Twenty-two years after the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League and the outlawed far-right Israeli political party Kach, his followers have found a creative way to spread his racist legacy.A 30-minute animated film describing the life and worldview of Kahane was recently uploaded to YouTube by Haraayon Hayehudi (the Jewish Idea) Yeshiva and is causing a small stir on the web. With only 2,500 views so far, the short Hebrew Language video is far from going viral but has nonetheless caught the media’s attention.
Clearly targeted at a younger audience, the unconventional video follows two children’s conversations with cartoon versions of Kahane’s present-day supporters, among them MK Michael Ben-Ari and Baruch Marzel, in order to better understand the rabbi’s philosophy for a school assignment. The film presents Kahane’s opinions on many explosive topics, including Jewish supremacy and the forced transfer of Arabs to Jordan.
“One of the traits that characterized Rabbi Kahane was his devotion to truth, without being concerned about what Jews or gentiles said of him. Rabbi Kahane fears only God,” the narrator declares. “He called for the deportation of non-Jews from the Land of Israel, regaining Jewish control of the Temple Mount, applying Jewish sovereignty over all parts of the Land of Israel and restoring Jewish pride.”
The Kach party was banned from running for Knesset in 1988 after a court ruled its policies racist and undemocratic. Following a massacre perpetrated by Kahane follower Baruch Goldstein at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 that left 29 Muslim worshipers dead and 125 wounded, the party was officially labeled a terrorist organization and has been outlawed ever since.
