Page 221 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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Kahane’s teachings. The Israeli government vote
KACZYNSKI, THEODORE J. See also made it a crime to financially or verbally support
UNABOMBER. such groups.
Many members of Kahane Chai are the children of
Holocaust survivors. The group is predominantly based
in Israel but maintains a presence in the United States,
KAHANE CHAI mainly in Brooklyn, New York. In the mid-1990s, the
group ran a summer training camp, called Camp Meir,
A Jewish nationalist group banned in Israel, in the Catskill Mountains in New York State.
Kahane Chai spreads the anti-Arab ideology of the Kahane Chai often organizes protests against the
late Rabbi Meir Kahane. Right-wing Jewish people Israeli government, and its members harass and
in the West Bank largely support the group, parti- threaten Palestinians in Hebron and the West Bank.
cularly those from Airyat Arba in Hebron. Kahane According to the U.S. State Department, the group
Chai is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State has issued many death threats. In July 1993, Israeli
Department. authorities charged four teenage Kahane Chai
Rabbi Kahane founded the right-wing nationalist members with a grenade attack in the Old City of
Kach Party in Israel in the 1970s and disseminated his Jerusalem that killed one Arab merchant and
violent, anti-Arab ideas until he was assassinated in wounded nearly a dozen others. According to press
New York City in 1990. After Kahane’s death, the reports, Kahane Chai members have carried out a
rabbi’s son Binyamin gathered together Kach mem- long list of unsophisticated attacks, such as throwing
bers and Kahane supporters to found the Kahane Chai eggs at the Israeli ambassador in a Queens syna-
or “Kahane Lives” group. The group’s stated goal is to gogue, beating Palestinian demonstrators in front of
restore the biblical state of Israel, replacing democ- the White House, and punching and kicking a U.S.
racy with theocracy. Its rallying cry is often, “Rabbi journalist visiting a settlement in the occupied
territories.
Kahane was right!”
On December 31, 2000, Palestinian gunmen assas-
Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born doctor who
sinated Binyamin Kahane, killing him and his wife
massacred 29 praying Muslims at a Hebron mosque
in a drive-by shooting. The group has vowed revenge
in February 1994, was a staunch Kahane Chai sup-
for these deaths. In 1995, Yigal Amir, a Kahane sym-
porter and close follower of the rabbi. The group
pathizer, assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak
was outlawed in Israel after making public state-
Rabin.
ments in support of Goldstein’s bloody attack. Under
the 1948 Terrorism Law, the Israeli cabinet banned See also BARUCH GOLDSTEIN; JEWISH TERRORIST GROUPS IN
Kach, Kahane Chai, and any organization following THE UNITED STATES; MEIR KAHANE

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