In the years before Rabbi Meir Kahane was barred from running for the Knesset, he was not regarded by Israel’s political establishment as a fringe curiosity destined for irrelevance; much to the contrary, by the mid- to late-1980s, especially in the run-up to the 1988 elections, there was growing anxiety among political elites that his Kach party could become a serious parliamentary force. This fear was not baseless; he had already demonstrated his ability to mobilize a passionate constituency, particularly among voters who felt alienated by Israel’s secular elite, shaken by rising Palestinian violence, and disillusioned with what they perceived as the moral evasions of the peace camp. Polls and internal assessments suggested that under conditions of heightened security tension and voter turnout, Kach might even earn ten seats or more.
It was precisely this prospect of R. Kahane wielding actual power that precipitated decisive legal action. His exclusion from Israeli politics was not the result of electoral failure or democratic repudiation, but of a bogus legal determination that his ideas themselves were allegedly incompatible with the constitutional framework of the state – notwithstanding that, as is well-known, Israel does not have and has never had a constitution. Although that decision, and the law under which it was made, continue to shape Israel’s democracy today, the manner in which that law has been applied since raises deeply troubling questions about consistency, principle, and hypocrisy.
The statute that disqualified Kahane is Section 7A of Basic Law that the Knesset enacted in 1985 and later refined. The provision prohibits a party list or candidate from participating in Knesset elections if their objectives or actions, explicitly or implicitly, include the negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; incitement to racism; or support for armed struggle by a hostile state or terrorist organization against Israel. Although the language is formally neutral, its origins are unmistakable: Section 7A was crafted as a direct response to R. Kahane and the alleged danger his ideology posed to Israel’s democratic order and international standing.
In 1988, the Supreme Court upheld the Central Elections Committee’s decision to bar R. Kahane, ruling that his platform constituted racist incitement and rejected the democratic foundations of the state. R. Kahane’s call for the removal of Arabs from Israel and the territories, his advocacy of legally enshrined Jewish primacy, and his rejection of equal citizenship were deemed incompatible with democratic governance, even though they were completely consistent with Torah law. Israelis who despised R. Kahane’s views but valued democratic pluralism accepted the ruling as a painful but necessary “safeguard.” Democracies, some argued, are entitled – indeed obligated – to defend themselves against movements that seek to dismantle them from within.
Israel is not unique in adopting a doctrine of “militant democracy.” For example, Germany’s Basic Law famously prohibits parties that undermine the constitutional order, and other allegedly democratic systems maintain similar guardrails. (Ironically, defenders of applying Section 7a to R. Kahane do not see the irony of comparing Israel’s election law to that of Germany, the Land of the Final Solution.) However, the legitimacy of such measures, assuming that any exists, depends entirely on their evenhanded application: A democracy that bans some anti-system actors while indulging others ceases to defend principle and begins to enforce raw political preference. And the ultimate question is, of course, who decides and using what criteria?
In the decades since R. Kahane’s disqualification, Israel has witnessed the steady rise of Arab and Palestinian political parties whose ideological commitments raise precisely the questions that Section 7A was designed to address. Today, those questions are no longer theoretical; if Arab parties once again unite into a single electoral bloc – as they have done before, and as many expect them to do again – their parliamentary strength could be decisive. Arab citizens constitute roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population, and when fragmentation is minimized and turnout is maximized, that demographic reality translates into substantial Knesset representation. In a chronically divided political system, such a bloc can determine whether a government is formed, sustained, or toppled, and this growing influence makes it impossible to avoid a fundamental question that Israel’s legal system has repeatedly evaded: if R. Kahane was barred for negating the Jewish and democratic character of the state, why are parties that openly reject Israel’s Jewish national identity permitted not only to run, but to wield significant political power?
