Likud MK: Meir Kahane ‘was right about many things, today he’d get the Israel Prize’

A Likud lawmaker said from the Knesset podium that late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane — who was banned from the Israeli parliament for being racist —  “was right about many things” and that “today he’d be seen as holy, he’d get the Israel Prize.”

MK Nissim Vaturi made the comments as the Knesset debated a bill to provide tax benefits to settlers in dangerous areas. It came in response to remarks from Yesh Atid MK Yorai Lahav Hertzanu, who criticized Likud for providing ideological cover to Kahane supporters.

“What have you become? You’ve turned from a distinguished national liberal movement into a pathetic branch of ‘Kahane lives,'” Lahav Hertzanu said.

When, during Vaturi’s remarks, Lahav Hertzanu shouted that Kahane was “a terrorist,” Vaturi shot back: “He wasn’t a terrorist, believe me, today he’d be seen as holy, he’d get the Israel Prize,” the country’s most prestigious award.

“Believe me, Kahane was right in many places where the people of Israel were wrong. Likud was also wrong to exclude him,” Vaturi added later. “This government will continue to lead and we know exactly what needs to be fixed — people’s heads need to be fixed.”

Vaturi’s statement marked a stark departure from the attitude of Likud four decades ago, when Kahane served a single term in the Knesset. At the time, lawmakers would walk out en masse when he spoke, and then-Likud prime minister Yitzhak Shamir denounced his movement as “dangerous.”

מתוך המליאה – ח״כ יוראי להב טען שהליכוד הפך לסניף של ״כהנא חי״, ח״כ ניסים ואטורי השיב – כהנא צדק בהרבה דברים, מנהיגי הליכוד טעו שהדירו אותו pic.twitter.com/RKWsuD5y66

— דפנה ליאל (@DaphnaLiel) November 12, 2025

Kahane, who was born in the US and founded the militant Jewish Defense League, immigrated to Israel in 1971 and won a seat in the Knesset in 1984. He called Arabs a “cancer” and called for them to be expelled from the State of Israel.

His Kach party was subsequently banned by the Knesset as racist. He was barred from running for re-election in 1988 and was assassinated in 1990 in New York by an Egyptian-born American.

His ideology has lived on. For years, far-right activists have used the slogan “Kahane was right” as a rallying cry, and Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right MK who began in politics as a Kahane follower, is Israel’s national security minister. But pro-Kahane rhetoric was never embraced or accepted by Likud in the decades after Kahane’s death.

A Likud spokesman did not immediately reply when asked for a response to Vaturi’s comments and Likud’s official position on Kahanism.

Hadash-Ta’al MK Ofir Cassif told The Times of Israel, “Forty years ago, it was a member of the Likud party at the Knesset, Michael Eitan, who compared Kahane and the platform of his party to the Nazis and the Nuremberg Laws. I wonder what he would have said today about his successors at the Knesset in Likud.”

In a sardonic reaction, Labor MK Gilad Kariv praised Vaturi for his “impressive honesty.”

“Under the leadership of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, Likud has become a Kahanist, nationalist and antidemocratic party,” he added in a post on X. “It’s good that the Israeli public is getting a firsthand account of how the ruling party has lost its way and its dramatic departure from the founding values of the State of Israel and the values of most of the public.”

This is not the first time Vaturi has made inflammatory remarks. Earlier this year, he supported expelling Arabs from Gaza as well as the West Bank. He also once called to “burn” Gaza.

“We want to remove all the Arabs from Gaza,” he said in February. “They should not be in Judea and Samaria either.”

MK Tally Gotliv of Likud, herself a firebrand, defended Vaturi’s remarks on Wednesday, referencing the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught.

“Every member of Knesset is entitled to their opinion, and in my assessment, MK Nissim Vaturi was referring in his remarks to the fact that there are certain perceptions regarding terrorists… who indeed are unimaginably cruel. Look at October 7,” she said.