This op-ed is in reply to Roger Froikin’s post on Facebook: “Setting the record straight —Rabbi Meir Kahane.”
Setting the record straight is needed because too many people know only how the media and those behind it slandered this man and distorted his image.
Who Was Rabbi Kahane and What He Was All About?
Meir David Ha’Kohen, born Martin David Kahane, August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990, was an American-born Israeli. He was an ordained rabbi, a writer and what the media called him “ultra nationalist-militant-far right” and a politician. Founder of the Israeli political party Kach.*
*Kach=Kahanism, a religious Zionist party. Rabbi Kahane held the view that most Arabs living in the land of Israel were the enemy of the Jews and Israel itself, and believed that non-Jews should have no voting rights in Israel. (note: to a large extent he was right on the point of the Arabs in Israel because these Arabs do not fairly, if at all, participate in their citizenship rights and obligations and they do not respect, many are foes of the country in which they are citizens. ~ The writer)
Jewish Defense League (JDL)
There is a history here that has been distorted and must be corrected.
In the mid 1960’s, Kahane, in response to crimes that were impacting Jews in New York City’s neighborhoods where it appeared the police were not interested in doing much if at all, created the Jewish Defense League (JDL). The JDL* organized visible patrols and thus discouraged crimes, especially assaults and robberies.
*Since 2015 JDL has been reported to be inactive in the United States.
Quickly, the Jewish Establishment in NYC, and the NY Times reacted, accusing Rabbi Kahane of racism, though, had they bothered to seek the truth they would have discovered that half of the JDL volunteers were Blacks, not Jewish, and that Black people in those city areas were also being protected. However, the Jewish establishment, appearing to be embarrassed by Rabbi Kahane being publically ‘so Jewish,’ chose to slander him rather than bother to seek and find the facts.
Additionally, the NY Times, yes, the same Times that denied Jews were being murdered by the Nazis in Europe, as late as 1944, in order to discredit him, printed a number of false accusative stories about Rabbi Kahane.
Mind Boggling though, today, none of the mid 1960’s NYC Jewish leadership have Jewish descendants; all have been assimilated to have lost their Judaism.
In Israel
Rabbi Kahane then left to live in Israel. In Israel he presented ideas that acquired quite a large following in variable degrees. Israel’s political establishment however, saw him as a threat to their controlling mindset, and thus borrowed all the hate from the U.S., and did whatever they could to tear him down, to make him a pariah.
In Israel they accused Rabbi Kahane of wanting to get rid of all the local Arabs, going so far as to say that he promised to rid the country of all Arabs.
What Kahane truly advocated for was that Arabs who could not accept the Jewish State and made good citizens should leave.
Assassination
Rabbi Meir Kahane, an outspoken activist for Jewish causes, the founder and national chairman of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), was assassinated in 1990 by El Sayyid Nosair*. Nosair was later convicted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
*El Sayyid Nosair, (born 16 November 1955) is an Egyptian-born American man who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990 and was later convicted of involvement in the 1993 New York City (NYC) World Trade Center bombing. Nosair, currently serving a life sentence, was acquitted in his initial trial on murder charges for the assassination of Rabbi Kahane, but in his later trial was found to have committed the murder.
In Retrospect
Perhaps, had Israel listened to Rabbi Kahane then, terror enclave Gaza would not have happened; perhaps terrorism against Israel from Jenin and Nablus and Jericho and terrible crimes in the Israeli-Arabs carrying Israeli passport communities would never have happened either.
In retrospect, we need to ask ourselves today: was anything that Rabbi Kahane actually said, not what the media reported he said, not what the rival political echelon accused him of, actually objectionable?
After years of terrorism, intifada, jihad, after October 7, 2023 Hamas murderous attack on Israel, after the continual sponsorship of terrorism by the Palestine Authority (PA), is Israel better off in this regard?
Now Israel is constantly under attack from within and without.
And while in the U.S. and Europe today where Jews are under attack, suffering unprecedented anti-Semitic assaults, would it not have been better if the Jewish Defense League was out guarding the streets and protecting Jews?
On Arabs Free Will Emigration From Gaza
It is said that in 1968, Levi Eshkol, Israel’s Prime Minister from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969, and Yitzchak Rabin, then serving as the Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), proposed a plan to deport all the Arabs from Gaza. Very similar to Rabbi Kahane’s idea. The proposal was dropped after pressure from Israel’s fair-weather friends France and Britain. Eshkol at 73, died a few months later of a heart attack only a few months after he went through a full medical checkup that found his heart and all other health conditions in good shape. Was his heart failure the reason this proposal was rejected? Just a thought!
However, and there is but here, this claim that Levi Eshkol and Yitzhak Rabin* proposed a plan in 1968 to deport all Arabs from Gaza is a complex and a sensitive topic. The historical record doesn’t support a formal, publicized plan of such mass deportation while there were covert efforts and discussions within the Israeli government during that period that touched on encouraging emigration from Gaza.
*Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel’s Chief of the General Staff and later Israel’s ambassador to Washington D.C, viewed the territories captured in 1967 – including Gaza – as potential bargaining chips in future peace negotiations. He believed that Israel’s security depended on military strength and strategic diplomacy, and not necessarily on mass population transfers.
Background
After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel gained control of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath, there were internal debates within the Israeli leadership about how to manage the newly occupied territories.
According to archival research, Israeli officials monitored and quietly facilitated the emigration of Palestinians from Gaza. A report from May 1968 noted that approximately 50,000 Gazans had willingly left Gaza since the war ended.
What is known is that between 1968 and 1969, the Israeli government discreetly assisted Arabs in Gaza – not yet addressed as “Palestinians” – who wished to emigrate abroad.
Nowadays if a Gazan wishes to willingly leave the Gaza Strip the terror militant Hamasniks will not allow him or her this free will.
It must be said that this was not a public deportation policy but rather a behind-the-scenes effort to reduce the population through voluntary or incentivized emigration.
Important Distinction
There’s no verified evidence of an official Israeli government plan in 1968 to forcibly deport all Arabs from Gaza. What existed were quiet efforts to encourage emigration, which some historians and propagandists “interpret” as part of a broader strategy to manage demographic and political challenges in the conquered territories, the outcome of a fair and square war campaign.
