THE
THIRTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF RABBI MEIR KAHANE HY"D
6
November 2003
By
S. Herbert B. Sunshine*
Rabbi Meir Kahane
Ben Yechezkel, was the antithesis of the assimilated Jew. Descended
from a dynasty of Rabbis on both his fathers and his mothers
side, he himself is the father of Rabbis. He lived the way he believed
and his beliefs are in his writings. His role model was the ancient
poet-warrior, David, King of Israel. His Yeshivah of the Jewish Idea
extolled Jewish pride, Jewish heritage and authentic Torah learning.
His essays of
twenty and thirty years ago were timely then and timeless now because
of their vision and truthfulness.
He officiated
at my wedding in 1987 and we were close personally until his murder
in 1990. Rabbi Kahane was a constant inspiration. He appointed me to
write his press releases during the last eighteen months of his life.
I traveled with him during his campaign for Knesset in1988. I was at
the High Court on the day he was banned from running for the Knesset
and I demonstrated in favor of the Referendum, intended to restore his
right to run. At the end, I followed his body from his Yeshiva to his
grave in Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.
He was depicted
by the media disrespectfully. But he was respected, even loved, by the
thousands of Jews whose lives he touched.
I lived for a
time in a Merkaz Klita (Absorption Center) together with many
other immigrants, the majority of whom were from the former Soviet Union.
There, during the winter of 1988, I took ill. Rabbi Kahane, more ill
than I, came to visit. A Russian neighbor, seeing Rabbi Kahane with
me,
invited me to his tiny, sparsely furnished apartment. He proudly pointed
out the two pictures hanging on his wall. One was of his beautiful daughter.
The other photograph was that of Rabbi Meir Kahane to whom he gave credit
for his liberation from the Soviet Union.
The test of a
true prophet is whether his predictions for good come true. In that
sense, and because no man is a prophet in his own time, Rabbi Kahanes
vision was perceptive, not prophetic. However, like the Prophet Yeshayahu,
the Rabbi did not speak of sweet things. Not unlike some
of the prophets of old, he was vilified, jailed, banned and murdered
The Jewish establishments of both Israel and the United States targeted
their mortal enemy, Rabbi Meir Kahane, the religious, Zionistic Jew.
I want to give
at least one example of the arbitrary hostility of the Israeli Establishment
against any threat to its political power. Israel has retained a British
Mandate Law prohibiting the causing of dissatisfaction to
a public official. It was used by both the British and Israeli governments
against Jews. It was a major weapon in the government's war against
Rabbi Kahane. Arrested dozens of times for political reasons, on one
occasion he was jailed for "causing dissatisfaction to then
Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir.
An Arab murderer
had grabbed the steering wheel of Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Bus 405, pulling
it into a steep ravine and killing and injuring many riders, Rabbi Kahane
immediately called for the resignation of the Prime Minister for failing
to protect the lives of Jews. This statement "disatisfied"
the government. This disgraceful British Mandate law further states
that the truth of the "guilty" expression shall
not constitute a defense to the charge.
The Rabbis
defense lawyer moved to dismiss on the usually valid ground that the
indictment was unsigned. The judge denied the motion, stating that she
wanted to hear the truth of the charges, despite the irrelevance
of truth under the law of Israel. The charge, which could have resulted
in five years imprisonment, was pending at the time of the Rabbis
murder.
Consistent with
his religious beliefs that every Jew has an obligation to defend the
State, the Rabbi served in the Israeli Army. The Arabs were at that
time rioting in the city of Kalkilya and the IDF was assigned to intervene.
Who better to send than the Rabbi? Then, as now, Israel endured an Arab
revolt and pursued a futile policy of purity of arms. The
unit commander gave the Rabbi his orders. You must first give
warning in Hebrew and in Arabic before shooting; you must fire in the
air before attacking. The Rabbi declined this invitation to commit
suicide and was told, If the Arabs dont kill you, then you
will face court martial for disobedience.
Together with
one frightened rookie assigned to him, Rabbi Kahane approached the rioters.
He was instantly identified. Kahane, Kahane, screamed the
Arabs as they dispersed. No shots were fired. No blood was shed. Peace
was restored.
He was later to
say, If I am ever Prime Minister, there will be no need to transfer
Arabs. When they hear of Kahanes election, they will run out on
their own.
