Meir Kahane

Meir David HaKohen Kahane ( kə-HAH-nə; Hebrew: רבי מאיר דוד הכהן כהנא; born Martin David Kahane; August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990) was an American-born Israeli Orthodox ordained rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who served one term in Israel's Knesset. Founder of the Israeli political party Kach—whose legacy continues to influence militant and far-right political groups active today in Israel,—he was convicted of multiple acts of terrorism in the United States and in Israel.

Born in 1932 in Brooklyn, New York City, to an Orthodox Jewish family, Kahane received his education there, starting with Jewish scripture studies, and eventually gaining an M.A. in International Relations from New York University. In 1968, he founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in New York City, whose self-described purpose was to fight anti-Semitism. Several JDL members, including Kahane, were subsequently convicted of acts related to domestic terrorism, including leading the attack on the Soviet United Nations mission in 1975. Later that same year, Kahane was convicted of conspiring to kidnap a Soviet diplomat, bomb the Iraqi embassy in Washington, and ship arms abroad from Israel. He consequently served a one year imprisonment, albeit in a hotel.

In 1971, Kahane moved to Israel and became a citizen, where he initiated protests calling for the expulsion of both Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians of the Israeli-occupied territories, which led to his arrest dozens of times. In the same year, he founded Kach, a political party that initially failed to gain any seats in the Knesset. In 1980, Kahane was arrested for the 62nd time since his emigration, and he was jailed for six months for planning armed attacks against Palestinians. Kahane was held in prison in Ramla, where he wrote the book They Must Go. In the 1984 elections, his Kach party gained one seat in the Knesset, which was taken by Kahane, but was later barred from running in 1988. In 1990, he was giving a speech to an audience of Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, urging American Jews to emigrate to Israel, when he was assassinated by an Egyptian-American national. Kahane was eventually buried in West Jerusalem.

During his lifetime Kahane publicized his Kahanism ideology throughout the United States. In Israel, he proposed enforcing halakha (Jewish law) as codified by Maimonides and hoped that Israel would eventually adopt it as state law. While serving in the Knesset in the mid-1980s Kahane proposed numerous laws, none of which passed, to emphasize Judaism in public schools, reduce Israel's bureaucracy, forbid sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, separate Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, and end cultural meetings between Jewish and Arab students. He went so far as to demand that non-Jews in Israel either become slaves or face deportation. He also popularized the slogan "For Every Jew a .22." He supported the restriction of Israel's democracy to its Jewish citizens, and endorsed the annexation of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.