State Dept. Rejects Kahane Bid to Stay a Citizen

The State Department on Friday rejected the plea of Rabbi Meir Kahane, firebrand founder of the radical Jewish Defense League, to keep his U.S. citizenship despite his service in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.

The decision sends the case back to U.S. District Court, which had put off action until Kahane, 54, a 17-year resident of Israel who has demanded that all Arabs be expelled from that country, had exhausted all administrative appeals.

The State Department maintains the controversial rabbi forfeited his citizenship last October because he was elected to the Knesset, although other Americans who have served in Israel’s government have retained their U.S. citizenship.

Friday’s ruling by the Board of Appellate Review, a quasi-judicial body within the State Department, declared: “The department submits that the appellant’s conduct and statements establish that his voluntary acceptance of a seat in the Knesset is the culmination of a long series of events which reveal a deep and sustained allegiance to Israel and an intentional abandonment of his U.S. citizenship.”

The board essentially adopted the view of the department’s legal adviser, Abraham D. Sofaer, who submitted a brief last February citing declarations by Kahane of his need to become part of a uniquely Jewish state.

“Such a need to belong to a state ‘stamped with Jewish uniqueness’ would, of course, be impossible to fulfill in the United States, where there is no established state religion,” the brief said.

In a 1982 case involving a U.S. citizen who served in the Knesset, the Board of Appellate Review reversed a consular decision that expatriated Marcia Freedman, a native of New Jersey residing in Israel who won a parliamentary seat as a member of a feminist party in 1973.

In that case, the board held that Freedman’s election was unexpected, that she was interested primarily in women’s rights and that she was consistently identified as an American--all circumstances that “narrowly overcome the presumption of intent to abandon allegiance to the United States.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has held since 1967 that citizenship must be voluntarily relinquished. Kahane’s attorney, Charles S. Sims, argued that his client never abandoned U.S. citizenship.

When Kahane was sworn in as a member of the Knesset in 1984, he sought to swear allegiance only to the Bible. But, when other legislators insisted, he took an oath of allegiance to Israel.

Since then, the Knesset has considered legislation barring dual citizenship by its members, a move directed against Kahane.