Dec 22, 2022

 

As a follower of the Judeo-nazi Rabbi Meir Kahane takes charge over the police in Israel there's renewed interest in the American-born rabbi. I've read about him for decades (and picketed him twice), but an article in Haaretz by Oded Balaban revealed much that was new to me.  For instance, though his Jewish Defense League in the U.S. made a big show of demanding that the Soviet Union allow Soviet Jews leave for Israel Kahane’s actions almost prevented it.  There were deals being made between the U.S. and the Soviets on nuclear weapons and the Soviet as a show of good faith were going to allow mass Jewish emigration.  However, Kahane’s people would attack Russian diplomats and the momentum for emigration slowed and and peace efforts then called détente almost stopped entirely.  Jascob Birnbaum who lead the fight for Soviet Jewish emigration disdained Kahane and said,  "Meir is a violent soul; he dreams of chasms of blood.”

 

I did know about his association with mobster Joe Colombo, but learned some new details.  It turned out the Colombo and Kahane used the same lawyer and Colombo once bailed Kahane out when he was arrested on charges of planting to bombs in Russian legations.  Kahane was with Colombo during a failed assassination attempt.

 

New to me was how Kahane first became political.  It had nothing to do with Jews.  It was in the mid-1960’s Kahane worked on campus with something he created called the July Fourth Movement.  It organized Against students who protested the Vietnam War.  He even received payment for this work from the FBI. 

 

Later his Jewish Defense League fought Blacks and communists.  Only then did he get involved with the situation of  Soviet Jews.  He started out as a fascist and anti-Black racist.

 

Balaban writes about something I heard about in rumors, Kahane’s double life.  In Queens New York he was Rabbi Kahane, but he also masqueraded as a Presbyterian from South Africa named Michael King!  He did this to have an affair with a woman named Estelle Donna Evans.  We know this because Evans leaped to her death from a New York bridge in 1966.  In her purse was found a letter from Kahane breaking off the affair and telling her that he was married with four kids.

 

When he was in the Knesset in 1984 “he declared that mixed Jewish-Arab dorms should be prohibited, non-Jewish volunteers should be barred from working on kibbutzim” and that support by a majority of Jewish residents should be required to allow Arabs to live in their neighborhoods. But you already may know about this.

 

Read the Balaban article.  Pretty sure it’s not behind the Haaretz paywall.  It’s got a striking illustration, a large picture of Kahane covered with red paint that someone had thrown on him.

 

This is the hero to Itamar Ben-Gvir who will be in charge of Israel’s police and border police.