In 1984, the Central
Elections Committee, described by the High Court, as a body which
is almost entirely composed of members with defined political outlooks...,
disqualified Rabbi Kahanes Kach Party. The ruling was reluctantly
reversed. The High Court required enabling legislation which set forth
yardsticks, clear limitations and definitions." For a list
to be banned, the Court asked for legislation and standards. To survive
court review, the law must define the measure of the violation
and the reasonableness of the danger (to democratic principles).
[Neiman v. the Chairman of the Central Elections Committee E.A 2,3/84]
In 1985 the Knesset
heeded the Courts message and passed legislation to ban a competing
party. They passed a law lacking standards and definitions in conflict
with the Court's decision. They passed a law tailor-made to ban Rabbi
Kahane and his Party.
7A. A list
of candidates shall not participate in elections to Knesset if there
is in its goals or acts... any of the following:
(1) The negation
of the State of Israel as the State of the Jewish people.
(2) The negation of the democratic nature of the State.
(3) Incitement to racism.
In the original
bill racism was undefined. The expectation of the bills
sponsors was for the High Court to equate Kahanism with "racism".
The Rabbi wrote in a letter from the Knesset:
472 days
passed and still no bill
I did want a bill with a good definition,
a thing that only a dreamer and people of immense faith could ever
imagine the Knesset coming up with
And, of course, the miracle
happened, in the way G-d always makes it happen. My worst enemy saved
me. Knesset Speaker Hillel - a man who goes to sleep every night with
me in his head, saw that the Knesset session was coming to a close
so in his obsession he announced that come what may, he was
tabling it for the next to the last day of the session. Faced with
the ultimatum by Hillel
and the anger of the religious parties,
the Law Committee, which is controlled by Likud, CHANGED [sic] the
bill and added a definition which took out religion as
a cause of incitement to racism and specifically declared that statements
based on Judaism would not be racist
In the end of this Alice-in
Wonderland scene, all the leftists who originated the bill voted against
it and I voted
for it. G-d is great.
Rabbi Kahane sought
re-election to the Knesset in 1988. In August he told an enthusiastic
crowd of hundreds of campaign workers:
The polls
show us getting between 10 and 13 seats. We will then be the third
largest party in Israel. There will be no government without
the Kach Party or there will be no government. We will
demand conditions, and these conditions are non-negotiable.
Every Jew sitting in an Israeli prison for ideological reasons
will be freed immediately. He will not be given a pardon because pardons
are only for criminals. (These Jews) will be welcomed in the Knesset
by the Prime Minister himself. There will be an automatic
death penalty for Arab terrorists. The Temple Mount will
be given to the Chief Rabbi of Israel and we will build a synagogue
there. The Arab citizens of Israel will do National Service
on the roads. There will be an end to the insanity of
subsidizing Arab babies. The law of Who is a Jew
will be amended in conformity with Halachah. There will
be an anti-missionary law. The Mormon Temple will become the largest
synagogue in the country. We will create a Jewish State,
not a State of Hebrew-speaking Gentiles. No longer will Jews be afraid
in their own Land.
The dream
of 2000 years has become a nightmare.
Hearing these
words, I thought, Rabbi, catch the ball before you run with it.
Friends have later told me, If he (Rabbi Kahane) had only softened
his words. If he had only been more polite, he might not have been banned
from running." The Rabbi, in reply to this, said, If I were
to speak only nice things then I am Shimon Peres, not Meir
Kahane.
Retribution for
these conditions was swift. On October 5, 1988, the Central Elections
Committee for the 12th Knesset, decided that the Kach list is prohibited
from participating in the elections under paragraph 7A, for inciting
to racism.
To prove that
the goals and acts of the Rabbi and his party were within
the confines of Torah Law, (to be exempt from racism under the Knesset
law), the Rabbi's attorney sought expert testimony from leading Rabbis.
All of the Rabbis approached confirmed that the principles of Rabbi
Kahane and his Kach Party were within Halachah; however, each requested
support from two others, before agreeing to testify. Thus, the High
Court did not have the guidance of religious experts on such issues
as Jewish sovereignty in Israel, intermarriage, transfer of enemy aliens,
or the incompatibility of Torah Judaism with Grecian-derived democracy.
In an opinion
that is historic and which should be required study in all Israeli schools,
particularly in its law schools, The High Court of Israel, speaking
through its Kippah-wearing Judge, Menachem Eilon, found the Halachah
(Torah Law) as expressed by Rabbi Kahane to be racist. (October,
1888)
The learned Judge
defined the word "ger" as resident stranger (a
neighbor to whom the Jew owes "kindness") rather than with
its true meaning, "ger toshav," (a non-Jew who has accepted
the Seven Noachide Laws) and is thus permitted to live among Jews in
the Land of Israel.
