As people may recall, I subscribe to the Hannah Arendt method of analysis that tracing political genealogy to understand the “origins” of political ideas (ideology) of political movements and their political actors and their acts is essential for any true understanding of contemporary movements which adhere to the same ideology. As did William (Bill) Polk, whom I believe I can call a mentor to me, as a historian. As he'd written of in various ways, including to this email list many years ago before . . . . . . . became more dominant here.
So those who are indifferent or even hostile to that method should read no further. But for those who seek a deeper understanding of current events, and might consider that both Arendt and Polk made some substantial contributions to the study of history as relevant to current events, read on. The following two articles explain the ideology of the Israeli Settlers and, thus, of the Israeli government, by tracing the “genealogy” of the most extreme right-wing faction currently part of the Israeli government. My only quibble is the failure to more fully recognize that in fact, the “Right-wing thinkers” are correct in their assertion directly below.
Quote from article at bottom:
"Right-wing thinkers maintain that the rise of Otzma Yehudit does not represent a rightward turn of the nation or the spread of Kahanism per se, but the fact that this faction was able to channel into it an electorate that’s existed for generations on a similar scale.
“That argument is misleading and dangerous, because it assumes that legitimate and natural processes took place here as a result of which some movement, totally random, arose here, which is called the Kahanist movement. In fact, this movement is the root of evil when it comes to the changes in the political map. It was not a circumstantial channeling, after which the water flows elsewhere. This putrid mire became part of the fabric of our life, and it doesn’t look like it will dry out anytime soon. It is situated at the very heart of the regime. Reality is already changing unrecognizably before our eyes.”
And from the same article at bottom:
Quote: “Correct. In the years Rabbi Kahane served in the Knesset and pursued ‘his truth,’ he submitted a succession of bills based on a Jewish isolationist approach: a ban on joint [Arab and Jewish] bathing on beaches, and segregation in the education system. Racist legislation, which MKs on the right likened to the Nuremberg Laws. And today, when I sit with Meir Ettinger, he says himself that the system of laws he envisions fairly closely resembles the laws of the Third Reich.”
"Just like that?
“He authored a little pamphlet on Judaism and racism, in which he wrote: ‘We are racists. Period.’”
So it's at least “refreshing” when these fascists admit the truth about themselves such as above, and in the headline directly below:
Why does this matter? These fascist Settlers are dba "National Conservatives" in the U.S. under the leadership and influence of Israeli Settler Yoram Hazony and the financial influence of far-right “Surveillance Industry Complex” (Palantir) leader, and admitted proponent of ideas distilled from Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt , Peter Thiel.
After a Decade Inside the Most Radical Circles of Israel's Far-right, He's Ready to Tell All
Scholar Idan Yaron penetrated Israel's radical right, winning the trust of its leaders, attending their gatherings and even observing a pogrom. Now he's publishing a book on the Kahanist legacy they are perpetuating
<Idan Yaron. “I’ve had coffee with people who have blood on their hands, people who committed serious crimes, because to my mind it’s out of the question for a taboo to exist in academia when it comes to certain realms of knowledge.”, Credit: Sraya Diamant>
Idan Yaron. “I’ve had coffee with people who have blood on their hands, people who committed serious crimes, because to my mind it’s out of the question for a taboo to exist in academia when it comes to certain realms of knowledge.”Credit: Sraya Diamant
The signal for the pogrom to start was given just hours after a terrorist attack on June 21 at a gas station near the West Bank settlement of Eli, in which four Israelis were killed and another four were wounded. The target of those bent on taking retaliatory “price tag” actions was the adjacent Palestinian village of Luban al-Sharqiya. Large numbers of young men arrived not only from the hard core of “hilltop youth” in the settlement of Yitzhar, but also included students from local high-school yeshivas and kollels (yeshivas for married men).
Among the dozens of rampagers moving toward the village and setting fire to fields en route, it was hard to miss Idan Yaron, a sociologist and social anthropologist who, at 69, was much older than those around him. Yaron, who has been conducting in-depth research on the extreme right in Israel – particularly the movement spawned by the ultranationalist, American-born rabbi Meir Kahane – found himself swept up in the angry crowd.
“I was present during the incident together with them in the most direct way, while also filming everything, to the displeasure of some of the young people,” Yaron relates now. “Of course, I did not take part in any violent activity.”
Did anyone attempt to prevent violent activity?
“There were [security] forces, albeit not in large numbers, including soldiers, Border Police and other police officers. But they did not intervene in a particularly forceful way, other than throwing tear gas [canisters] and shooting in the air when young Palestinians from the village showed up on its outskirts. Dozens of eyes saw what was happening there.”
Did you consider intervening yourself?
“I decided to rise above the immediate issue of preventing an injustice – and burning fields or the carpentry shop of an innocent Palestinian is an absolute injustice in my eyes – and asked myself whether I would be willing to go beyond my limit: infliction of actual violence or physical harm on another person. If so, I would do everything to prevent harm. But in that particular situation, I thought that my vocation obligated me to overcome the feeling of injustice that was taking shape before my eyes, in order to be present within the events and to publicize them in due course. To hold up a mirror, to generate a discourse and through it perhaps later on to shape a different reality that is consistent with my values.”
