Beyond Words
Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990
Volume 6
“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.
“Beyond Words” now can be bought at Amazon.com. On the search line, type… Beyond Words Kahane.
THE FACE OF DEMOTARIANISM
July 21, 1989
In the summer of 1976 I was invited to the police station in Tel Aviv. Since the invitation was delivered by three plainclothed men who arrived to take me there, it seemed prudent to comply. Arriving at the station, located on Dizengoff Street, I was ushered into a third-floor room, whose door was totally devoid of any identifying sign. A rather balding man sat at a desk and introduced himself as “Brenner.” It was glaringly clear that this was the local office of the Shin Bet, the General Security Services, whose legendary James Bond deeds never include their exploits against Jews.
“Brenner” proceeded without delay to inform me that he was unhappy over my activities and told me directly:
“We do not warn more than once and this is the second time that I am telling you to stop it.” (A message to that effect had been delivered to me by the Shin Bet some months earlier, through my brother.)
I considered it prudent not to point out the essential contradiction in what he had said but, instead, asked”
“Stop what? Exactly what would you like me to stop? Breathing?”
“Brenner” was not amused. Indeed, Brenners are never amused, lacking that sense of humor which is the major demarcation line between normal people and the totalitarian mind.
I am not here to argue with you, he said. “If you do not stop, you will regret it.”
That ended the interview and, needless to say, I did not “stop it,” whatever “it” was, and continued with my ideological struggle.
And so, it happened that on the night after the Fast of the 17th of Tammuz, 1976, I found myself walking slowly and leisurely on Rechov Chana (Chana Street), a small, poorly lit street in the Shikun Chabad area of Jerusalem, located between Sanhedria and Ezrat Torah neighborhoods. I was returning from giving a class to a group of Jewish Defense League leaders who had arrived in the country for an eight-week leadership training course. It was close to 11 P.M. and the street was empty of passersby as I walked home.
And then I heard it. The merest sounds behind me, but hearing it undoubtedly saved my life. I began to turn to see what had made the noise and, there, just beginning its descent, was a sack. A burlap sack being brought down over my head. Instinctively, I threw myself down on the ground, in the gutter, and began shouting loudly: Mechablim! Mechablim! (Terrorists! Terrorists!). The assailants (there were two as I saw later) were professional and methodical. Foiled in their efforts to get me in the burlap sack, they attempted to hit me with what were apparently blackjacks – heavy metallic weapons. I began to roll and continued to roll over and over, the whole time shouting, and they had great difficulty aiming at me, though they were eventually able to fracture a hand and cause a deep gash in my head.
Had Divine Providence not caused me to hear that slight sound and see the sack, I would have been caught in it and surely killed.
By this time, people began to come out of their houses in response to the noises, and an automobile suddenly rounded the corner, coming toward us. The attackers fled, and I could clearly see that there were two of them. They had not made a sound during the entire assault, a thing that clearly ruled out robbers or muggers. They were “Brenner’s” men, the Shin Bet carrying out its threat, the Shin Bet of the Jewish state against a Jew.
In the years that followed, many were the stories I heard about the methods used by the Israeli General Security Services. Jews accused of being “right-wing extremists,” and who were alleged to have attacked or planned to attack Arabs, were held in tiny cells where they could not lie down and without blankets against the bitter cold. They were awakened again and again, and interrogated again and again, sometimes with plastic bags placed over their faces. Charges, patently false, were fabricated, and witnesses simply lied. Promises were made that were broken and, in general, the worst of James Bond Western culture was used.
Two points:
I have not the slightest objection to any method used against enemies of the Jewish people who wish to destroy us. I find it intolerably obscene, however, that such methods to be used against Jews who are not the enemies of the state of Israel. Nothing could more graphically underline the gentilization of the Jewish state than to see who the Shin Bet people are and how their callousness to fellow Jews emerges from their total lack of Jewishness of soul.
Secondly, I say all this because there is no mitzvah to be silent when Jews suffer at the hands of other Jews. There is no Ahavat Yisrael. Love of Jews, in silence concerning evil done by Jews to their fellow Jews. Indeed, true love of Jews demands that our voice cry out loudly against the injustice being done to Jews inside Israel.