Maimonides
Mishneh Torah, which is the consensus authority on Torah Law, states:
When,
however, Israel is in power over them [the gentiles], it is forbidden
for us to allow an idolater among us
[Exodus 23:33] states,
They shall not dwell in your land - i.e., even temporarily
A person who accepts these seven mitzvoth is a "ger toshav."
A "ger toshav" may be accepted only in the era when the
[laws of the] Jubilee Year are observed. In an era when the [laws
of the] Jubilee Year are not observed, however, we may accept only
full converts [to Judaism]. (Rambam, Hilchot Avodat Kochavim
10:6)
Rabbi Kahane explained
this law:
The
Ishmaelites who view the Jewish People as thieves are thirsty for
Jewish blood and will never abandon their ambition of destroying our
nation and its land. For that reason, the law of the seven nations
applies to them, and whoever hesitates in this, will, through his
foolish mercy, bring cruelty upon merciful sons of merciful fathers.
(Or Haraayon, The Jewish Idea, vol. II, p. 631, Rabbi Meir Kahane)
The State of Israel
is the State of the Jewish People but Western democracy"
would permit an elected Arab majority to rule Israel. About this, the
opinion says:
the
existence of the State of Israel as the State of the Jewish People
does not negate its democratic nature, just as the Frenchness of France
does not negate its democratic nature.
If the Kach Party
could run for office because their racist programs were
(by statute) exempt as being based on religion, and if such statements
negate[ed] the democratic nature of the State", then is there
not a fundamental incompatibility between Torah Judaism and Western
Democracy? The High Courts resolution of this dilemma was to deny
the religious content of the Kach program and further to sanctify the
Israelness of Israel over its Jewish nature.
There is a photo
of Rabbi Kahane as he emerged from the Court House being carried on
the shoulders of his supporters. They sang and they danced. Did
you win or lose, Rabbi?, I asked. "Gam zu ltova,
he replied, Everything from G-d is for the good.
During the same
session the High Court held that the Arab lists, which unashamedly advocated
the destruction of the State of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants, were
not in violation of Section 7A. Their platforms were declared to be
neither undemocratic, inciteful nor racist, and therefore the Arabs
of Israel were eligible to serve as Knesset members with the power even
to determine Who is a Jew.
A body blow, not
yet fatal, had been dealt to the Kach Party. Other assaults were designed
to prevent the resurgence of this right-wing Party.
Fearing the loss
of seats to Kach, Likud sponsored a bill requiring that any candidate
for Knesset must, before running, surrender any non-Israeli citizenship.
Such a bill (directed against a single individual) is unconstitutional
in the United States. Had Golda Meir been subject to this legislation,
she could have lost her U.S. citizenship. The taking of Rabbi Kahane's
U.S. citizenship was intended to cripple his ability to travel to raise
funds.
In the letter
which accompanied the surrender of his passport to the U.S. State Department,
the Rabbi (a citizen of the U.S. by birth) stated that he intended the
renouncement of American citizenship to be conditional upon his re-election
to Knesset.
In 1990 Rabbi
Kahane entered the United States with permission to contest this issue
in Federal Court. The case become moot upon his death.
The last blow
to the Kach Party was administered by a Knesset seeking to pacify the
United States State Department, which demanded even-handedness
in Israels war against the Arab Revolution. There being no Jewish
terrorists, Kach would do, and so the Party, having been incessantly
demonized by the government-controlled media, was declared to be illegal.
In true autocratic
style, this was done without notice or hearing or right of appeal. Based
upon the Israeli decision, the United States, without independent proof,
placed Kach on its list of terrorist organizations, side-by-side with
Hamas and Al Qaida.
The hand was the
hand of Esau, but the mind was the mind of Jacob. The hand which fired
a bullet into the head of Rabbi Meir Kahane, in mid-Manhattan on the
night of November 5, 1990, was that of the Egyptian terrorist, El Sayid
Nossair.
Esau hates Yaakov,
in every generation, and Yaakov, in the form of the Government of Israel,
hated and feared Rabbi Meir Kahane.
The Egyptian was
acquitted of Rabbi Kahanes murder. He was found guilty only of
illegally possessing a weapon. A search of the murderers apartment
uncovered 47 boxes of documents in Arabic which proved that he
(Nossair) was at the heart of a worldwide terrorist network. (Jerusalem
Post 11/25/94)
The Israel governments
indifference to the assassination of this Member of Knesset was mirrored
by the American Jewish Establishment. Neither demanded an objective,
thorough investigation, and so the motivation, financing and larger
significance of the murder remains hidden to this day.
