"Abbie Hoffman is reputed to have remarked of Kahane, “I agree with his methods but not his goals.”"
This was especially witty, since it was an intentional inverted echo of a line from King's "Letter" that everyone knew at the time:
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action""
Magid’s sociological observations about Kahane’s JDL are on the money. His followers were troubled. And they had a lot to be troubled about. Jewish lower middle-class neighborhoods in the ’70s were emptying out and, in some cases, burning down. Those left behind were beleaguered.
Saw MK speak a couple of times when I was a teenager. He’d go on fund raising excursions, hitting up small business owners for contributions.
This was also a time of local school boards in the city controlling policy and patronage. Mayoral control of NYC schools didn’t come until much later.
On the Lower East Side there were brutal battles for control of the District 1 school board between Puerto Rican parents of the kids attending public school allied with left wing groups versus Jewish residents and the mostly Jewish, UFT (teacher’s union). School Board meetings sometimes descended into street fights involving local gangs. JDL members would attend meetings to protect Jewish school board members. The Department of Justice would send hundreds (no exaggeration) of observers to monitor the District 1 elections. Someone should write a book about the District 1 school board wars.
Kahane’s view of The inherent contradiction between a Jewish state and a liberal democracy is exactly parallel to the inherent contradiction seen between an Islamic state and a liberal democracy and between a white Christian state and liberal democracy. This view is entirely false. All these religions could flourish in a liberal democracy but they couldn’t run the societies in their terms. Too bad, get over it.
Liberalism has some problems with intermediating institutions. It only knows of states and individuals. There is always going to be some tension between liberalism and religion--or for that matter, between liberalism and corporate power, or between liberalism and the family. Kahane's error was that of all totalizers. He did not understand how messy tensions could help all parties to the tension.
I've long summarised a relative's description of the Betar—the Revisionist young men's group—he joined in the Warsaw Ghetto of the 1930s as 'a fascist, Zionist, cross between the Boy Scouts and the Panthers, but without the guns'…but they _did_ drill with wooden rifles.
'Fascist' is not simplistic invective in the above, he was taught to admire Mussolini's claim of making Italians into Romans, black shirts were the style-choice, and though the invasion of Abyssinia was mocked as dishonourable, bits of Betar evidently were still training with the Italian Navy until, I think it was, 1937. He didn't know about the much weaker feelers sent-out to the Nazis by higher-ups in the movement, which I feel were done more out of 'feeling one must try' more than out of any hope of getting anywhere.
Kahane's praising-unto-damnation of Arab nationalism is, incidentally, exactly what Jabotinsky wrote in "The Iron Wall". Note that its implicit respect for The Arab Nationalist need not suffer any contradiction with complete lack of respect for actual Arabs—see the M.A.G.A.ty idolisation of AMERICA with their contempt for many or most U.S. Americans and Hamas' love for Palestine compared to their care for the health and prosperity of Palestinians.
Me, if I can I'll hope that the nationalist and other base tendencies of the entire human race _can_, in fact, be bought-off with better health and food over a much longer lifespan and not having to toil or cower to bosses or commissars for any of it. The alternative is our being bought-off with spooks-in-the-head like Nation, Deity, Race, and all the others such that, insubstantial and unsubstantiable, are infinitely malleable by tyrants of all sizes and whose evidentiary bases can be 'proved' only by threats to the dissenting.
One thing about Ocean Hill-Brownsville (which is a seminal event of the 1960's.) There were a lot of Black people against local control, because they distrusted the Black people who would be doing the controlling. There were also a lot of Jews for local control. But the Black and Jewish politics of that era shared one thing in common: a desperate desire to present a united front, or at least avoid the perception of disunity. This desire was mostly exploited by right-wing Jews and far-left Blacks. Indeed, Jews have only recently freed themselves of the need to "support Israel," as defined by the hasbara of the moment. I think that Black people freed themselves a bit earlier.
I at some point got the impression that he had a lot of support from ex-Soviets, whose suffering under 'Communism' made it easy to support any Rightist, learned brutality from the régime*, and who might have remembered J.D.L. terrorist actions against Soviet targets in the U.S. nominally in support of refuseniks. (I, by contrast, wore a pendant with Valerii Kukuy's name on.)
*More than one ex-refusenik of my acquaintance was very quick to suggest 'taken out and shot' as part of a solution to any social problem that reared its head, which biasses my view.
