ISRAEL'S NEW RIGHT

...I was impressed, too, with how eloquently many of the Kahane backers expressed their sense that he is the only leader who offers hope of rescuing Israel from its deepening economic and security crises...

...You can see such couples on the street all the time, brazenly holding hands or kissing in public...

...On one hand, I am against Kahane because I fear his message will lead to sinat achim [hatred between brothers]," she said...

...The great majority of the Israelis who confided to me that they supported Kahane were, indeed, Sephardim...

...Kahane offers a real solution for people like me," said David, a twenty-four-year-old unemployed laborer, "because the problem we confront is that Arabs coming from the [occupied] territories will work for much less than Jews will...

...More than his opponents, Kahane recognizes the roots of his popular appeal...

...The growing strain in Israel's National Unity government makes it ever more likely that Prime Minister Shimon Peres may soon decide to dissolve the government and call for new elections...

...In fact, more and more Jewish women are getting sexually involved with Arab men...

...I asked Levi whether Germans might not have issued similar assurances about Hitler in 1932: that the Nazi leader spoke in strong terms but would not really act on his pronouncements...

...Political sentiment in the town appeared to be swinging rapidly from the support of the Likud to open identification with Kahane's politics...

...I will just sit back quietly and let it happen...

...Everybody here has always been for Likud, but I and many others are going to vote for Kahane the next time," said Moshe, a shoe salesman from the nearby Hatikvah slum quarter...

...Like Nazism in the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, Kahanism flourishes in Israel among large segments of the population that despair of conventional political parties, which offer no hope of solving the overwhelming difficulties facing the nation and its people...

...Levi was leaning toward voting for Kahane because the present national unity government was a "complete bardak [chaos]," he said...

...I left Israel convinced that Kahanism is a dynamic, rapidly growing protofascist movement that represents a direct threat to Israel's future as a democratic and humane society...

...The greatest support for Kahane in the 1984 election was recorded in places where there was a great deal of poverty, welfare dependency, unemployment, and lack of schooling A mid-June poll showed Kahane's Kach Party likely to increase its representation in the 120-member Knesset from one member to five...

...The arrest of an Arab worker who had raped a number of single Jewish women in Tel Aviv dramatized the issue for Rafi...

...I am furious that the Ashkenazis have the clean jobs and 'protectzia,' and that we 'blacks' do the dirty work...

...This bill is the work of the Israeli political mafia trying desperately to save itself," he says...

...If they think they can ban someone for simply pointing out the great contradiction between Zionism and democracy, they are going to have to suffer the consequences of an angry electorate...

...During my visit to Israel, I found strong support for Kahane in a variety of settings, including the struggling development town of Bet Shemesh, the tough neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv, and the chic cafes on the Ben Yehuda mall in downtown Jerusalem...

...The Arabs swagger around the Jewish parts of Jerusalem today with complete self-confidence," said Raft, twenty-four, a handsome and articulate night clerk...

...Kahane's open call for the expulsion of the entire Arab population of Israel and the occupied territories, for example, is a clearer prescription for solving the Israeli-Arab conflict than the muddled and contradictory approaches of the right-wing Likud or the Labor Party...

...Western Jews of Central and East European origin, the Ashkenazim, repeatedly made that point to me when I was in Israel last summer...

...It quickly became clear to me that the stereotype of the Kahane supporter as a hate-filled Sephardic immigrant is a dangerous oversimplification...

...When I asked Levi about threats Kahane has made against liberal Israeli Jews whom he considers traitors, he responded, "Kahane speaks in very strong tones, but that doesn't mean one should take everything he says literally...

...Hannah Ansalem, twenty-five, a housewife and mother of two small children, reflected a sense of ambivalence about Kahane that I encountered among a number of people...

...Whenever I talked to Israelis about Kahane, I met Jews who echoed his expressed apprehensions about sexual contact between Jews and Arabs...

...My most chilling encounter was with a likable young man named Yitzhak Levi, who works in the Machane Yehuda vegetable market...

