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Meir Kahane, 58, Israeli Militant and Founder of the Jewish Defense League [1]

['John Kifner']

Date: 1990-11-06

"I don't want to kill Arabs, I just want them to live happily, elsewhere," he told cheering rallies. "Give me the strength to take care of them once and for all."

"Kahane, King of Israel," his followers shouted back at a funeral of two Jewish schoolteachers allegedly killed by Arab youths in 1985. "Kahane, messiah, messiah. The Arabs are everywhere."

"Before his election a year ago, Kahane was just an illness; now he is an epidemic," Alouph Harevan, associate director of the Van Leer Foundation, a private Israeli research group trying to promote tolerance, said that year.

When he took his seat in Parliament, most Israeli political commentators dismissed him as "an American import" and a "racist lunatic" who would never find a serious following in Israel.

But it soon became clear he had tapped a visceral political feeling. An Appeal Based on Fear

"I have touched a simple and honest nerve on the part of the people," Rabbi Kahane said. He said the appeal was based on mounting fears Israelis had of Arabs and of a desire to end what they called the Arab problem once and for all.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/06/obituaries/meir-kahane-58-israeli-militant-and-founder-of-the-jewish-defense-league.html

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