Meir Kahane - Emigration To Israel, Knesset Service

Emigration To Israel, Knesset Service

In 1971, Kahane emigrated to Israel. When he moved to Israel, Kahane declared that he would focus on Jewish education. However, he soon began initiating protests advocating the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. In 1972, Jewish Defense League leaflets were distributed in Hebron, calling for mayor to stand trial for the 1929 Hebron massacre. He was arrested dozens of times. In 1971, he founded the Kach party. In 1973, the party ran for the Knesset (Israeli parliament) during the general elections under the name "The League List". The party won 12,811 votes (0.82%), just 2,857 (0.18%) short of the electoral threshold at the time (1%) for winning a Knesset seat. The party was even less successful in the 1977 elections, winning 4,836 votes.

In 1980, Kahane was arrested for the 62nd time since his emigration and jailed for six months following a detention order based on allegations of planning armed attacks against Palestinians in response to the killings of Jewish settlers. Kahane was held in a maximum-security prison in Ramla, where he wrote the book They Must Go. Kahane claimed in the book's preface that one of his cellmates was a Bedouin from the Negev about to be released after serving an eighteen-year prison sentence for the rape and murder of a Jewish girl.

In 1981, Kahane's Kach party again ran for the Knesset during the 1981 elections, but did not win a seat, receiving only 5,128 votes. The Central Elections Committee had banned him from being a candidate on the grounds that Kach was a racist party, but the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the ban on grounds that the committee was not authorized to ban Kahane's candidacy. The Supreme Court suggested that the Knesset pass a law that would authorize the exclusion of racist parties from future elections, and the Anti-Racist Law of 1988 was later passed. In the 1984 legislative elections, Kahane's Kach party received 25,907 votes, enough to give the party one seat in the Knesset, which was taken by Kahane. Kahane refused to take the standard oath of office and insisted on adding a Biblical verse from Psalms, to indicate that when the national laws and Torah conflict, Torah (Biblical) law should have supremacy over the laws of the Knesset. Kahane's legislative proposals focused on transferring the Arab population out from the Land of Israel, revoking Israeli citizenship from non-Jews, and banning Jewish-Gentile marriages and sexual relations, based on the Code of Jewish Law compiled by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah.

As his political career progressed, Kahane became increasingly isolated in the Knesset. His speeches, boycotted by Knesset members, were made to an empty parliament, except for the duty chairman and the transcriptionist. Kahane's legislative proposals and motions of no-confidence against the government were ignored or rejected by fellow Knesset members. Kahane often pejoratively called other Knesset members "Hellenists" in Hebrew (a reference to Jews who assimilated into Greek culture after Judea's occupation by Alexander the Great). In 1987, Kahane opened a yeshiva (HaRaayon HaYehudi) with funding from US supporters, for the teaching of "the Authentic Jewish Idea". Despite the boycott, Kahane's popularity grew among the Israeli public, especially among working-class Sephardi Jews. Polls showed that Kach would have likely received three to four seats in the coming November 1988 elections, with some earlier polls forecasting as many as twelve seats (10% of popular vote), possibly making Kach Israel's third largest party.

In 1985, the Knesset passed an amendment to Israel's Basic Law, barring "racist" candidates from election. The Central Elections Committee banned Kahane a second time, and he appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court. This time, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the committee, disqualifying Kach from running in the 1988 elections. Kahane was thus the first candidate in Israel to be barred from election for racism.