Israel's electoral threshold in its pure proportional representation system used to be very low, only 1%, 1.5%, and 2% in earlier elections to the Knesset. When Kahane was elected in 1984 the threshold was only 1% and his party only got 1.2%.
Following the German model of having a higher threshold to screen out small and possibly extreme factions and facilitate government formation, it was gradually raised to 1.5%, 2% and is now 3.25%.
Advocates of proportional representation and low thresholds often say that first-past-the-post systems and high PR thresholds exclude the points of view of many voters and waste votes. That's a good thing. In the USA with a pure PR system, we'd have a QAnon Party and a Portland Maoist Party in the Congress, among other nutballs. There are other electoral models which would allow expression of more varied views yet allow effective vetos of nutball parties by large pluralities, like Single Transferable Vote or multi-member districts.
A footnote to Kahane's career is that his case, Kahane v Schultz (1987) is taught in law school Immigration Law courses. The case limited the power of the US government to expatriate US citizens based on actions taken as a citizen of another country. In Kahane's case the State Department tried to strip him of US citizenship because he took the Knesset seat. The court ruled that a US citizen can't be stripped of their citizenship without their clear intent (or fraud in their petition for naturalization, in the case of naturalized citizens).
The case means that we dual nationals are free to vote and even run for election in our other nationalities.
The big problem with Kahane and Afro-pessimism is that you can’t prove either is entirely wrong.
I/P flare ups have been around for my entire life and I am 43 and every one seems to include some little bit of denying Israel or Jews some contribution or credit. A few years ago, there were accusations that Israel’s relative tolerance of LBG people was merely “pink washing.” This time, there was a meme last Christmas on how “Jesus was a Palestinian” which was just a modern variant of 2000 years of denying that Jesus was a Jew.
I think Ben-Gvir is a murderous thug but there are times when the pro-Palestinian protests make me think the Jews will always be a people apart
Does anyone here have a recollection of reading an interview with MK where he says something to the effect of "we will have more death, if that's what it takes"? Perhaps with a French outlet? I can't seem to find it.
"Abbie Hoffman is reputed to have remarked of Kahane, “I agree with his methods but not his goals.”"
This was especially witty, since it was an intentional inverted echo of a line from King's "Letter" that everyone knew at the time:
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action""
Magid’s sociological observations about Kahane’s JDL are on the money. His followers were troubled. And they had a lot to be troubled about. Jewish lower middle-class neighborhoods in the ’70s were emptying out and, in some cases, burning down. Those left behind were beleaguered.
Saw MK speak a couple of times when I was a teenager. He’d go on fund raising excursions, hitting up small business owners for contributions.
This was also a time of local school boards in the city controlling policy and patronage. Mayoral control of NYC schools didn’t come until much later.
On the Lower East Side there were brutal battles for control of the District 1 school board between Puerto Rican parents of the kids attending public school allied with left wing groups versus Jewish residents and the mostly Jewish, UFT (teacher’s union). School Board meetings sometimes descended into street fights involving local gangs. JDL members would attend meetings to protect Jewish school board members. The Department of Justice would send hundreds (no exaggeration) of observers to monitor the District 1 elections. Someone should write a book about the District 1 school board wars.
Kahane’s view of The inherent contradiction between a Jewish state and a liberal democracy is exactly parallel to the inherent contradiction seen between an Islamic state and a liberal democracy and between a white Christian state and liberal democracy. This view is entirely false. All these religions could flourish in a liberal democracy but they couldn’t run the societies in their terms. Too bad, get over it.
But a liberal democracy would not be a Christian state, that's kinda the point of liberal democracies
How does it work for European states with mainstream Christian democratic parties?
Do these countries have a state religion?
Thumbs up for the "Too bad, get over it."
Liberalism has some problems with intermediating institutions. It only knows of states and individuals. There is always going to be some tension between liberalism and religion--or for that matter, between liberalism and corporate power, or between liberalism and the family. Kahane's error was that of all totalizers. He did not understand how messy tensions could help all parties to the tension.
I've long summarised a relative's description of the Betar—the Revisionist young men's group—he joined in the Warsaw Ghetto of the 1930s as 'a fascist, Zionist, cross between the Boy Scouts and the Panthers, but without the guns'…but they _did_ drill with wooden rifles.
