Customer Reviews

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

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Friedman is a dishonest reporter. His hatred of Israel and of Jews who support her is apparent on every page. He sees the late Rabbi Kahane as a threat to his point of view. In his effort to discredit him by repeating unsubstantiated stories, he exposes his own axe to grind.

This book reads like an F term paper in a college course. No self-respecting professor would accept such work. It's obvious that the publisher agrees with Friedman's assertions otherwise this radical leftist pamphlet would have been thrown on a scrap heap.

The only reason why I graded this a one-star book is because we are not allowed to rate zero stars or negative number stars.

I knew and liked Meir Kahane when he was a 16-year-old wise guy from New York who tried, every Saturday, to persuade me not to defile the Sabbath by smoking. A year later, in 1948, he and I were allied in trying to steer the American Betar toward Menachem Begin's new Herut movement and away from the Zionist Revisionists. Siding with us was only one man, Mordechai Dolinsky, later Begin's press spokesman.

Until I read this book by the late Robert I. Friedman, I did not know that Dolinsky was one of the founders of Kahane's Jewish Defense League (JDL). My only other contact with Dolinsky came years later, in the mid-1980s, when he called me from Jerusalem to set up a lunch date so he could raise funds in Cleveland for a "Thanks to the U.S.A." monument in Israel, a fund-raising project that smelled of scam, fraud, and deceit and was never erected.

Friedman's book was published before Kahane was murdered in 1990 by the guys who brought down the World Trade Center, although it wasn't until after 9/11 that the FBI finally connected the dots. That the Arabs were able to kill Kahane in a crowded Manhattan hotel ballroom is all the more remarkable if Friedman is correct in stating that the FBI was keeping close tabs on Kahane, not only in the United States, but even in Israel.

And well it should have, if I can believe even a fraction of what Friedman has to say.
* In 1971, Kahane announced that the JDL was aligning itself with the Italian American Civil Rights League, founded by mob boss Joseph Colombo. Their common link was their opposition to African Americans. Friedman said, "This unholy alliance was the first serious attempts to forge an ethnic fascist movement in modern American history."
* Throughout his career, Kahane had a total disregard for the courts and the law, flagrantly violating the terms of probation and skipping out on bail.
* Kahane was a married womanizer, who even contemplated having two wives at once. (Friedman does not tell us much about his wife, Libby.)
* The JDL was involved in murder, terrorist bombings directed at Arab-Americans, and harassment of Jews with whom it (meaning Kahane) did not agree
* Kahane betrayed all his friends and backers, using them, regarding them only as source of money, money that allowed him to live high on the hog.

And this is only a partial glimpse of what Kahane did in the United States. It ignores the violence against the offices and diplomatic premises of the Soviet Union, which also ended in bloodshed.

JDL was a creature, according to Friedman, of Yitzhak Shamir and Geula Cohen. He was one of the three leaders of the Lechi, while Cohen had been its broadcaster. By Kahane's time, Shamir was high up in the Mossad. Friedman does a lot of theorizing about everybody's motives, but I tend not to believe him.

Friedman does a pretty good job on Kahane's drive to become prime minister of Israel, constantly gaining supporters for his "expel all Arabs" dream, but Shamir and Cohen later pulled the rug on him because they did not want to lose their own supporters to what Kahane himself is said to have called "the crazies."

Both Shamir and Cohen voted for the measure that banned Kahane's Kach party as racist.

Kahane deserves a biography, and however biased this one may be at least its a biography. The author documents the entire life of Kahane, however not including his asssasination. Kahane was born to a Rabbinic family and entered the Rabbinate, however he found his calling in politics. He embraced the cause of Jewish self defense, leading the JDL and coining the phrase "every Jew a .22". He went on to fight the Soviet suppression of Jews and then did Aliyah to Israel where he quickly became infamous for his ideas and speeches regarding the demographic problem and his calls in "They Must Go" for a volunary expulsion of Arabs. His opponents, like the author of this book, saw him as a dangerous nationalist Jewish fascist and likewise Jewish intellectuals such as Dershowitz rejected his ideas.

Seth J. Frantzman

Kahane's views and behaviour brought disgrace to the title 'rabbi', and were a distortion of orthodox Judaism. This book, although biased against him, irrefutably proves that besides for being a self-important rabble rouser, Kahane was a hypocrite who preached morality despite his womanising, and who claimed to defend orthodox Judaism although he lied to and cheated even his closest supporters. As an orthodox Jew who knew very little about Kahane before - but who certainly held him in esteem - I have found this book cathartic and useful. Anyone who wants to know how mediocre politicians with extreme views and no scruples can raise their profile and influence public opinion should read this book so that they may be warned that often all is not as it seems, and that often we can be manipulated by a cleverly-worked facade into sympathising with views that are both dangerous and, upon reflection, not in tune with our instincts or moral code.