When the flames died down, the results of the rampage became clear: five of Luban al-Sharqiya’s residents were wounded by live fire. Some 10 homes were defaced, windows of businesses were smashed, extensive farmlands were set ablaze and about 30 vehicles were torched. One of them, by the way, was Yaron’s car, which he had parked at the edge of the village. Upon discovering that, the researcher wondered whether he had perhaps gone too far in clinging to the idea of being a participatory observer. “The car was done for,” he says. “Windows, mirrors, lights, serious damage to the exterior, everything was smashed. But because the engine wasn’t damaged, I managed somehow to get home.”
Idan Yaron didn’t just happen to be present that day by chance. For the past decade he has been forging ties, some of which have become genuine friendships, with central activists among the so-called hilltop youth, some of whom are disciples of Meir Kahane. Indeed, Yaron has become a familiar face among extreme right-wing circles and has acquired virtually full access to the hard-core group of the late rabbi’s followers. For example, Yaron attended a memorial ceremony last year for Eden Natan-Zada, the AWOL soldier and perpetrator of a 2005 shooting attack that killed four people and injured many others in the Israeli Arab town of Shfaram. Natan-Zada was subsequently beaten to death. Yaron also joined leaders of the movement as they visited blood-drenched scenes of Palestinian terrorist attacks, and he was present at events commemorating the 1994 massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, which were held at the grave of the “just and heroic” Baruch Goldstein, who carried out the slaughter.
<The memorial ceremony in 2020 for Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994. Yaron attended the annual event this year., Credit: Courtesy of Idan Yaron>
The memorial ceremony in 2020 for Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994. Yaron attended the annual event this year.Credit: Courtesy of Idan Yaron
Yaron has devoted himself to fieldwork and over the past decade has not published his findings “so as not to contaminate the complex and sensitive relationships I have forged with much effort,” he explains. But lately he has decided to “come out of the closet” – as he puts it. The first sign of this was his article last month in De’ot, the journal of the religious-Zionist Torah and Labor Faithful movement, in which he analyzed the schism in the top ranks of the Kahanist movement and described the steps two of its notoriously radical leaders, Michael Ben-Ari and Baruch Marzel, are taking to establish a new political entity.
In the months ahead, Yaron plans to publish a book about the history of the movement, starting with the rise of the Jewish Defense League that Rabbi Kahane founded in the United States in 1968, to today’s Otzma Yehudit party, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, in Israel. His work also focuses on the Jewish supremacist/anti-Arab Lehava organization and includes interviews with its leader, Bentzi Gopstein, and with members of the group who set fire nine years ago to a bilingual (Hebrew-Arabic) school in Jerusalem. Yaron bases his research on interviews with leading Kahanists, on a thorough study of Kahane’s writings and on a close monitoring of events as they unfold.
“You return home after meetings or activities of that kind and you ask yourself: ‘Just a minute – where was I just now, what did I do, am I insane?’ The fact is that I am the only nut who’s survived a decade within such a complex reality, alongside people some of whom espouse abominable political views. I chose to wait with publishing, based on an understanding that I have a more essential role than being one more voice in our political cacophony. So that today, I will be able to say these things from an authoritative position that is unrivaled among the Israeli public.”
Idan Yaron, who is married and has seven grandchildren today, taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and until recently was a senior lecturer at Ashkelon Academic College. He is a major in the Israel Defense Forces reserves and served as an organizational consultant at the army’s school of counterterrorism. He has published a book on marksmanship and another on the legal aspects of combat and military ethics. In recent years, marginal phenomena have been featured in many of his research projects – including the book he wrote on bathrooms as a symbolic domain.
As a retiree, Yaron has dedicated most of his time to studying Israel’s extreme right. In 2017 he wrote “The Shkolnic Saga” (in Hebrew), which describes in great detail the murder of a bound and incapacitated Palestinian terrorist by a settler named Yaron Shkolnic, in March 1993. At its center are accounts of conversations the author held with Shkolnic, who talked about his motivations for committing the murder.
The Kahanist project he has undertaken is perhaps his most ambitious in character and scope, but he has had distinctly cool reactions from his colleagues. “Quite a few tried to dissuade me from continuing and to explain to me that it was a pity to invest resources and to make an effort to create relations of trust with individuals, movements and organizations that are of dubious character, to put it mildly.”
What types of comments have you heard?
“‘Why are you occupying yourself with them? How can you sit with those murderers?’ Leading academics, including professors at the Hebrew University, maintained that my research as such legitimizes these groups. I don’t accept that. I have had coffee with people who have blood on their hands, people who have committed serious crimes, because to my mind it’s out of the question for a taboo to exist in academia when it comes to certain realms of knowledge.”
Why do you think your colleagues have reservations about what you’re doing?
“There is also an emotional element at play here. It’s no secret that most academics, including anthropologists, are typically left-wing. They have a natural repulsion to groups like those. I believe that the proper approach is to put things on the table and to grapple with them openly. We will not be able to posit ideological, philosophical or moral counter-positions if we do not confront things head-on. If we cannot understand the Kahanist movement from its very core, we will not be able to grasp its implications and to offer an alternative, ethical approach.”
