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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 3, 1984
PAGE 13
nity,
!
will gQ � there."... [Israeli state security officials
have vowed to prevent this from occurring.]
Many Israeli political leaders have denounced Kahane as a racist.
In response, he said: "We believe we are a special people--we be
lieve we are a chosen people. The real tragedy is the cowardly
rabbis and the cowardly Orthodox Jews who are afraid
to
get up
and say, 'He (Kahane) is right.' If they ever attempt to pass a
law against racism in the Knesset, I will make an hour-long
speech quoting only from Jewish ( religious) sources. The bi11
will never pass."
The crowd applauded enthusiastically when Kahane demanded the ex
pulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. He
said they could go to any of 22 Arab countries. "They have 22
countries," he said. "I have only one country." •..
In more than two hours of oratory, punctuated by finger-pointing
gestures, Kahane ran through his political philosophy--expulsion
of all Arabs from Israel and the occupied West Bank of the Jordan
River and Gaza Strip, substitution of Jewish religious law for
Israeli democracy and plenty of scorn for Israeli and American
Jewish leaders who disagree with him.
His comments about the Temple Mount may have been the most sig
nificant •••• Under a ruling by Israel's chief rabbis, Jews are
prohibited from setting foot on the mount to prevent them from
inadvertently stepping on the spot that before AD 70 held the
Holy of Holies, the most venerated site in Judaism. The exact
location of the site is unknown. Israeli secular law protects
the Muslim shrines from attack by Jewish zealots.
Pollster Hanoch Smith, writing in the JERUSALEM POST, said Kahane
received most of his vote in blue-collar development towns, re
ligious-oriented farming communities and the poor neighborhoods
of Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. All those areas are largely
populated by Sephardic Jews•••• He received almost no votes in
affluent city neighborhoods or on the kibbutzim, the collective
farms of Israel.
Kahane acknowledged that much of his support came from the Se
phardic community. He said: "When .f speak to Sephardic Jews,
they understand what Arabs are. They lived under them, and they
never intend to live under them again."
Most Israeli newspapers decried Kahane's election, although the
mass-circulation daily YEDIOT AHARONOT termed it a reaction to
Arab hostility toward Israel. "Much of what Rabbi Meir Kahane
says now is frightening madness, but this must also be known:!!
23,000 Israeli voters� behind him, it's not only madness of�
individual, but the beg1nn1ng of general Jewish madness,"
the
newspaper said. "And there must be a reason for such madness.
And that reason, in our opinion, is the end of the store of Jewish
patience in the face of continued Arab madness."
More to come about the explosive combination of "Torah and Terror."
--Gene
H. Hogberg, News Bureau