...Rosana said he would switch his vote from Likud to Kach in the next election because "Likud talked good and made promises but didn't deliver...

...The Knesset recently approved without dissent a Basic Law Amendment that bans participation in the next election of parties that incite to racism, impugn Israel's democratic character, or deny Israel's existence "as the state of the Jewish people...

...Most of them were young, Israel-born, and army veterans...

...While Labor and Likud speak of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a protracted struggle that will continue for generations, Kahane offers a quick fix to Israelis fed up with the nation's social and economic problems...

...Bet Shemesh in the Judean foothills, twelve miles from Jerusalem, has become emblematic of the "Second Israel" of the Sephardim...

...On the other hand, a lot of what he says— especially about [expelling] the Arabs-makes a good deal of sense...

...Labor, which has forty-one Knesset members, receives fifty-two seats in the new polls...

...I won't do anything to encourage it...

...What is the point of protecting Israel from hypothetical attacks from the outside when she is being eaten up by fascism from within...

...We talked in a Jerusalem tavern...

...Two months later, in mid-August, new polls showed Kach receiving ten or eleven Knesset seats...

...Hitler was out to destroy the Jews, whereas Kahane is trying to save them...

...Kahane predicts the Knesset's action will provoke more violence: "If they try to ban me from running in the next elecWalter Ruby is the New York correspondent of The Jerusalem Post...

...in religious moshavim, the privately owned family farms predominantly settled by Jews of Sephardic origin...

...Finally, he said, "I am not bothered by this comparison between Hitler and Kahane, because there is a clear difference...

...In Israel, the peril is palpable...

...In the mean streets around Tel Aviv's central bus station, I found strong support for Kahane...

...He also makes a cogent argument against Labor's proposed solution to return most of the occupied territories to Jordan...

...Each minister is mainly interested in protecting his own ministry and guarding his personal perks...

...He added, however, that "the rapes...

...in the slums of Jerusalem, and among soldiers...

...Most of the gains by Kach and Tehiya, another far-right party now capturing nine seats in the polls, came at the expense of the Likud, which registered only twenty-two seats in the latest polls, down sharply from its thirty-nine seats in the present Knesset...

...Kahane correctly points out the inherent absurdity of Likud's contention that Israel can attain permanent sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza, with an Arab population of 1.3 million, while remaining both a Jewish state and a Western-oriented democracy...

...Since 1969, when the Brooklyn-born rabbi erupted on the American scene as the charismatic head of the Jewish Defense League, Kahane has benefited greatly from the tendency of many critics to dismiss him as a crackpot...

...All of the contractors as well as the factories are hiring Arabs because they will work for less, and also because they hold down the salaries that are paid to Jews...

...Fear of losing even more support to Kahane has pushed such Likud leaders as Foreign Minister Itzhak Shamir and Commerce and Industries Minister Ariel Sharon to take harder-line positions...

...After his emigration to Israel in 1972, Israeli political leaders complacently portrayed him as "the American disease," a lunatic-fringe protofascist who might meet with some success in preying on the insecurities of Jews in the diaspora, but who could never achieve more than marginal influence in a proud and independent Jewish state...

...Kahane would never do that...

...I am sure that if he comes to power, he will not end democracy, but will in fact treat [left-wing Knesset members Shulamit] Aloni and [Yossi] Sarid much better than they really deserve...

...Ya'acov Rosana, fifty-eight, one of the original settlers who came here from Morocco in 1951, remarked, "Shimon Peres respects the Arabs and treats them as brothers, while the Jews of Bet Shemesh are dirt under his feet...

...They often ignore the more pernicious—and dangerous—enemy that lurks within the system of Israeli politics...

...Recent events—including an economic austerity program that seems to depend on sacrifices by the working class-have pushed thousands of voters in Kahane's direction...

...I really believe Kahane is the only leader around today strong enough to take action necessary to save Israel* Much of the resentment against Arabs in Bet Shemesh has to do with the depressed job market and the low salaries paid for the jobs that are available...

...Despite the Knesset vote, Kahane remains defiantly confident...