For that you need to publish, which is something that’s taken you quite a long time.
“True. Academics live off their articles, but I didn’t want to play that game. In that sense, I have never been career oriented; the proof is that to this day I am not a professor. I wasn’t interested in accumulating academic publications that will be read by a few colleagues, at the expense of the strong position I’ve established in the field. My aim is to publish semi-popular works for the public at large, to give everyone the tools to read reality intelligently and to move them to act. That’s what drives me.
“Let’s say I found out about a certain action by hilltop youth before it happens,” Yaron continues. “Some would perceive knowledge of that kind as a crucial piece of information. But I’ve seen it as secondary to the possibility of accumulating a whole inventory of experience, knowledge and acquaintanceship with people. Today no one can claim that I don’t know what I am talking about.”
Yaron’s office in his home in Tzur Hadassah, southwest of Jerusalem, is crammed with documents, leaflets and secret investigative files dealing with persons and groups that have throughout the years been identified with Jewish terrorism. To an outside observer, this collection may appear chaotic and illogical, but Yaron is able to locate every document or photograph in an instant.
The highlight of the archive are albums documenting the childhood and adolescence of Yigal Amir, who murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which Yaron received from the family, along with a packet of letters sent to Amir by his now-wife Larissa Trembovler, during the period in which she courted him. “During the past three years, I’ve been in close touch with members of the Amir family,” says Yaron, who adds that he is currently writing a book about Amir that will focus on the conspiracy theories that have sprung up since the 1995 assassination. Such theories suggest that Amir may have been framed or set up by certain authorities. Yaron aims “to cope directly and systematically with those who have initiated and spread those theories, and to pick apart their arguments one by one.”
A picture of Yigal Amir in the Sinai, in 1995, from an album in Yaron’s archive. The researcher says he’s in touch with the family of Rabin’s assassin.Credit: Courtesy of Idan Yaron
Another treasure is a thick binder with documents covering the activity of the Kahane Lives movement, courtesy of the late Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane, son of Rabbi Kahane. The rabbi had launched the Orthodox-nationalist Kach political movement in 1971 in Israel, but following his assassination in 1990, at age 58, the party split: The Kahane Lives organization broke away from it and was subsequently banned.
Another box in Yaron’s study is filled with pamphlets offering reflections, moral lessons and news in the spirit of the “Jewish idea” (which was also the name of Kahane’s yeshiva in Jerusalem) – in other words, writings characterized by unbridled racism and incitement to murder. One such flyer, for example, compares the cost to the state of imprisoning a security offender with the (far lower) cost of a bullet.
A comic interlude during the visit to the archive is provided by a Monopoly-like game fashioned by Kach activists. Players are supposed to scamper virtually across the hills of Samaria, aka the northern West Bank, and to collect as many “Greater Land of Israel” cards as possible (e.g., “You were silent in a police interrogation: You get 201 hilltop youths”). The players encounter obstacles when they pick up cards bearing verses such as “Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth from thee” (operative meaning: “You are suspected of harboring forbidden thoughts – go into administrative detention”).
When Yaron began to collect the documents and memorabilia, they were still identified with a small, wacky group that seemed to have been relegated to eternal exile. Indeed, in 2013, the Kahanist movement was considered to be so marginal that even the far right spurned it. Yet it was precisely at that nadir Yaron decided to shine a spotlight on it.
He did so, he explains, “based on a conception that by understanding the fringes it would be possible to infer in a distinct and productive way the phenomena that were happening in the center. It’s along the ‘borders’ that the most interesting phenomena occur.” But Yaron could not, however, have imagined a scenario in which the leaders of such an outcast movement would be thrust rapidly to center stage in the country and wind up in key governmental positions.
“I think they also didn’t believe such a thing could happen,” he adds. “This is an accelerated process that occurred by total surprise and is a direct product of the legitimization of the Kahanist movement and its leaders by a prime minister of Israel.”
<The Kach Monopoly game. Players scamper virtually across the hills of Samaria and try to collect as many “Greater Land of Israel” cards as possible.>
The Kach Monopoly game. Players scamper virtually across the hills of Samaria and try to collect as many “Greater Land of Israel” cards as possible.
* * *
Last Purim, Yaron attended an annual ceremony held at the grave of Baruch Goldstein in Kiryat Arba, an urban settlement abutting the city of Hebron: “Baruch Marzel, Noam Federman and other activists from the most extreme core group were there. They read the Megillah [Book of Esther] and castigated the sons of Haman, drawing comparisons to [former Supreme Court President] Aharon Barak and his successors in the court. The most vitriolic things you can imagine. It’s a harsh experience. At the end of this pageant they invited me to a meal at the farm owned by former Kach leader Noam Federman. They eat hummus, praise Goldstein and expound on the most misguided conspiracy theories – among them, that Apollo 11 was an invention and that no one actually landed on the moon.”
What sort of people are there?
“Young people, mainly from the new generation of the Kahanist movement, which is identified today with the branch headed by Marzel and Ben-Ari, and also a few devoted supporters of Lehava.”
