Kahane Wins Back Knesset Vote Privileges, Pay

Militant Rabbi Meir Kahane won back his parliamentary voting privileges Wednesday by swearing full allegiance to the state of Israel.

Kahane’s pay as a member of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, also was restored in what amounted to an embarrassing retreat from his latest challenge to government authority.

On June 8, Kahane provoked a confrontation with Knesset Speaker Shlomo Hillel by inserting a verse from the Torah, the Jewish Scriptures, into the Knesset oath of allegiance.

By inserting the verse from Psalms, Kahane said, he was demonstrating that he owed a higher allegiance to Jewish religious law than secular Israeli law.

Hillel immediately stripped Kahane of his voting privileges and barred him from entering the main Knesset chambers or taking part in committee business.

On Tuesday, Hillel stepped up the pressure on Kahane, 54, by revoking his pay a day after Israel’s highest court overturned an appeal by the fiery, Brooklyn-born rabbi to have his parliamentary voting rights reinstated.

Kahane, elected to the Knesset in 1984 on a platform marked by harsh anti-Arab rhetoric, had threatened to take the oath in Arabic but relented Wednesday and took it in Hebrew, officials said.

“The High Court has said that Knesset law is above Torah law,” Kahane said later, referring to the High Court of Justice ruling against him Monday. “The battle lines are set. When we take power, we will change the High Court.”

In her ruling against Kahane, High Court Justice Miriam Ben Porat wrote: “Adding a verse from Psalms with the intent of placing Torah law above state law is an inadmissible act. . . . A Knesset member must recognize the supremacy of Knesset laws.”

When Kahane won his first Knesset term, he also inserted the Torah verse into the oath. But the issue only came up for scrutiny recently, apparently because of growing antipathy for Kahane.

Shortly after Kahane took the oath in 1984, the U.S. State Department ordered him stripped of his American citizenship for pledging allegiance to a foreign government. But a U.S. federal court recently ordered it reinstated.

Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League in the United States, emigrated to Israel in 1971.