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Uncomfortable Questions for Comfortable Jews
By Rabbi Meir Kahane. Secaucus: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1987. 324 pp. $18.00 (cloth).
Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and a member of the Israeli Knesset, is a man to attract strong opinions. Accused of being a Jewish fascist, he has been the object of "anti-racism" bills in the Knesset, his parliamentary immunity has been lifted, and the US Department of State has unsuccessfully sought to deprive him of his US citizenship.
As the occupant of his Kach Party's lone Knesset seat, he is seen by liberal Jews and fearful Arabs in Israel as the embodiment of racist fanaticism. But to disaffected members of Israel's working class Kahane's insistence that Judaism justifies the expulsion of Arabs by force from all of Israel offers the promise of deliverance from competition for jobs with presently abundant and underpaid Arab labor.
Responding to his critics, Kahane vehemently denies being a racist, informing the reader quite seriously that anyone, including an Arab, can, by renouncing his own religion, become as good a Jew as Kahane. In reading this book, it is not difficult to see the glaring inconsistencies in his protestations of "good faith." In the same...