Baruch Marzel,
a disciple of the Rabbi and later to be a Knesset candidate, requested
that the F.B.I. look into the backers of Nossair
On
December 7, 1990 he wrote:
The killing
of Rabbi Meir Kahane is a terrorist act held in the United States
because America has little experience with terrorism and is not prepared
If the F.B.I. will treat this case as an act of international terror,
then the support group behind Nossair, will be unearthed.
In February of
1993, a bomb was set off in the parking level of the World Trade Center.
Six people were killed and more than 1000 injured. Four terrorists,
linked to Nossair, were convicted of this attack in March, 1994.
On October 1,
1995, Nossair and the blind Muslim Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, and ten
others, were convicted in U.S. Federal Court of conspiracy to blow up
the UN, an FBI building, and three bridges and tunnels.
The funeral of
Rabbi Meir Kahane was announced on hundreds of huge posters pasted on
boards throughout Israel. On Thursday, November 8, 1990 at 3:00P.M.,
the procession commenced from the Rabbi's Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea
in the Shmuel HaNavi neighborhood of Jerusalem.
He sacrificed
his life for the sake of the Nation of Israel, its Torah and its Land,
declared the posters. Those present exceeded 100,000, making it the
second largest funeral in Israels history. Mourners flooded the
streets for blocks around the Yeshiva. Young and old, religious and
secular, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, native Israelis and immigrants, men,
women and children, jointly mourned their great loss. Rabbi Meir Kahane,
a leader of the generation, had united Jews in his death as he had attempted
to lead them during his life.
The government
of Israel never ceased its de-legitimization of Rabbi Kahane and the
harassment of his followers - despite the murder of more than 1000 Jews,
the wounding and maiming of thousands more, and the more than 5000 murderous
attacks during the years folowing the failure of Oslo.
On July 7, 2002,
the Attorney General of Israel indicted a young Kahane supporter: "The
defendant is accused of having printed
the picture of Rabbi Kahane
on the front of a number of shirts, and on the back thereof he printed
the slogan, no arabs, no terror attacks. The charge,
still pending, is incitement to racism.
On most Fridays,
an Arab cleric will preach at the Al Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount
that Jews are infidels, occupiers of Arab
land and deserving of expulsion, if not death. No Arab preachers have
been indicted for incitement or racism arising
out of their expounding their (Muslim) religion.
One is tempted
to speculate on the history of the Jewish people in Israel had Rabbi
Kahanes life been spared.
Had Israel been
led by a strong, G-d-fearing Jew, would Israel have adopted the Oslo
Surrender Plan, creating a PLO Army with 50,000 Israel-supplied machine
guns? Would the Holy Places of Shchem (the Arab Nablus), the Cave of
the Patriarchs, the site of the First and Second
Temples, have become Mosques, dangerous if not impossible for Jewishworship?
Would there have been brazen desecration of the name of the G-d of Israel
when priceless artifacts of Jewish history were scooped up by Arab bulldozers
and dumped in garbage heaps under the eyes of the Israeli Department
of Antiquities?
Would there have
been interminable Arab revolution, relentlessly decimating Jews, the
Israeli economy and the standing of the Jewish people throughout the
world? Would an Israeli government led by a less fearful Jew be guided
by a policy that there is no military solution to the Intifada?
Would there be
crammed down the throats of a sovereign people a series of Land
for Peace Plans, (Madrid, Oslo, Wye, Taba, Camp David, Tennet,
Mitchell, The Road Map, and recently, Geneva) whereby the People of
Peace with little land give land to People of Terror who have millions
of square miles of land, trading Holy Land for dubious peace?
The Jewish
people should be a light unto the world, not a memorial candle,
Rabbi Kahane often said.
Anti-Semitism
is not created by Jews who stand proud and tall in defense of their
people. (Rabbi Meir Kahane, December 11, l970.)
###
*Mr. Sunshine
is a retired U.S. Attorney-at-Law who resides in Jerusalem. He conducted
a private practice of law for 35 years and was an adjunct Professor
of Law in upstate New York. In Israel, Mr. Sunshine served as President
of the Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea and was, until its banning, a member
of the Inner Council of the Kach Party. He was the English-speaking
spokesperson for Rabbi Meir Kahane from 1988 to 1990.