The following day, according to tradition, Yaron continues, “they all meet again at the Jewish Idea Yeshiva in Jerusalem. That event is attended every year by the leadership of the movement, but this year was exceptional because two cabinet ministers showed up [National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, and Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, both from the Otzma Yehudit faction of the Religious Zionism party]. Ben-Gvir takes the podium to speak. On the face of it, nothing could be more of a home court for him. But he’s aware of the unspoken feelings harbored by his public and of the criticism from within the camp. So he begins with a type of apology: ‘True, we haven’t yet achieved this or that, but you have to give us time, we are working to exert influence from within’ – and so on. But then he says something very interesting: ‘In previous years when we held this gathering, law enforcement authorities entered, made a mess, disrupted the goings-on. Today I stand before you and the Shin Bet [security service] guards are standing outside and guarding us. That’s the great change.’”
Yaron’s work has also brought him to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, whose Palestinian residents radical Jewish elements have worked to get rid of for years. Early last year, for example, Ben-Gvir set up an office there – a provocation that brought confrontations with the Palestinians there to the boiling point. A far-right militant identified with the extreme right lives in the neighborhood and, according to Yaron, “his house acts as a kind of center for hilltop youth and right-wing activists. It’s a place where they can organize and form a type of militia that deploys for operations involving violence and terrorism.” This group, Yaron adds, is “a kind of local Kahanist guard unit. Some of them come with weapons, some come from a background of martial arts. There is no mistaking their spirit of combat; they train and are primed for confrontation.”
In July 2021, Yaron attended a memorial ceremony for Eden Natan-Zada, held at Givat Tal, outside the settlement of Kfar Tapuah in the central West Bank. “I was well acquainted with the activist who organized the commemoration,” Yaron relates. “I’d visited him in prison, where he was doing time for a series of legal offenses committed as part of his activity in the Kahanist movement. In addition to the Kahanists, the event was attended by the hard core of hilltop youth from Yitzhar. Most of them were kids at the time of the terrorist attack [by Natan-Zada]. After prayers in the synagogue and conversations on current events, everyone gathered together and food was served – plates of salads, hummus with beans and pine nuts, warm pita.
“At beginning of the memorial ceremony, the organizer said, ‘We’ve come to pay tribute to Eden. He was murdered by Arabs ... He went out and gave his life for this. We need to ask ourselves why him, yes, and us, no.” Another participant added, “Eden was a gentle and determined guy. A thinking, curious person, and he performed an act of self-sacrifice.”
It took Yaron years of cultivating relationships and knocking on locked doors before he was invited to attend events like these. “Patience is part of the method, and I must be very meticulous. I don’t ask tough questions, I don’t go into intimate issues, I don’t encroach on spaces where I should not be. If I didn’t ask an important question today, never mind; maybe I’ll do it in another year. It’s not urgent.”
The efforts to forge a path to Meir Ettinger, Rabbi Kahane’s grandson and a leading ideologue of the hilltop youth, demanded particular forbearance. Yaron wooed Ettinger – one of the founders of The Revolt, a subversive group that was among the primary targets of the Shin Bet’s Jewish Division – for three months before Ettinger agreed to meet with him, a few years ago.
Ettinger was suspicious and short-tempered, Yaron recalls. “Meir told me that he doesn’t know how to engage in small talk. I asked him what he does know, and he replied, ‘to learn.’ So it shall be, I replied. For three consecutive years after that, we maintained a hevruta [Talmudic study group], and we made every effort not to miss even one weekly lesson. We would read texts and speak for two to three hours.”
Yaron learned later that Ettinger had agreed to meet him after consulting with his rabbi, Yitzhak Ginsburgh, considered the most prominent spiritual leader of the hilltop youth. The rabbi told Ettinger that it was important to get to know “left-wing intellectuals close-up.”
Their meetings “koshered” by the rabbi, Yaron and Ettinger formed a close relationship at the latter’s home in Moshav Naham, near Beit Shemesh, later in Lod, and then afterward when Ettinger settled in Yitzhar.
Yaron admits that over time he became quite fond of Ettinger, who is 32 today, describing him as “a person of great stature” and as “one of the most intelligent, sensitive, gentle and even principled persons, according to their belief,” that he’s met during his research. He was invited to join Ettinger and his cohorts on their annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to Uman, in Ukraine, the burial place of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, a journey he describes as “a rare and instructive experience.”
<Meir Ettinger. Yaron describes Meir Kahane’s grandson as “one of the most intelligent, sensitive, gentle and even principled persons” he’s met., Credit: Gil Eliyahu>
Meir Ettinger. Yaron describes Meir Kahane’s grandson as “one of the most intelligent, sensitive, gentle and even principled persons” he’s met.Credit: Gil Eliyahu
What did you gain from that trip?
“The possibility of witnessing a captive audience, but very broad one, that treated Ettinger with a glorification bordering on absolute adoration. He represents many things that are close to this public’s heart. For example, the affinity with Rabbi Kahane, about whom he himself is ambivalent today, and also his [Ettinger’s] defiant attitude toward the state and its institutions. People lapped up every word he said. I think that I understood there that Meir is not only a person but a phenomenon, from which stems an integrated religious-ideological ideology, albeit not political.”
