Summary
American-born rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League in Brooklyn and of Kach in Israel, who in Lustick campaigned on an overtly racist platform to rid the country of its Arab population and entered the Knesset in 1984 (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 3200-3400).
Details
- Kahane left the United States in 1971 under FBI investigation and created Kach in Israel; in 1980 he was arrested and held in administrative detention for six months, reportedly on suspicion of participating in a plot to destroy the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 3200-3400).
- He endorsed and is suspected of having been behind TNT (Terror against Terror), which claimed responsibility for a long series of violent attacks against West Bank Arabs, Christian missionaries in Jerusalem and dovish Israeli Jews; he publicly praised violent attacks against Arabs and led followers to Arab villages addressing residents as “dogs” and warning them to leave the country (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 3200-3400).
- In three unsuccessful Knesset campaigns he appealed on an overtly racist platform, proposing laws to forbid intimate contact between Jews and Arabs and promising to rid the country of its Arab population through intimidation, discriminatory legislation and enforced servitude; in 1984, drawing support mainly from poor, undereducated Sephardic Jews, he received 29,907 votes and entered the Knesset (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 3200-3400).
- Supporters of Kahane threatened to commit suicide if the Yamit evacuation was not halted in April 1982; in 1985 Kach won two seats on the Kiryat Arba local council, though it received only 3-6 percent of the vote in Gush Emunim settlements in 1984 (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2950-3050, lines 3200-3400).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Kach, Gush Emunim, Jewish Fundamentalism, Temple Mount, Kiryat Arba