I am particularly incensed at the outrageous, totalitarian treatment meted out to two young Kach Yeshiva students arrested on the Temple Mount. The Mount – victim itself of a massive Hillul Hashem by the gentilized leaders of a gentilized state – finds Jews barred from praying there or exercising their G-d give right of freedom of religion on their holiest site on this earth.
The two Kach young men, David Axelrod and Ben-Zion Gapstein, were attacked by the gang of Moslems that is hired by the infamous Wakf, the Moslem Religious Council, headed by the Mufti (and no greater band of Jew-haters can be found on this earth). The two Kach people fought back, injuring several Moslems, when the Israeli police attacked them, too. Most of the police in the Old City of Jerusalem are Arabs, another desecration of G-d’s Name, another disgrace and outrage. The police attacked the young men with clubs, and the Jews fought back. They were arrested, charged with attacking police “under serious circumstances” (sic) and have been held since May 27th (I write this on July 6th) without bail.
In what civilized Western state is no bail allowed for two young men with no criminal record and on such a relatively minor charge? The purpose of bail is not to punish the accused (the accused is innocent until proven guilty) but merely to insure his appearance at trial. In Israel, the refusal to allow bail (and how often did that happen to me!) has a specific purpose. Punishment.
David and Ben-Zion will sit until October at least (since the summer recess begins soon, followed by the High Holidays). They may be found innocent, but will have lost more than four months of their lives. This is a common thing in the country. As is the outrageous court habit of deciding to keep a suspect in jail because he refuses to “cooperate” with the police, meaning that he exercises his right to remain silent! As is the outrageous habit of police (used against me several times) under which, at the arraignment, the police officer tells the judge that the evidence is “secret” and cannot be shown to the prisoner or his attorney, for “security reasons.” Not only do the defendant and his attorney have not the slightest clue as to what the police are talking about and what evidence there is against the suspect, but time after time, the “secret” evidence consists of a note from a police officer to a colleague stating, “we have good reason to believe that ‘x’ is guilty of a serious attempt to . . . “ Of course, this is nonsense, but the judge, especially when the officer in charge is from the Shin Bet or the Department of Special Services, is both unsure and impressed by the apparent seriousness of the note.
The practice of not informing a suspect of his “crime,” of course, reaches its zenith in the concept of “administrative arrest” under which a defendant is sent to prison for six months without benefit of a trial or even knowing what the charge is. After the six months are over, the Minister of Defense can sign yet another order for yet another six months, ad infinitum.
Or the practice of police asking that no bail be granted because “we have not yet finished investigating the case.” The truth is that nowhere in a Western civilized country is this argument used, and in the cases in which it was used against me, it proved to be a total fraud. They never bothered to ask me anything about the case until the last day or so of the remand, at which point they came back to the judge to say that they still had not finished.
The entire world understands the opposed concepts of democracy and totalitarianism. In most cases, the two are easily distinguishable and we have little difficulty in pointing out to which of the two systems a particular country belongs. But Israel has succeeded in creating a system of Demotarianism, totalitarian regime clocked in much of the trappings of democracy, but to those who run afoul of its inner system – and especially if they are particular thorns in the side of the government – the totalitarian nature is clear.
The success of the government in creating this Demotarianism is due to the basic fact that Jews wish to believe only the best about the country. They do not want to believe things about it that puncture the illusions Jews so badly need. But David Axelrod and Ben-Zion Gapstein are clear and cruel exhibits in the indictment of Israel as a Demotarian state. As a poor Alan Goodman, who shot two Moslems on the Temple Mount. Anyone who knows Goodman knows that he is simply not sane. He is simply not in possession of his faculties. When a gentile, an Australian, burned down Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in 1967, the Israelis hastened to declare him crazy and to expel him from the county. But because Goodman, clearly mad, is a Jew, the Israelis had to make of him an example to the world of Israeli “justice.” He sits today, as he has for years, alone in a cell in Ramle Prison, slowly going crazier.
Israel. Neither the Jewish state we dreamed of nor even a democracy. I sit here, a citizen, and look at it, seeing the face of Demotarianism.
[The police never investigated the attack against Rabbi Kahane and not a single one of the news media carried a word of the attack BG]
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