...I am not bothered by this comparison between Hitler and Kahane...

...Levi bought me another beer and appeared to ponder my question for a while...

...Novelist Amos Oz came here two-and-a-half years ago to record the seething anger of the residents toward the Labor Party, media, and intellectuals, and their immense devotion to then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Likud Party...

...The greatest support for Kahane in the 1984 election was recorded in places with higher than average levels of poverty, welfare dependency, unemployment, and low levels of education, according to an analysis by professors Yoav Peleg of Hebrew University and Gershon Shafer of Tel Aviv University...

...We are all fed up with the present government demanding that people in places like Bet Shemesh constantly make sacrifices to the point where many families are facing hunger, while Peres and all of his ministers and their various assistants refuse to cut their salaries or give up all of the perks of office...

...When I visited the town last July, two days after Peres announced his austerity program, the mood in Bet Shemesh seemed even more volatile and frightening than Oz's book, In the Land of Israel, had led me to expect...

...Rafi said he is convinced there are "thousands" of such mixed couples in Israel...

...The leftists are terrified of the power of my ideas, whereas the rightists are afraid I will take votes away from them...

...Friends of Israel in the United States need to confront the frightening growth of the Kahane movement and its meaning for the future of Israel...

...But the statement seemed an odd form of reassurance, since Sephardim account for 60 per cent of Israel's Jewish population...

...We ought to be brainstorming together with the Israeli government about the most effective ways we can help combat him...

...The greatest threat to Israel right now is not [Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasir] Arafat or [Syrian President Hafez al-]Assad but rather the rise of Rabbi Meir Kahane," says one prominent Jewish leader who requests anonymity...

...Meir Kahane may be a dangerous demagogue, but he is also an astute politician...

...Not all Bet Shemeshites are fervid Kahaniks, but in four hours I could not find anyone who would condemn him unequivocally...

...tions, there will be rioting the likes of which Israel has never seen...

...Almost everyone here is supporting Kahane," he added...

...The study showed that Kahane's popularity was particularly high in the "development towns" built in the 1950s and 1960s to absorb the enormous influx of Sephardic immigrants...

...According to Kahane, this plan would fail not only to diminish the threat to Israel's security in the short run, but also to preserve Israel as a democratic and Jewish state, since Arabs account for 17 per cent of Israel's population within the pre-1967 borders and that percentage is growing rapidly...

...A string of gruesome murders of Jews by Arabs over the last year, culminating in July with the killings of two teachers at Afula, has also helped to boost Kahane's support...

...I really believe Kahane is the only leader around today strong enough to take action necessary to save Israel...

...The last straw for me was when Likud ministers supported freeing the 1,150 terrorists...

...They appear all the time in the best hotels...

...This analysis overlooked Kahane's coherent ideology—one that is intrinsically appealing to many Israelis...

...Personally, I have some doubts about Kahane, but what with the horrible economic situation, and now with all of these killings of Jews by Arabs, we have reached the point of saying, 'Enough.' We are ready to try Kahane or any other radical alternative that offers the possibility of turning this country around...

...I served for three years in the army and risked my life for this country, and today I'm sorry I did," said Shimon Dan, a twenty-eight-year-old municipal sanitation worker...

...His hatred is directed against the enemies of Israel...

...The politicians simply don't understand the anger, frustration, and bitterness that are going down in the streets of Israel," he says...

...are only part of the problem...

...Many of these people insisted on buying me coffee or cake as we talked, and I was repeatedly struck by the contrast between their personal kindness and the frightening sentiments they voiced...

...The last clause was added to disqualify the Progressive List for Peace, a predominantly Arab party that calls for establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel...

...It is widely assumed that Kahane's base of support is largely composed of Sephardim—Israeli Jews with origins in Arab and Middle Eastern countries...

...A series of violent acts committed by pro-Kahane toughs, coupled with polls showing rising support for Kahane's Kach Party, have finally jarred Israel's political establishment into action...

...I think it is antithetical to everything this country is about for Jewish women to sleep with Arabs...