Kahane's Legacy
By Hanan Ashrawi
Twenty years ago this week, a Brooklyn-born Israeli settler named Baruch Goldstein walked into the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and opened fire with his army-issued assault rifle, killing 29 Palestinians and wounding 150 others. In the following days, Israeli soldiers shot and killed at least 20 more Palestinians and injured hundreds of others as protests erupted across the occupied territories. The Israeli government convened a commission of inquiry that found Goldstein had acted alone and deemed there was no deeper problem, despite repeated warning signs that he posed a serious danger prior to the massacre. A year later a Jewish extremist and admirer of Goldstein assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in an attempt to stop the peace process.
Goldstein and Rabin’s killer, Yigal Amir, were both followers of the notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane, a fellow Brooklynite of Goldstein’s who advocated a Greater Israel and the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories, founded the Jewish Defense League in New York before immigrating to Israel in the early 1970s where he formed the Kach political party. At the time of Kahane’s assassination in 1990, Kach had been barred from Israeli politics for its overt racism and extremism.
After Goldstein’s bloody rampage the Israeli government outlawed Kach as a terrorist organization along with offshoots like Kahane Chai, as did the U.S. Yet, two decades later, the extreme right-wing, anti-Arab racist ideas espoused by Goldstein and his mentor Kahane, which deeply alarmed many in Israel’s ruling elite at the time, have moved into the mainstream of Israeli politics and society. Kahane has become a folk hero to many on Israel’s right, for whom “Kahane was right” has become a popular slogan. Equally disturbing is the veneration of the mass murderer Goldstein by some.
Although generally not as horrifically lethal as the events of February 25, 1994, settler violence against Palestinians has risen steadily in the intervening years, particularly over the last few. So-called “price tag attacks” against Palestinians and their property, including holy sites, have become routine. A culture of hate has been encouraged by the impunity granted to Jewish extremists who attack Palestinians. Meanwhile, settlers and Kahanists have risen to powerful positions in the government and a steady stream of racist laws directed at Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the population, have been passed by the Israeli parliament. Numerous edicts from influential rabbis on the government payroll have been issued calling on Jews not to rent housing to Arabs, not to mix socially or romantically with non-Jews, and even condoning the murder of non-Jewish children and babies on the grounds they might grow up to pose a threat to Jews and the state.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/199475-kahanes-legacy#ixzz2ul6OUpLm