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

A Likud lawmaker says at the plenum that late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane “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.

Kahane spoke out against Jewish coexistence with Arabs, whom he claimed were a “cancer” and called for them to be expelled from the State of Israel. He was elected to the Knesset in 1984, but Knesset members across the spectrum would leave when he spoke, and 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.

For years, far-right activists have used the slogan “Kahane was right” as a rallying call, but such rhetoric was never embraced or accepted by Likud.

“Believe me, Kahane was right about many things that the Israeli people were wrong about, and Likud was wrong to exclude him. We should have looked into things,” Vaturi tells Yesh Atid MK Yorai Lahav-Hertzanu.

“This government will continue to lead and we know exactly what needs to be fixed — people’s heads need to be fixed,” he adds.

When Lahav-Hertzanu says Kahane was “a terrorist,” Vaturi shoots back: “He wasn’t a terrorist, believe me, today he’d be seen as holy, he’d get the Israel Prize.”

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

Lahav-Hertzanu later tells Likud: “You’ve turned from a national liberal movement into a pathetic branch of Kach.”

Asked for a response to Vaturi’s comments and the Likud’s official position on Kahanism, a party spokesman does not immediately reply.

Hadash-Ta’al MK Ofir Cassif tells 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.”

MK Tally Gotliv of Likud defends Vaturi, saying: “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.”