Kach and Kahane Chai

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Kach ( Hebrew : "So") and Kahane Chai ( "Kahane Lives") are or were two right-wing extremist , Jewish organizations and former party in Israel . They have been declared illegal by the Israeli authorities for their support for attacks against the Arab minority and the Israeli government , but they continue to exist as underground organizations . The EU and the US both have organizations on their list of terrorist organizations. According to the US government, its activities include :

Both organizations also swore revenge for the death of Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane and his wife.

However, the activities of supporters and sympathizers of Kach and Kahane Chai go beyond threats and protests. Baruch Goldstein , who killed 29 Palestinians during prayer in the mosque over Abraham's grave in a 1994 attack in Hebron , and Jigal Amir , who shot Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in 1995 , come from the sphere of influence of both organizations.

prehistory

The Kach party was founded in 1971 by Rabbi Meir Kahane in Israel, who had previously founded the Jewish Defense League in the USA . Before immigrating to Israel, Kahane had stated that he did not plan to become politically active there. The name of the party is derived from "Rak Kach" ("Nur so"), the former motto of the Irgun . Until the early 1980s, however, Kach was largely unsuccessful.

Electoral success

Kahane achieved greater notoriety in 1982 during the peace process between Israel and Egypt through a trick. At that time it was agreed that Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula, which had been occupied since the Six Day War , to Egypt. In order to offer resistance, followers of Kahane had holed up in a bunker in Yamit , a Jewish settlement founded during the occupation, and threatened to commit collective suicide in the style of Massada if Yamit fell into the hands of the Egyptians again. Because Kahane's supporters did not allow themselves to be persuaded by the Israeli chief rabbis , the Israeli government had Kahane flown in from the United States and flown in a military helicopter to Yamit, where he then convinced his supporters to abandon their plan. This elaborate event was broadcast on Israeli television at the time and increased Kahane's popularity. After the 1984 elections, he entered the Knesset with a single seat .

At that time Kahane organized a sensational victory celebration in Jerusalem in Israel, during which an Arab market and passers-by were attacked.

In the following years, Kahane's speeches were boycotted by the other MPs, so that the Knesset usually stood empty, apart from the chairman of the board of directors and the note-taker. Kahane described his opponents as Hellenists , following the Jews who had assimilated into Greek culture at the time of the occupation of Judea by Alexander the Great . Despite this isolation, Kahane's popularity grew. Before the 1988 elections, however, the Israeli government passed a law that enables it to forbid parties from participating in the elections if it classifies them as “ racist ”. After Kach was banned from participating in the elections, Kahane called the Israeli Supreme Court , but this was unsuccessful, so that he left the Knesset after the elections.

Former members of the party include former Defense Minister of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu Avigdor Lieberman .

ideology

Kach pursued radical Zionist nationalism on the one hand and Judeo-religious fundamentalism on the other. Kahane had confirmed several times that he wanted to eliminate Israel's secular system and replace it with a Jewish theocracy in which the inhabitants should live according to the Halachnian laws. He affirmed that Judaism and democracy are not the same thing, and that a "Jewish democracy" with non-Jewish voters is self-contradicting itself, since it could one day give non-Jews the opportunity to vote out Israel as a Jewish state. Kahane referred to the chosen people of Israel . Kach was best known for calling for the expulsion of most Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories , as well as for a ban on sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews. The Kach members often appeared in public uniformed - with yellow shirts and party symbols - so that they were often dubbed “yellow shirts” (based on Mussolini's black and Hitler's brown shirts ) in the media . The catchphrase “Kahanazis” also arose on the street. The party symbol, the Star of David with a fist, was previously used by the Jewish Defense League and, according to the organization, is a symbol that was found on a wall there after the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945. On the wall was a Star of David with a fist and the words “Yiddalach! Nekama! ”( Yiddish :“ Jews! [Take] vengeance! ”). A Jew who was murdered in the Holocaust shortly afterwards is said to have painted it there. Kahane was particularly popular among the poorer part of the Jewish population, the Sephardim , with radical settlers in the occupied territories and among young Israeli voters. Polls showed that Kach would have reached 10% in the 1988 elections and would have been on the way to becoming the third largest party in Israel. After leaving the Knesset, however, Kahane and his party became increasingly politically insignificant.

Aftermath

On November 5, 1990, Kahane was assassinated during an event in Manhattan . The main suspect, El Sayyid Nosair , was arrested after an exchange of fire with police but was later acquitted of murder charges. Nosair was also involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing . After Kahane's death, the party split into the similar organizations Kach and Kahane Chai. Kach was continued by Baruch Marzel , while Kahane Chai was continued by Kahane's son, Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane, until he and his wife were killed in an assassination attempt by Palestinian militants in 2000.

Both groups have been considered illegal since 1994 due to the anti-terrorism laws enacted at the time following the attack by Baruch Goldstein on the patriarch's grave . You now have several hundred members, including a circle of supporters in the United States and Europe .

On August 4, 2005, 19-year-old Eden Natan-Zada , a member of the Kach movement, shot dead four Arabs and injured 22 others in a bus in Shefar'am . He was then lynched by the angry crowd .

According to a publication by the Israeli army radio, a successor organization to the Kach is led by Israeli Mike Guzovsky .

See also

Web links

Commons : Kach  - collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ↑ Kahane Chai (Kach) ( Memento from November 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Center for Defense Information: Kahane Chai (Kach)
  2. ↑ EU list of terrorist organizations from January 26, 2009 , accessed on April 27, 2012 . In: EUR-Lex .
  3. ^ State.gov: US list of foreign terrorist organizations from January 12, 2012. Last accessed April 27, 2012
  4. ↑ library.nps.navy.mil Kahane Chai (Kach) ( Memento from July 25, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ [1] SPIEGEL online: In blood and fire
  6. ↑ Reiner Nieswandt: Abraham's contested legacy. A contextual study on the modern conflict between Jews, Christians and Muslims over Israel / Palestine, Stuttgart 1998, pp. 179–180.
  7. ^ [2] Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Kach Movement - Background
  8. ↑ [3] Thomas G. Mitchell: Native vs. Settlers. Ethnic conflict in Israel / Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa
  9. ↑ a b c d [4] Spiegel online. Uri Avnery: Meir Kahane - a Jewish Nazi
  10. ↑ a b c d e Kach and Meir Kahane: The Emergence of Jewish Quasi-Fascism ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Ehud Sprinzak, published by The American Jewish Committee. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / members.tripod.com
  11. ↑ Avigdor Lieberman . In: Ynetnews . March 13, 2013 ( ynetnews.com [accessed December 14, 2017]).
  12. ^ Meir Kahane: Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews , Lyle Stuart 1987, Part II: A Jewish State Versus Western Democracy ; Part IV: Judaism Versus Western Democracy .
  13. ↑ a b c [5] Adam Horowitz: Settler network promotes racist comics to bring Meir Kahane to a new generation of Israelis
  14. ↑ [6]
  15. ^ [7] Washington Report on Middle East Affairs