Why not political?
“Ettinger believes that hilltop youth should not be involved in internal developments within Israel. They are an oppositional organization when it comes to the state, unlike other extreme-right movements, including classic Kahanism, which always aspired to influence things from the inside. From Ettinger’s viewpoint, even if you succeed in wielding influence from within, if you are operating in a system whose principles you do not accept – i.e., the secular State of Israel with all it represents – you become part of the problem.”
Ettinger suggests a different alternative, Yaron continues: “A state of halakha, or as he calls it, a ‘Torah state.’ In contrast to Otzma Yehudit, which fundamentally rejects democratic and liberal values, but plays the political game in order to promote undemocratic and illiberal goals, people like Ettinger don’t join in the game from the outset.”
But when it comes to the “Arab enemy,” these groups are in perfect agreement.
“Correct. In the years Rabbi Kahane served in the Knesset and pursued ‘his truth,’ he submitted a succession of bills based on a Jewish isolationist approach: a ban on joint [Arab and Jewish] bathing on beaches, and segregation in the education system. Racist legislation, which MKs on the right likened to the Nuremberg Laws. And today, when I sit with Meir Ettinger, he says himself that the system of laws he envisions fairly closely resembles the laws of the Third Reich.”
Just like that?
“He authored a little pamphlet on Judaism and racism, in which he wrote: ‘We are racists. Period.’”
Don’t remarks like that make you want to run out of the room?
“Definitely – every moment I take a breath in that environment is difficult for me. But over the years, I’ve developed mechanisms that enable me to survive and continue to be authentic. To tell myself: Your problems don’t need to be given _expression_ here; deal with them when you get home. And I continue to deal with them to this day. The frustration is ongoing; there have been innumerable occasions when I thought of stopping and dumping everything. I had to pause and remind myself of the worthiness of what I am trying to do.”
Which is to tell it like it is?
“You must certainly know this experience from your work as a journalist, when people say: ‘Just don’t twist my words.’ That of course is a commitment I took on myself fully, but from the outset there was actually no reason for manipulation. The statements themselves are sometimes so insane and extreme, that presenting them as they are speaks for itself. They [the interviewees] also want me to reflect what they say in the most accurate way, so there is no conflict of interest between us.”
Arguing could be a possible tactic.
“I don’t argue with them. To sit in an environment where you don’t agree with a single word, with any type of behavior, with any of the feelings of the people around you, and not to project disagreement – that is one of the most difficult skills I needed to adopt. I trained myself to absorb things, to try as far as possible not to externalize any of my views, conceptions and emotions, even at the level of body language. To tame even the uncontrolled gestures, the completely autonomic systems. The idea is to try to understand from the inside where it all stems from and what these people want to attain – while keeping a poker face.”
Have there been any moments when you have felt threatened?
“Never. The image of extreme, unrestrained organizations changes completely when you win [their] trust and get to know the people from the inside. Sometimes I had to provide explanations for my presence, but I found ways to get them to reconcile with it.”
What was their motivation for letting you in?
“Amos Oz, in his book ‘How to Cure a Fanatic,’ dealt with the motivation that makes people act like that. According to Oz, one of the most obvious attributes of the fanatic is his burning ambition to change you, so that you will become like him. To persuade you that you must convert your world and move to life in his world. He strives indefatigably to ‘improve’ you, to open your eyes. I myself did not see the light, but I think that I have developed a deep understanding of those who aspire with all their might to see it.”
Did they persuade you in any way?
“The amazing thing is that even though I came in with openness, listened very attentively and really let things settle within me, nothing in me changed. I gave them 10 years and even so, my views did not change in the least.”
* * *
Thanks to the perspective of time, Yaron has been able to cite certain events that presaged the consolidation of the Kahanist movement and its move toward the mainstream, in terms of its members holding key government positions. One such event was Operation Protective Edge, which was launched against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in 2014, and more particularly the shock waves it generated on the Israeli street.
Yaron: “Operation Protective Edge is a milestone because the environment in the region then became very violent and a public atmosphere was created that served as an excellent platform for the development of an organization like Lehava, which was then in its infancy. That year, we saw Lehava people taking to the street. First in Jerusalem. The hard core Gopstein was actively leading searches for young Arabs [to harass] and created provocative situations. In the wake of these incidents the movement swelled and its activity spread outside Jerusalem as well.”
And it was not only directed against Arabs. The demonstration in Habima Square in Tel Aviv during Operation Protective Edge, in which right-wing militants beat left-wing demonstrators, was unprecedented at the time. “Yes. A Lehava group came to Tel Aviv and fomented friction that turned into a violent brawl. That was a flagrant event both because the movement flaunted itself and in terms of the relations between right and left in Israel.”
<Right-wing protesters in Habima Square in Tel Aviv, during the 2014 Gaza War. According to Idan, the war was a milestone in the hostile relationship between the right and the left in Israel., Credit: Tomer Appelbaum>
Right-wing protesters in Habima Square in Tel Aviv, during the 2014 Gaza War. According to Idan, the war was a milestone in the hostile relationship between the right and the left in Israel.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
Did the Kahanist movement succeed in leveraging Lehava’s popularity?
