Is There a Lesson for Israel in Vance’s Message at Munich? Yes.

By Walter E. Block

Meir Kahane (Photo by Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer, Public Domain [Cropped])

There are several lessons which do not at all apply. One, Europe’s defense budgets are paltry. Israel cannot at all be faulted on that ground (although I must say, it really needs a domestic munitions industry!). Two, the countries on that continent have succumbed to virulent wokism. No one can make that complaint at least against the Netanyahu administration with a straight face.

What about his statement that Europe’s main enemies lie within, not without? Here, he is creeping a bit too close for comfort, at least insofar as not the latter, but the former is involved. Israel is all too well aware of foreign adversaries.

Now for the within issue. What was occurring before that day of infamy, October 7, 2023? There were massive marches in Israel. People were protesting Likud’s plan to convert the Israeli judiciary more on the lines of that practiced in the United States. In the latter country, every time a Supreme Court judge passes away or retires, elected officials play a total role in his replacement. Sitting judges have no say whatsoever in this matter. In Israel, matters are the complete opposite. Extant judges solely, all on their own, choose the next member of the court. As a result, its ideological makeup never changes; the average voter has no influence, not even an indirect one as in the US through elected officials.

Millions of protestors took to the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem streets opposing this supposed attack on “democracy.” Horrifically, there were even members of the IDF claiming they would not serve as a result of this eminently reasonable and democratic Likud initiative. If that is not an internal problem, nothing is an internal problem.

Then there was Vance’s attack on Romania for cancelling a duly conducted election. This was not due to any fraud or chicanery, but simply because the “wrong” right wing victory ensued. The Vice President of US was not a happy camper, either, with how the Germans were treating the AfD party, the second most popular according to polls: all the other parties were trying to freeze out this one, and attempting to legally ban it. He did not necessarily support this party; he merely protested at the treatment it was receiving, on grounds of violating the precepts of democracy.

What does any of this have to do with Israel? Plenty, unfortunately. I refer, here, to the treatment accorded to Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach Party. After several attempts which failed, this political party won a single seat in the Knesset in 1984. Several attempts to do so followed and it was officially banned in 1994. Behind this lies a story.

Before making Aliyah from the US to Israel, Rabbi Kahane played an important role in the Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. Before he became involved, thugs were preying upon the Chassidics. They were demanding money from them at gun point, including on Shabbos, when they were not allowed by Jewish law to carry funds. According to legend they asked their leaders for an exception to this rule. Better the exception should have been made to carry guns instead.

Along came Rabbi Meir Kahane. He set up the Jewish Defense League. It was comprised mainly of a group of Jews who were armed to the teeth, and took it as their mission to end this scourge. They did so. Kahane is a Jewish hero. No one can ever take that away from him.

What was the policy of the Kach Party Kahane set up when he arrived in Israel? Among other things, “Kach advocated that the Arabs be expelled from the country, to prevent their becoming a majority. It also advocated that the Camp David Accords and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty be abrogated, that the Israeli response to acts of terror should be counterterror, and that the mosques be removed from the Temple Mount.” The party was accused of racism and he personally was accused of murder, but was never convicted.Kach was considered a terrorist organization by the US.

This is not the time nor place to debate the merits of Kahane and his Kach party. Instead, there is a lesson I wish to take from Mr. Vance’s speech. It is that what he accused the Europeans of can easily be thought to apply to Israel as well. In order to gain admittance to the Knesset, a candidate needs a certain proportion of the overall vote. Kach passed muster only once, but on the other occasions garnered thousands of ballots. So, banning this party indirectly discounted the political viewpoints of many Israeli citizens. This is no more democratic than supporting a Supreme Court that continually replaces itself without any input at all from the citizenry. One of the mottos of the US revolutionary war was: “No taxation without representation.” Well the same applies here. The motto should now be, “No judicial findings without representation.”

If Germany and Romania were undemocratic, and they were, then so was Israel. In the latter case, the threat posed by the Kach party was greatly inferior to what is now occurring in these other two countries. The AfD is the second most popular in that nation. In Romania, the detested “right-wing” party actually won a recent election. The Kach party came nowhere near that level of popularity. If Israel had wanted to remain innocent of the charges wrought by J. D. Vance, it could easily have put up with the tiny supposed danger posed by this exceedingly small part of its electorate.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Banning a party such as this only drives it underground and builds resentment.