortal has the right to settle for borders any narrower than these. Thus negotiating a peace settlement with Israel’s neighbors is unthinkable.”
“Not worth a Jewish fingernail”
Few Americans understand the extreme views which characterize Israel’s now dominant right-wing. At the funeral of Kahane follower Baruch Goldstein, who murdered Muslims at prayer in Hebron, Rabbi Yaakov Perrin stated that, “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” Shmuel Hacohen, a teacher in a Jerusalem College , said that, “Baruch Goldstein was the greatest Jew alive, not in one way, but in every way. There are no innocent Arabs here.” Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, who wrote a chapter in a book in praise of Goldstein and what he did declared that, “…every simple cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God…Therefore something is special about Jewish DNA…If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value.” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who headed the Chabad movement, declared, “The body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of (members) of all nations of the world…A non-Jew’s entire reality is only vanity…The entire creation of a non-Jew exists only for the sake of the Jews…”
The Jewish community has yet to confront this level of intolerance. While it launches vigorous campaigns against the intolerance of others, it has, unfortunately, largely ignored the bigotry which has come to the forefront in Israel.
“Grammar of Race”
Professor Shaul Magid sheds new light on Kahane’s political views and his use of the “grammar of race” as a tool to promote what he calls “Jewish pride.” He describes Kahane’s theory of violence as a measure to assure Jewish safety. He examines how tradition and classical Jewish texts profoundly influenced Kahane’s thought. He argues that Kahane’s enduring legacy lies not in his Israeli career but in the challenge he posed to the liberalism and assimilation inherent in American Jewish life. Here, Magid may be mistaken. In America, Zionism and Jewish separatism are in retreat, while in Israel, Kahane’s influence has never been greater. Zionism, it seems clear, never understood the nature of the American society and erred dramatically in telling Jewish Americans that they were in ‘exile” and that their real “,homeland” was Israel. Meir Kahane believed all of this and acted upon it. Israel must now confront the influence his movement has achieved. It is, unfortunately, a sad story, one whose end is, at this time, difficult to predict. ##
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Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and serves as editor of ISSUES. The author of five books, he has served on the staff of the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives and Office of the Vice President.