“The Kahanist movement was never able to cobble together an organization and activate grass-roots mechanisms effectively. It did not invest resources in those things – except for Gopstein, who created a distinctive organization around himself. When the Kahanist movement tried to enter the Knesset via all kinds of political alliances, it wasn’t able to ‘turn up the volume’ of pure Kahanism all the way.”
You’re referring to the fact that Kahane followers got spots on the slates of Moledet, Tekuma and as part of other blocs.
“Right. Within other parties, or as fragments of a Knesset faction, Kahanism found it difficult to sweep the masses up around one label, the way we see it today. Its influence was insignificant, and it was the same at the grass-roots level. For years it was a movement of ‘potential voters,’ as one of its leaders described it to me.”
So perhaps Otzma Yehudit is a passing phenomenon? Could it be that it won six Knesset seats because of a chance, one-time situation?
“I don’t attribute it to one event, but to a clear-cut, persistent process in which Israeli society has been become more extremely right wing. Operation Guardian of the Walls [May 2021] is only a symptom of this trend. The ‘revelation’ of the danger constituted by Israel’s Arabs ostensibly confirmed the Kahanist rhetoric. Thus, these elements were able to maintain more forcefully that all Arabs are the same and that all of them have one goal: namely, to annihilate the State of Israel.”
Right-wing thinkers maintain that the rise of Otzma Yehudit does not represent a rightward turn of the nation or the spread of Kahanism per se, but the fact that this faction was able to channel into it an electorate that’s existed for generations on a similar scale.
“That argument is misleading and dangerous, because it assumes that legitimate and natural processes took place here as a result of which some movement, totally random, arose here, which is called the Kahanist movement. In fact, this movement is the root of evil when it comes to the changes in the political map. It was not a circumstantial channeling, after which the water flows elsewhere. This putrid mire became part of the fabric of our life, and it doesn’t look like it will dry out anytime soon. It is situated at the very heart of the regime. Reality is already changing unrecognizably before our eyes.”
Where do you see that?
“We are currently witnessing the realization of blatantly hard-right policy. The moment that agenda trickles down, it legitimizes what happened in any case in Judea and Samaria in the course of decades, within the framework of the occupation, in the central involvement [in it] of the IDF and with the validation of the judicial system. In this sense the phenomena we are seeing on the ground are certainly not new, but they are being given _expression_ today at the very extreme edges of the extremes. Subterranean processes have been exposed.”
Only because of the legitimacy they received?
“It’s far beyond legitimacy. In the past, hilltop youth needed to conduct themselves in light of a certain complexity, to maneuver between the settlement banner, on the one hand, and the banner of the war against the Arabs, on the other hand. They were afraid of the price that the ‘price tag’ actions would exact: a blow to the settlement project. Today they no longer have a conflict. They can hoist both banners proudly: to expand the settlements and at the same time take aggressive action, sometimes by using live ammunition, against the Palestinians. And without paying any price. On the contrary, the moment events like this draw a response from the Palestinians, there’s an immediate declaration of a new neighborhood, or mobile homes are placed on a hilltop. The far right today can operate on all fronts. That is unprecedented.”
But the hilltop youth is a movement with anarchical traits. Aren’t we overstating the weight of the government?
“When Ben-Gvir comes out after a terrorist attack with a declaration like ‘Run to the hilltops’ – it’s a green light not only for settlement but also for rampaging against Arabs. The results are evident on the ground at both levels: the fact that so-called price tag actions are becoming more frequent, and the fact that their perpetrators are being glorified. The hilltop youths who walk about with their weapons and their chests puffed up is a phenomenon we have not seen before. And it is intensifying. After demons like this burst out, it’s very difficult to put them back in the bottle.”
<From left, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bentzi Gopstein and Baruch Marzel, in 2015. “Ben-Gvir is Rabbi Kahane in full. There’s no crack, no space in him that’s not Kahane.”, Credit: Ilan Assayag>
From left, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bentzi Gopstein and Baruch Marzel, in 2015. “Ben-Gvir is Rabbi Kahane in full. There’s no crack, no space in him that’s not Kahane.”Credit: Ilan Assayag
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To get the upper hand over these demons, Yaron observes, we must go back to their emergence in 1960s’ New York. A cursory look will not easily reveal concrete associations between the Jewish Defense League – the organization Rabbi Kahane established in order to help Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union – and present-day Kahanism. But for his part, Yaron believes that the roots of the latter are embedded deep in the JDL.
“Rabbi Kahane,” he says, “lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, which influenced the road he took and his thinking in an almost absolute way. His motto was ‘Never again.’ Not in the sense that there would not be a second Holocaust, but from the notion that we will not go like sheep to the slaughter. We will resist actively. As such, he attributed value, at times a sacred one, to acts of violence.”
And then he settled in Israel.
“Here, Rabbi Kahane discovers that his supposedly ‘natural’ electorate – the Ashkenazim, the settlers – is turning its back on him and responding to him with suspicion and hostility. He was seen as a strange bird. He was under administrative detention [incarcerated without trial], in surroundings in prison that he described as being predominantly Mizrahi. And he falls in love with the Mizrahim [Jews of North African or Mideast origin], or at least falls in love with them for political purposes. He understands that this is the audience he must talk to.”
