Kahane returns to the Knesset
Feb 21, 2019 3:36 AM – Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/kahane-returns-to-the-knesset-1.6957376
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lust for power knows no limits. The pressure he brought to bear on Habayit Hayehudi and National Union – including a promise of the housing and education ministries, two seats in the security cabinet and a reserved spot on the Likud list for one of their members – bore fruit. Rabbi Rafi Peretz responded to Netanyahu’s call to unite with the Otzma Yehudit party, comprised of followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, which will receive slots No. 5 and No. 8 on the joint ticket.
Thus, under the sponsorship of a prime minister who is prepared to sacrifice every principle and smash every institution in his battle to entrench his regime, the followers of Kahane will return to the Knesset riding like the Messiah on the donkey of religious Zionism.
Kahane’s Kach party, which championed the deportation of the Arabs from all of “Eretz Israel,” was disqualified from contending for Knesset in 1988 because its platform contained racist incitement. It held a Knesset seat from 1984 until 1988. After the massacre by Baruch Goldstein, a Kach activist, at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994, the government declared the Kach and Kahane Chai movements illegal terror organizations. Kach is also on the American and EU lists of terror groups. But none of this matters to Netanyahu, who is determined to win at any price.
Otzma Yehudit is the political home of Kahane’s students and admirers, extreme Arab-haters who believe in Jewish supremacy, among them the founder of the Lehava movement, the radical-right group that opposes personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews. The Kahanists followed the “advice” of the party’s rabbis – Rabbi Dov Lior, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu and Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer – who told them to accept the compromise because the fate of the Land of Israel is at stake. (...)