Israeli Knesset deputy speaker praises extremist rabbi

Nissim Vaturi, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and deputy speaker of the Knesset, praised ultranationalist rabbi Meir Kahane, according to Middle East Eye and agencies on November 13th.

The remarks were made during a parliamentary debate on November 12th, where Vaturi criticised his fellow Likud members for dismissing Kahane as a terrorist. He was challenged by other Knesset members and asked if he supported “Jewish terrorism”, to which he replied: “I support it. Believe me, Kahane was right in many ways where we were wrong, where the people of Israel were wrong.”

Vatrui continued, “[Likud leaders] should have examined the matters and understood one thing: Arabs on our border, terrorists on our border.”

These comments likely referenced former Likud leader and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who denounced Kahane as a “dangerous figure” after Kahane was elected to the Knesset in 1984. Kahane was ultimately disqualified from electoral politics over his blatant anti-Arab racism.

Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party is part of a coalition government alongside far-right allies, the Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) party.

An American-born rabbi, Kahane was a co-founder of the Jewish Defence League (JDL) and the founder of the now-banned Kach movement, which Ben-Gvir joined as a teenager. He was known for his Jewish supremacist views, which included repeated incitement to kill Palestinians and Arabs.

It was reported on November 3rd that a woman wearing a JDL jumper was arrested over a plot to attack pro-Palestine protestors in the Canadian city of Toronto, as she threatened protestors with a bottle containing reagent-grade ammonium hydroxide, a toxic laboratory chemical that can damage lungs and cause extreme burns.

Ben-Gvir has been known to glorify terrorists like Kahane. He visited Kahane’s grave in November 2024 to mark the anniversary of the rabbi’s 1990 assassination in New York.

It was reported on October 29th that Ben-Gvir was one of 55 Israeli politicians who signed a letter urging President Isaac Herzog to pardon Israelis convicted of killing Palestinians.

One such prisoner was Amiram Ben-Uliel, who was convicted in 2020 of a firebombing that killed three members of the Palestinian Dawabsheh family, including an 18-month-old baby. Ben-Gvir is a trained lawyer who has worked to acquit those accused of anti-Palestinian attacks and incitement.

Middle East Eye and agencies, Maghrebi.org