September 1990, Page 64, 65

Books

The False Prophet: Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member

By Robert I. Friedman. Lawrence Hill Books, 1990. Hardcover, 282 pp. List: $19.95. AET: $15.00 for one, $19.95 for two.

Reviewed by Andrew I. Killgore

"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." -The Balfour Declaration, Nov. 2, 1917

When Britain issued the euphemistically worded Balfour Declaration in 1917, three categories of people were mentioned. These were "the Jewish people," "Jews" and "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The latter were the Palestinians, 95 percent of the total population of Palestine at the time. Numbering about five million today, half of the Palestinians are in exile as a Palestinian diaspora. The other half, 2.5 million souls, live under Israeli domination in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel proper. It is these Palestinians under Israeli control whom Rabbi Meir Kahane, author Robert I. Friedman's "False Prophet," would expel totally. Palestinians stubborn enough to try to remain in spite of the intimidation Kahane envisions would, by implication, be killed if that became necessary.

The Balfour Declaration's peculiar division of the adherents of Judaism into two categories, "Jews" and "the Jewish people," reflected a split in British Jewry between non-Zionists and Zionists. The non-Zionists, led by the wealthy and politically powerful British Jewish Montagu and Montefiore families, feared that their own standing and the status of Jews in other countries would suffer if a Jewish state were established. These were the Declaration's "Jews," whose rights were not supposed to be harmed. Those wanting a Jewish state, as the Declaration always envisaged in spite of its tricky Latinate obfuscations, were the "Jewish people."

In 1948, they got their state of Israel, which has exiled half of the Palestinians and repressed the other half.

All this is background to the establishment of two arenas, the Zionist state and also its corps of American Jewish supporters, in which Rabbi Kahane has played his multi-faceted role. As meticulously documented by author Robert Friedman, a frequent contributor to the Village Voice, Newsday the Los Angeles Times and this magazine, Rabbi Kahane emerges as the closest thing to a monster yet seen in the United States. The Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn is depicted by Friedman as a hate-filled racist just as ready to smash Jew as Gentile to realize his ambitions, which include becoming prime minister of Israel or even the Jewish Messiah.

Founder in the United States of the violence-prone Jewish Defense League, and in Israel of the ultra-extremist Kach Party, in both countries. Drawn to his charismatic personality, many of these supporters revel in Kahane's image of the empowered Jew who, though facing persecutors or would-be persecutors on all sides, smites his enemies everywhere" philosophy is reflected in the name he chose for his scruffy office in Jerusalem: "The Museum of the Future Holocaust."

Friedman's is a scathing portrait of Kahane, his noisome supporters in America and Israel, and of the extremist side of Israel itself. Like the highest tree in the forest, the uniqueness of Friedman's portrayal of this violent side of Israel and its American support mechanisms attracts lightning. The New York Times Book Review, instead of dealing with the substance of charges by Friedman, who is Jewish, set out instead to prove that his book is an attack on Judaism itself. It assigned a literary hit man to so savage the book that a subsequent review in the Village Voice questioned whether the Times review of "The False Prophet" was not a review of an entirely different book.

The ensuing verbal shoot-out between the Times and Village Voice reviewers can be compared to the same issue that split Britain's Jews more than 70 years ago: Is Judaism to be synonymous with Israel? Are all Jews to be held accountable for Israeli transgressions?

In this sense the Israelis represent the "Jewish people," and Jews who reside elsewhere, particularly American Jews, are the "Jews" of the Balfour Declaration. It was the Jews who reside elsewhere whose "rights and political status" were not to be prejudiced when a Jewish state was established.

Significantly, both the American attackers and defenders of Friedman assume he should be writing as a Jew. For example, Jewish peace activist Rita Hauser, a defender, finds that he writes about Israel "with sensitivity." The fierceness of The New York Times book reviewer's attack, however, reveals that he believes Friedman has betrayed Judaism, or at least Zionism, by letting the chips fall where they may in "The False Prophet."

Perhaps too contradictory for "psychological" analysis, Kahane only gradually emerges, as Friedman clearly intends, from thousands of bits and pieces of evidence. It appears his hatred of Arabs may come from the killing by Palestinians of a Kahane relative in the 1930s. Yet his apparent belief that he is the Jewish Messiah must flow from some deeper well, perhaps a basic schizophrenia.

