The Resurgence of Meir Kahane - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

by Liel Leibovitz

The following article is republished from Tablet Magazine:

A specter is haunting Judaism’s genteel corners these days: the specter of Meir Kahane.

Everywhere you turn, the rabbi and Israeli politician, who was assassinated by a jihadist in New York in 1990, is looming large.

“As Kahanism forces its way into mainstream discourse,” thundered one young progressive on social media, “it’s incumbent upon voices in the Jewish space to call it out and to pressure Jewish organizations to not pedestalize those who invoke his name with favor.” Another pundit, a rabbi and Jewish communal leader, warned in a fiery and widely shared post against “mainstreaming Kahanist maximalism.” On Instagram, a group of Jewish content creators wrote to express their “shock” at the “surge in Kahanist rhetoric.”

The list goes on. In the feverish imaginations of our self-appointed best and brightest, the ghost of Kahane now howls in the bones of Jews from Peoria to Petach Tikvah, threatening to turn even the most formerly reasonable Zionist into a bearded beastie all too keen on finding and lynching the first Arab who ambles by.

I’ve some very good news: the rumors of Kahane’s rebirth are greatly exaggerated. For the overwhelming majority of Jews, the late rabbi remains more or less what he had always been: a historical footnote, a charismatic and problematic leader who was right about some things and very, very wrong about a lot of others.

Poll Jews anywhere about Kahane’s desire to abolish Israel’s electoral system and replace it with a theocracy, and you’ll find no more than a handful of takers. Ask who’s in favor of outlawing sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, and you’ll see very few hands go up. And nearly no one, Baruch HaShem, walks around these days referring to secular Jews as Hellenizers and suggesting that, should the opportunity arise, slaughtering a handful of them would do the nation a bit of good. These vile delusions excite none but a gaggle of rabid lunatics, which, I’m happy to report, was the case even when Kahane himself was around to spew them.

But the late rabbi, like a broken clock that tells the right time precisely twice each day, was right about one thing. The Palestinians, he correctly observed, were a cluster of clans, not a nation with a shared history, a shared identity, and shared aspirations for an eventual peaceful coexistence with Israel. Their aim is the eradication of the Jewish state next door, which is why all attempts at replacing the rifle with the olive branch end in tragedy. To solve the problem, Kahane advised, one would need to separate the Palestinians from the Jews, with the former joining their brethren in any of the region’s many Arab states.

Considered with October 7 and its aftermath firmly in mind, there is nothing particularly jarring about this insistence on separation. As President Donald Trump argues, we need a new paradigm if we are to secure the safety and wellbeing of Israelis and Palestinians moving forward. Keep Hamas in power, or hand over the reins to the only slightly less genocidal PLO, and you’ll have another Oct. 7 (and its Israeli reply) next week, next month, next year. This is why the idea of forced relocation is gaining traction. The vast majority of those who support it see it not as an invitation to Kahanism and with it some spree of wanton killing and rampant racism, but as a difficult yet necessary solution designed to guarantee no more bloodshed.

None of this is very hard to understand. And yet, many are running around warning about the second coming of Kahane. Why? That’s a much more interesting—and much more urgent—question.

Consider, for a moment, the road traveled by many American Jews these past 15 months. One day, they were members in good standing of a virtuous, unimpeachable community of people who attended the finest schools, subscribed to the finest publications, and held the finest opinions. The next, they woke up not only to thousands of slaughtered innocents but also to the realization that the schools they attended were hotbeds of bigotry, not the free and unfettered exchange of ideas; that the publications they read were propaganda, telling always and only one story; that the opinions they held bore little resemblance to the gruesome reality unfurling before their very eyes.

Having had the opportunity myself, before Oct. 7, to challenge everything I once believed, I can report that the process of asking inconvenient questions can be daunting. Pursue it with neither fear nor favor, and you’ll end up a bit dazed, asking yourself if it’s really you saying all these things you’d once considered anathema. You’ll witness friends taking their leave and social circles contracting. And you’ll understand why that great Jewish playwright hit it right on the head when he stated that some people just can’t handle the truth.