Ben-Gvir, in contrast, is flesh of the flesh of the religious-Zionist movement.
“Exactly. Ben-Gvir grew up on our hilltops. He is a far more authentic representative of the settlements, with an affinity for what will become over the years the hilltop youth and with an extensive history of provocation, which helped him gain constant media exposure. In this, by the way, he is very like Rabbi Kahane, who knew exactly how to get onto the front page of The New York Times or The Washington Post. Ben-Gvir learned well from him.”
What else did he learn from or improve on?
“Rabbi Kahane had the wisdom to try to appeal to different segments of Israeli society – secular and religious, for example. But Ben-Gvir is succeeding in creating even broader coalitions.”
MK Almog Cohen from Otzma Yehudit as representative of the periphery, Amihai Ben-Eliyahu, from the same party, as a representative of the hawkish wing of the Mizrahi Haredi community. There’s even a woman and also a brigadier general in the IDF reserves. Ben-Gvir is building Otzma Yehudit as a trans-Israeli party.
“Once the Kahanist ideas seep from the fringes into the center, it becomes possible to talk about them openly and to consolidate groups spanning different communities around them. I wouldn’t give Ben-Gvir all the credit for this development. Deep political and demographic shifts in Israel society are what have made it possible. Ben-Gvir, who has charisma and also commands no little popularity in certain circles, took this thing and leveraged it. He collected all the neglected eggs and put them all into one basket.”
Could that type of diversity affect the movement’s ideology?
“On the face of it, this is a new entity, but at the internal level, Ben-Gvir is Rabbi Kahane in full. There’s no crack, no space in him that is not Rabbi Kahane. There simply isn’t. Everything else that we see is only an interface with the outside.”
So when Ben-Gvir removes a picture of Baruch Goldstein [from the wall in his home] or hushes a demonstrator who cries out, “Death to the Arabs,” those are empty gestures?
“He is playing the political game. The other three leaders of the movement [Ben-Ari, Marzel and Gopstein] have also made every effort [to do that], to the point of being pathetic. In order to enter the Knesset they were willing to make compromises as part of that indefatigable desire to be elected. Baruch Marzel, especially, did everything to get his candidacy approved, including an appearance before the Central Elections Committee to say things like ‘I have changed my way.’ So this is always a double game: a willingness to sacrifice something, ostensibly, at the level of speech and with a wink, when it’s clear to everyone that they don’t actually mean it.”
Ben-Gvir is nevertheless challenging the limits of pragmatism. As national security minister, he promised to oversee the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem and to ensure “that not a hair on the head of the marchers will be hurt.”
“That truly was an unusual remark, because it is halakhically unacceptable, certainly for a religious person who espouses Kahanism. From the viewpoint of the members of the movement, that’s something that it was forbidden to say.”
Ben-Gvir is actually quite consistent in these contexts, such as when he came out with another statement to the effect that “the gays are my brethren.”
“This whole concept of ‘we are brethren’ is enshrined in the writings of Rabbi Kahane and is one of the most blatant falsifications of his conceptual doctrine. It is meaningless. Rabbi Kahane had a deep loathing for any person who in his perception was not a ‘real Jew.’ His hatred for Jews who left the religion and adopted Western liberal values was fiercer than his hatred of Arabs. And yet, he signed his letters ‘With love of Israel.’ His people told him, ‘But, honorable rabbi, every person’s body emits excretions – why do you write ‘with love of Israel’ about excretions that are not part of the body?’ He told them they were right, but continued to sign off that way because it served his purposes. In the same way, Ben-Gvir is making cynical, ugly and completely false use of ‘we are brethren’ and ‘we are all Jews.’”
<Rabbi Meir Kahane speaks in Jerusalem. Fells in love with the Mizrahim for political purposes., Credit: Nati Harnik / GPO>
Rabbi Meir Kahane speaks in Jerusalem. Fells in love with the Mizrahim for political purposes.Credit: Nati Harnik / GPO
Still, don’t displays of pragmatism have any effect on reality?
“Within the framework of those compromises, the leaders of the Kahanist movement had to bite their tongue, and Ben-Gvir succeeded in doing it better than others. He is very good at talking the talk, to speak in a way so that he’s always on the border. The court noted that he was very close to crossing the disqualification threshold” when running in the last election for the Knesset.
So Ben-Gvir owes his breakthrough to the High Court of Justice?
“Totally. For many years, in the era after Rabbi Kahane, there was a collective leadership. After all, there was only one Kahane, so everyone fell into line. They trusted one another, and from their point of view it didn’t make all that much difference which of them would be their representative in the Knesset. And then a situation arose in which Ben-Ari was disqualified [as a Knesset candidate], and afterward Marzel and Gopstein, so only Ben-Gvir remained. From the point of view of the others, that wasn’t so awful – as long as there is someone who can carry the torch. They assumed that Ben-Gvir was one of theirs and would follow their path to the end.”
And what happened then?
