Tolerate not the Sicarii

Critiquing Kahanism from the Right.

I have found myself profoundly estranged from Israeli politics. Despite being on the Right, there are slim pickings. The Likud and its offshoots offer a center-right liberalism that is more interested in preserving the status quo than it is in solving Israel’s political crises. What’s left is not much more appealing. The Kahanists are more or less manifest in every right-wing Religious Zionist party, whether they admit to it or not. It is no secret that I detest Kahanism, yet many are confused as to why. I am resolutely not a liberal. For the liberal and the Leftist, concepts such as human rights¹, self-determination, and equality are of the utmost importance. For me, they are not much more than empty platitudes that appeal to some sort of utopian version of how reality should be rather than focusing on what it is. The main arguments against Kahanism from the Left are based on ideas that I (largely) reject. So, why my hesitation?

Many young Religious Zionists have been enthralled by the allure of Meir Kahane and his ideas. His zeal and the zeal of his students, the messianism-crazed delusions of its chief proponents, and the refreshing attitude of “saying it like it is”, have convinced many on the Right that this must be the way forward. But, the ability to say ought not to be an indication of ability to do, a mistake many make. If we look at the broad influence of Kahanism over its four-decade-long existence, what has it actually achieved? “Kahane Tzadak - Kahane was right” stickers in the environs of places like Ma’ale Adumim and Ben-Gvir and Smotritch? That’s not exactly what I call a success story. What institutions has it penetrated? Where are its intellectuals? Where are the Kahanist authors, poets, musicians, artists, scientists, and professors? Why are they nowhere to be found? Without intellectuals, institutions cannot be captured. Without institutions, there is no way forward.

Kahanism is a movement bereft of both intellectual and institutional capital, and this speaks volumes about its substance. Successful political movements are capable of captivating the minds and hearts of the elite as much as they are of the common man. There is a reason why liberalism went from being the theories of the enlightened aristocracy in France and England to the driving force behind European and American democracies. Liberalism, as much as I disagree with its outcomes, had many legitimate criticisms of, and solutions to, the Absolutisms of Europe’s Ancien Regimes. This is why it ultimately gained hegemony, and why to a lesser extent Socialism, at least in its more moderate iterations, also had much success.

What does Kahanism actually have to say? Besides the regular proclamations of kicking out the Arabs and creating an ethnically homogenous Israel, what actual solutions do they propose? The Kahanist vision of how to formulate such a plan is to gain power, issue a blanket expulsion order, and magically expect the Palestinians to comply. It’s completely unrealistic, almost childish. Not to mention that if this exact method were to be pursued, it would inevitably lead to an absolutely massive conflagration in the West Bank, posing an existential threat to the very Settlers they claim to want to protect. I have visited these Settlements. I am invested in their future and in their success. This disastrous plan would lead to their decimation.

Continuing with this point, successful political movements are not built by the zeal of the faithful, but by the plans of the wise. There has been no real plan put forward. As they make endless pronouncements of a Jewish Government with a Halachic State they have no plan of how that is going to work, how to integrate non-religious Jews into such a system, or how not to become an international pariah state. These are legitimate concerns that must be answered thoughtfully and prudently. Statecraft is not the business of the unsophisticated. When sweeping political reforms are made brashly, the state fails, regardless of how much you say Hashem will help you. Hashem guards fools from their folly, he does not assist them.

Tolerate not the Sicarii. Kahanists have deluded themselves into thinking that they are the heirs of the Biblical heroes of old, those who will restore Israel’s national character and bring it into a new golden age. But, they are the modern Sicarii, and just as the Sicarii did during the Second Commonwealth, they will end the Third. The Religious Jewish Right must get together to fight against a soulless liberal Zionism that seeks to strip Israel of all character and make it nothing more but the LA of the Middle East and the Kahanists who would revel in a few months of a Jewish Iran.

1. As noted by others, this concept of “human rights” is nebulous, even by liberal standards. Locke posited natural rights that man receives by dint of existing and there are civil rights bestowed by governments. But, “human rights” do not emerge as a concept until after the Second World War and are just used as a buzzword thrown around to justify an indefinite number of supposed “rights”, from Healthcare to Euthanasia. This is beyond the scope of this piece, but I will return to it later.