Meir David Kahane was a Jewish religious and Israeli nationalist activist who founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL). His controversial nature is a testament to the fact that he has been referred to as both a “visionary hero of the Jewish people” and as a “criminal racist” or “Kahanazi.”

Kahane received a degree in International Law from New York University and ordination from the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn. He edited the Jewish Press and served as a pulpit rabbi and teacher in New York until the mid-1960s. He also partnered with the government in rallying Jewish support for the Vietnam War.

His life’s work, however, really started in 1968, when he founded the JDL, whose activities were aimed at the self-defense of the Jewish community in Brooklyn and harassment of Soviet activities in New York as a protest against the treatment of Jews in Russia. Kahane saw many of the poor and elderly Jews living in the inner-city being targeted by criminals; as a result, he set out to change the image of the Jew from “weak and vulnerable” to one of a “mighty fighter, who strikes back fiercely against tyrants.” The JDL’s controversial methods, which frequently included the threat of actual violence, greatly exacerbated the Black-Jewish tension already present in New York City. The JDL also focused on the plight of Soviet Jewry and coined the phrases “Never again” and “every Jew a .22” to emphasize that Jews would no longer passively ignore the plight of their foreign brethren.

While some saw Kahane’s goals as laudable, his actions were often criminal. He spent time in jail after being convicted of conspiring to make bombs.

Kahane and his family moved to Israel in 1971, where he founded the anti-Arab Kach political party. The party’s platform called for the annexation of all conquered territories and the forcible removal of all Palestinians. Under the auspices of Kach, Kahane continued to lobby for his beliefs in violent ways and was jailed on several occasions. He was the first Jew in Israel ever to be accused of sedition.

Kahane ran for Knesset and lost in 1976 and 1980 but was finally elected in 1984. His movement continued to grow until, before the 1988 Knesset elections, the Kach party was banned from running by a Labor-Likud coalition. The ban was based on an amendment added to Israel’s Basic Law that disqualified any candidate whose platform included “incitement to racism.”

Two years later, on November 5, 1990, Kahane was assassinated in New York City. An Egyptian-born Arab was acquitted of the murder on technicalities on December 21, 1991, but in 1995, he was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for his involvement in Muslim fundamentalist terror in New York in relation to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.