36 Years Since the Assassination of Rav Meir Kahane and His prediction about the Arab Votes have come true!

 

36 Years Since the NYC Assassination of Meir Kahane

Today, Wednesday, י״ז חשון, was the 36th yahrtzeit of Meir Kahane. He was assassinated in New York at the age of 58.

Born in Flatbush, Brooklyn in 1932, Kahane later founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968 under the defining banner of "Never Again," organizing self-defense initiatives to protect vulnerable urban Jewish communities from violence and intimidation.

After immigrating to Israel in 1971, he entered public office and served as a Member of the Knesset leading the Kach party, where he consistently warned against concessions and called for total Jewish sovereignty across the Land of Israel. While the party was banned in 1988 from running, Kahane’s message and theology still lives strong.

On November 5, 1990 (18 Cheshvan 5751), Kahane was assassinated in Manhattan by Egyptian-born Islamic terrorist El Sayyid Nosair, an early act of radical Islamic terrorism on American soil that foreshadowed the global wave of jihadist violence in the decades that followed.

Following his assassination, the Kach party split, with Kahane Chai, started by Meir Kahane’s son Binyamin Zev, breaking away from the main faction.

Israel banned both Kach and Kahane Chai in 1994, a month after a Kach supporter shot and killed twenty-nine Muslims at a mosque.

Binyamin Kahane was killed along with his wife by Palestinian terrorists in a drive-by shooting in Samaria in December 2000, essentially proving his father’s point.

Meir Kahane had advocated strongly for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel, including Judea and Samaria, and proposing that those who refused to leave willingly should be forcibly deported or pressured to go. In a 1985 speech in Los Angeles, he stated that his name meant "terror to Arabs".

He felt strongly that Arabs living in Israel, including Judea and Samaria, were enemies of Jews and Zionism. He frequently asserted that Zionism requires a permanent Jewish majority, meaning that if Arabs were allowed full democratic participation, it would cease to be a Jewish state. During his time in the Israeli Knesset as the leader of the Kach party, he introduced bills calling for the physical separation of Jews and non-Jews and the removal of Arab populations.

Throughout his life, Kahane delivered razor-sharp warnings regarding security, national deterrence, and absolute self-reliance that continue to resonate today:

"I prefer a powerful and proud Jewish State that is hated by the entire world than an Auschwitz that is loved by one and all."

"Never, ever deal with terrorists.  Hunt them down and, more important, mercilessly punish those states and groups that fund, arm, support, or simply allow their territories to be used by the terrorists with impunity."

"The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state—attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea."

"For so long as the Jew has even one ally, he will be convinced—in his smallness of mind—that his salvation came from that ally.  It is only when he is alone—against all of his own efforts and frantic attempts—that he will, through no choice, be compelled to turn to G-d."

Kahane’s message remains clear: total strength, national deterrence, and uncompromising pride are the fundamental guarantees of Jewish survival.