“He set himself free, liberated himself. From the point of view of Marzel and Ben-Ari, his head swelled and he was alienating himself from the legacy of Rabbi Kahane. It started even before the [last] election. He said he didn’t mind sitting with Arabs [Ben-Gvir did not rule out the establishment of a government that rested on the support, from the outside, of the United Arab List], and selected people like Almog Cohen for the party slate whose connection to the Kahanist clique is close to nonexistent. He gave an interview to an Arabic-speaking channel in order to clarify that he has no interest in expelling the Arabs from Israel, and promised to improve the situation of Israel’s Arabs if he received a key position in the government – an interview that Marzel and Ben-Ari described as a display of ‘hypocrisy and sycophancy.’ And then he enters the government and ‘plays the minister-role,’ as Marzel put it.”
Still, it’s usually assumed that the split that has developed in the Kahanist movement is part of a spin to brand Ben-Gvir as the responsible adult.
“Not so. The rift is real. When they meet they barely shake hands. In their great frustration, Marzel and Ben-Ari told Rabbi Dov Lior, the party’s patron, that they intend to break with the party. The rabbi immediately replied that he would continue to back Ben-Gvir. The two remained without rabbinic authority and without their troops, other than a few outcasts and youngsters. Not long ago, members of their contrarian faction organized a demonstration in Jerusalem and did all they could to promote it in the social media. Not even enough people for a minyan showed up. Marzel brought large signs but there was no one to hold them up.”
Still, a few months ago Marzel and Ben-Ari declared the establishment of a new movement. Why?
“In the WhatsApp and Facebook groups of that organization, one message reverberates: ‘The solution is transfer,’ ‘Transfer now!’ [referring to the expulsion of Israel’s Arab population from the country]. From their perspective, that is the distilled truth of Rabbi Kahane and it must be declared and inculcated in the government. This group does not forgive Ben-Gvir, who as they see it removed the subject from the agenda.”
Indeed, he has dissociated himself from the Kach doctrine and said, “I am not Kahane.”
“They exploded. The moment Ben-Gvir said aloud that there is a difference between ideology and politics, that was it. That was an inconceivable thing to say. If there is one word that is the essence of the whole Kahanist thing, it is ‘truth.’ Rabbi Kahane said, and his disciples quote him day and night, that there is no such thing as 99-percent truth. Either you are speaking truth or you are lying. Accordingly, from their point of view, Ben-Gvir is a traitor.”
Idan Yaron.Credit: Sraya Diamant
But not in the eyes of Gopstein, who continues to stick with Ben-Gvir.
“Gopstein is a very interesting figure. On one hand, he is a pure ideologue, on the other he is one of the more pragmatic people in the group. He chose to go with Ben-Gvir and he is reaping the fruits. The ‘nationalist rape’ bill [which calls for stricter punishments for acts of sexual violence that have a nationalist motive] is tailor-made for him. He is also coordinating the whole issue of the municipal elections on behalf of Otzma Yehudit. He wields tremendous influence.”
Apropos tailor-made laws, the coalition agreement between Otzma Yehudit and Likud stipulates that the clause in the law which prevents inciters to racism from running for the Knesset will be revoked. But it doesn’t seem to be on the agenda, from Ben-Gvir’s point of view.
“Correct – he understands that the way things are aligned politically does not enable this at the moment ... But Ben-Gvir isn’t really interested in this. He’s gathered around him a group that obeys his authority and does as he says. He has no interest in bringing Marzel and Ben-Ari back to the Knesset at this stage. But today, if the hard core of Otzma Yehudit would be allowed a little more political leeway, they would take the racial and ethnic segregation laws that Rabbi Kahane promoted and enact them word for word. Absolute racial separation, with a hope for obliteration.”
They will go that far?
“And in the most explicit way. Whoever is not behind the ‘iron wall’ will be ground down and liquidated by the iron fist. They will be uprooted, in the most literal sense. The _expression_ ‘to eradicate the evil’ runs like a thread through the whole Kahanist history.”
Those are not expressions that we are hearing from Ben-Gvir and his people.
“I talk with the activists. From their point of view, the evil is associated with every movement that is not religious, and certainly one that is anti-religious. These people tell me that they understand the Arabs, because they are enemies and fight like enemies. But the punishment that the leftists, for example, deserve, is far graver. Not to mention LGBTQ people and Reform Jews. Everyone who does not follow a national-religious approach. Everyone who is not a ‘real Jew,’ as Rabbi Kahane defined it, must be annihilated – and not metaphorically.”
Was there ever a stage at which this phenomenon could have been stopped?
“The everlasting tragedy was the very decision to allow the Kach slate to run for the Knesset in 1984. We allowed these forces to operate for too long with too few limitations, and as Dorit Beinisch [who as the deputy state prosecutor represented the state in the disqualification proceedings against Kahane] said, the first limitation should have been the permanent disqualification of the Kach movement. Since then, that leadership group – which is committed absolutely to the rabbi and his path – has done everything to perpetuate his doctrine and to influence society and the state accordingly. As Ben-Gvir said once in reply to a surfer on the web, ‘The prohibition of activity relates to the movement, not to the ideas.’ We must remember that.”