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Rabbi Meir Kahane is the most controversial American Jewish leader in history. He founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968. Its members would go to marginal neighborhoods and, while carrying tire irons, chains and baseball bats, escorted elderly Jews to and from synagogue on Shabbat and on Jewish holidays to make sure they were not assaulted by thugs who otherwise preyed upon the elderly Jews. Jewish Defense League members physically confronted neo-Nazis and other anti-Semites.
Under Kahane's leadership, the Jewish Defense League was in the forefront of civil disobedience aimed at the Soviet Union's oppression of the Jewish people. To Kahane's credit, he was denounced as a "militant" by the conventional and cowardly leaders of the American Jewish establishment. The FBI was obsessed with Kahane and made a practice of surveilling him.
Rabbi Kahane made aliyah in 1971. He boldly advocated annexation of all of the lands of biblical Israel and transfer of the Arabs to neighboring Arab states, which he described as the completion of the mutual exchange of populations that occurred when modern-day Israel came into existence in 1948 and accepted as citizens the Jews who were expelled by the Arab states. He founded the Kach Party, which espoused his principles. He won a seat in the Knesset in 1984. In 1988, as Kahaneand Kach were gaining in popularity among the Israel people, the Israeli government banned him from the Knesset and outlawed Kach as "racist" under a law adopted specifically for the purpose of excluding Kahane from political power.
Rabbi Kahane was assassinated by a Muslim terrorist in a Manhattan hotel room in 1990. That Muslim terrorist was El Sayyid Nosair, who was initially tried and acquitted of Kahane's murder. Nosair was subsequently prosecuted in federal court for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and was found guilty of Kahane's murder as part of a larger conspiracy. Nosair ultimately confessed to Kahane's murder.
In 2000, 10 years after Kahane was assassinated, his son Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane and Binyamin's wife were murdered in Israel by Arab gunmen. Five of their six children were wounded in the attack.
Kahane's ideology was one of aggressive Jewish self-defense, including the unapologetic use of force when necessary. He unflinchingly advocated annexation of all the land liberated by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967 and the expulsion of the Arabs from the Jewish State. Ironically, many of the critics who condemned Kahane as racist have no problem with the forcible removal of Jews from their homes to make room for a judenrein Palestinian state.
To date there has been nobody to carry Kahane's torch after his murder. The question that demands an answer is, "Why not?"
Steven M. Goldberg, Esq. was counsel to the Jewish Defense League when it was still active. He will discuss Rabbi Kahane's legacy and whether the Jewish people need the movement he started to be revived.
It is a subject about which it is impossible to be neutral.