Friedman describes the Jewish unease on which Kahane battened as blacks crowded into former Jewish neighborhoods in New York. Against a background of occasional muggings and street fights, Kahane co-founded the eventually murderous Jewish Defense League. More fiction than fact in its early days, JDL's role in defending Jews was brilliantly embellished in fiery Kahane speeches and newspaper columns. After Kahane adopted the issue of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, the JDL extended its activities from simple harassment to sniper attacks on the families of Soviet and Arab diplomats. Such vicious attacks on foreign diplomats in the United States were designed to provoke reprisals in kind against U.S. diplomats abroad.

Friedman's revelation that Israeli intelligence and Yitzhak Shamir, then a Mossad operations director and now prime minister of Israel, were secretly colluding with the JDL to violate U.S. laws in a manner sure to put Americans abroad in mortal peril, may account in part for the Book Review's blast at "The False Prophet."

In 1985, after Kahane had moved to Israel, JDL violence increased. That year his extremist followers murdered two Americans, including Alex Odeh, an official of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in Southern California. The putative murderers took refuge in Israel, as had Kahane himself, earlier, after FBI surveillance become too hot in America.

Rabbi Kahane's private life also was an embarrassment to Orthodox Jews, whose rabbis normally observe the highest personal standards. Professing contempt for women, Kahane had one affair after another, although he had a wife and four children. He was so notoriously careless about funds entrusted to him that, if he had not been identified as a man of the cloth, he might have been regarded simply as a crook. Still, he retained a covey of passionate and monied supporters.

The explanation may lie both in Kahane's undoubted personal charisma, and a disinclination among the faithful to believe that an Orthodox rabbi could, in fact, be simply despicable. Kahane's existence in Israel has been just more of the same, or worse. His hateful rantings against Arabs attracted such support that he won a seat in the Knesset.

Then, when polls in Israel indicated his "Kach" slate might win three or four Knesset seats in Israel's 1988 general election, the Israeli government decided he was a "racist" and did not permit him to run.

Kahane's Economic Lifeline

Friedman details Kahane's economic lifeline to the United States, where he raises millions, and not merely from radical Jewish right-wingers in New York. Indeed, what Friedman calls one of the best kept secrets in America is that Kahane gets big money from extremely prominent businessmen, including Reuben Mattus, the founder of Haagen-Dazs ice cream.

Overall, Robert Friedman paints a sordid picture of Kahane, his American and Israeli supporters, and extremist Jewish forces in Israel. In some circles, apparently, including The New York Times Book Review, the brazen truth is regarded as betrayal.

To this reviewer, Friedman is simply an honest man who exercised a good writer's obligation to sort out fact from fiction. This was not easy in the case of the elusive Kahane, who frequently used aliases and who lied routinely. Washington Post foreign editor David Ignatius got it right when he said of Friedman, "As far as I know, he's a tough reporter who takes on tough subjects and gets his facts right."

If Friedman were an Israeli writing in Hebrew, "The False Prophet" would not have created an uproar. It is only in America, as they say, that many Jewish "leaders" and "Jewish" institutions, pre-eminently, perhaps, The New York Times, have such a certifiable case of schizophrenia, applying one standard of truth to Jewish writers and their subjects, and quite another to everyone and everything else.

It is, in fact, impossible, as the drafters of the Balfour Declaration realized, for the same individuals to fill both the roles of "Jews" and "the Jewish people." Americans who seek only to fight Israeli battles, no matter what the cost to the United States, invite and surely will feel the contempt of their fellow Americans.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's American lobby, makes no serious pretense to be anything else. When The New York Times, however, seeks through calumny to discredit such an original, informative and carefully researched and documented book as Robert Friedman's "The False Prophet," the editors risk losing their claim to be "America's newspaper of record," whose owners just happen to American Jews. Instead, the mighty Times begins to look like a major weapon in the arsenal of Israel.

Andrew I. Killgore was U.S. ambassador to the state of Qatar when he retired from the career foreign service. He is president of the American Educational Trust and publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.