'Fascist' is not simplistic invective in the above, he was taught to admire Mussolini's claim of making Italians into Romans, black shirts were the style-choice, and though the invasion of Abyssinia was mocked as dishonourable, bits of Betar evidently were still training with the Italian Navy until, I think it was, 1937. He didn't know about the much weaker feelers sent-out to the Nazis by higher-ups in the movement, which I feel were done more out of 'feeling one must try' more than out of any hope of getting anywhere.
Kahane's praising-unto-damnation of Arab nationalism is, incidentally, exactly what Jabotinsky wrote in "The Iron Wall". Note that its implicit respect for The Arab Nationalist need not suffer any contradiction with complete lack of respect for actual Arabs—see the M.A.G.A.ty idolisation of AMERICA with their contempt for many or most U.S. Americans and Hamas' love for Palestine compared to their care for the health and prosperity of Palestinians.
Me, if I can I'll hope that the nationalist and other base tendencies of the entire human race _can_, in fact, be bought-off with better health and food over a much longer lifespan and not having to toil or cower to bosses or commissars for any of it. The alternative is our being bought-off with spooks-in-the-head like Nation, Deity, Race, and all the others such that, insubstantial and unsubstantiable, are infinitely malleable by tyrants of all sizes and whose evidentiary bases can be 'proved' only by threats to the dissenting.
One thing about Ocean Hill-Brownsville (which is a seminal event of the 1960's.) There were a lot of Black people against local control, because they distrusted the Black people who would be doing the controlling. There were also a lot of Jews for local control. But the Black and Jewish politics of that era shared one thing in common: a desperate desire to present a united front, or at least avoid the perception of disunity. This desire was mostly exploited by right-wing Jews and far-left Blacks. Indeed, Jews have only recently freed themselves of the need to "support Israel," as defined by the hasbara of the moment. I think that Black people freed themselves a bit earlier.
What was the voter base that elected Kahane to the Knesset like? Or is it too small a percent of the vote to say anything interesting about?
I at some point got the impression that he had a lot of support from ex-Soviets, whose suffering under 'Communism' made it easy to support any Rightist, learned brutality from the régime*, and who might have remembered J.D.L. terrorist actions against Soviet targets in the U.S. nominally in support of refuseniks. (I, by contrast, wore a pendant with Valerii Kukuy's name on.)
*More than one ex-refusenik of my acquaintance was very quick to suggest 'taken out and shot' as part of a solution to any social problem that reared its head, which biasses my view.
Israel's electoral threshold in its pure proportional representation system used to be very low, only 1%, 1.5%, and 2% in earlier elections to the Knesset. When Kahane was elected in 1984 the threshold was only 1% and his party only got 1.2%.
Following the German model of having a higher threshold to screen out small and possibly extreme factions and facilitate government formation, it was gradually raised to 1.5%, 2% and is now 3.25%.
Advocates of proportional representation and low thresholds often say that first-past-the-post systems and high PR thresholds exclude the points of view of many voters and waste votes. That's a good thing. In the USA with a pure PR system, we'd have a QAnon Party and a Portland Maoist Party in the Congress, among other nutballs. There are other electoral models which would allow expression of more varied views yet allow effective vetos of nutball parties by large pluralities, like Single Transferable Vote or multi-member districts.
A footnote to Kahane's career is that his case, Kahane v Schultz (1987) is taught in law school Immigration Law courses. The case limited the power of the US government to expatriate US citizens based on actions taken as a citizen of another country. In Kahane's case the State Department tried to strip him of US citizenship because he took the Knesset seat. The court ruled that a US citizen can't be stripped of their citizenship without their clear intent (or fraud in their petition for naturalization, in the case of naturalized citizens).
The case means that we dual nationals are free to vote and even run for election in our other nationalities.
The big problem with Kahane and Afro-pessimism is that you can’t prove either is entirely wrong.
I/P flare ups have been around for my entire life and I am 43 and every one seems to include some little bit of denying Israel or Jews some contribution or credit. A few years ago, there were accusations that Israel’s relative tolerance of LBG people was merely “pink washing.” This time, there was a meme last Christmas on how “Jesus was a Palestinian” which was just a modern variant of 2000 years of denying that Jesus was a Jew.
I think Ben-Gvir is a murderous thug but there are times when the pro-Palestinian protests make me think the Jews will always be a people apart
Does anyone here have a recollection of reading an interview with MK where he says something to the effect of "we will have more death, if that's what it takes"? Perhaps with a French outlet? I can't seem to find it.