The stated platforms and public rhetoric of several Arab and Palestinian parties leave little room for ambiguity. Many explicitly reject the definition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and instead advocate for a “state of all its citizens,” a formulation whose clear intent is to eliminate Jewish collective self-determination. Leading figures within these parties have denied Jewish historical ties to the land, portrayed Zionism as an inherently racist or colonial enterprise, and endorsed the Palestinian “right of return,” a demand whose implementation would, by design, end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state through demographic means. Many have expressed sympathy for, or moral justification of, what they describe as “resistance,” even when that resistance takes the form of violence against Israeli civilians and support of Hamas.
These positions are not marginal; rather, they are core ideological commitments, reiterated over years and across electoral cycles. Under a straightforward reading of Section 7A, they directly implicate at least two of the statute’s prohibitions: negation of Israel as a Jewish state and support for armed struggle against it. Yet, when attempts have been made to disqualify Arab parties or candidates, Israel’s manifestly undemocratic Supreme Court has intervened to reverse the Central Elections Committee, setting an evidentiary bar so high that disqualification becomes virtually impossible unless a candidate provides a recorded confession of treason in legally precise language.
That is certainly not the standard that was applied to R. Kahane. His ideology was deemed disqualifying not because he commanded armed groups or issued operational directives, but because his worldview was judged by political idealogues fearing (with good reason) the erosion of the leftist status quo as incompatible with the state’s constitutional identity. By contrast, Arab parties are permitted to advance a worldview that envisions the end of Jewish sovereignty, provided they do so in language sufficiently indirect to give Israel’s high court any ludicrous basis whatsoever, no matter how indefensible and fraudulent, to permit Arab parties dedicated to the destruction of Israel to serve in the Knesset.
Defenders of this asymmetry argue that Arab parties represent a national minority and that banning them would disenfranchise Arab citizens and undermine democratic inclusion. This argument collapses under its own weight because facts are very difficult things to ignore. Weren’t R. Kahane’s supporters also citizens? Many were economically disadvantaged, socially marginalized, and politically alienated, but their exclusion from representation was deemed an acceptable price for preserving “democratic values.” The same logic is unaccountably rejected when applied to parties whose ideological goal is not merely reform of the state, but transformation of its foundational identity.
The result is a one-sided application of militant democracy: vigilant against Jewish extremism, indulgent toward Arab extremism, an untenable imbalance that corrodes public trust and deepens political polarization. It tells Jewish voters that certain ideas, even if supported by a substantial segment of the electorate, are beyond the bounds of legitimacy, while signaling to Arab politicians that they may challenge the Jewish character of the state with impunity.
Over time, this double standard has fueled resentment, radicalization, and cynicism on all sides, and it also weakens Israel’s moral standing. A democracy that claims the right to disqualify candidates on ideological grounds must apply that power consistently or abandon it altogether and selective enforcement is not moderation, but is arbitrariness disguised as restraint. When courts engage in legal hair-splitting to excuse some forms of anti-system ideology while condemning others, so obviously for political purposes, they cease to act as neutral guardians of constitutional order and become participants in political choreography.
Israel therefore faces a choice it has long postponed: Either it genuinely believes that the Knesset must be protected from parties that seek to negate the Jewish state, or it doesn’t. If it does, then Section 7A must be applied without fear or favoritism, regardless of whether the offending ideology comes from Jewish or Arab quarters. If it does not, then R. Kahane’s disqualification was not a principled defense of democracy, but an act of political convenience dressed in constitutional language. Which, of course, is exactly what it was.
What Israel cannot continue to do is maintain the pretense of principle while practicing selective enforcement, a path that leads not to democratic resilience, but to democratic erosion. Laws that are enforced asymmetrically lose legitimacy; courts that bend doctrine to avoid uncomfortable outcomes lose authority; and a political system that tolerates the negation of its own foundations from some actors while suppressing others invites instability rather than pluralism.
R. Kahane’s ideas were, indeed, abhorrent to many Israelis, but that is not the test in a democracy. Moreover, the vile and hateful ideas of the Arabs, who deny Israel’s very right to exist as a Jewish state, are even more repugnant to Israeli citizens – and by orders of magnitude. When all is said and done, a democracy worthy of the name cannot survive indefinitely on such contradictions, and it is time to correct this great historical wrong.