The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance: The Struggle against Kahanism in Israel

The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance: The Struggle Against Kahanism in Israel, by Raphael Cohen-Almagor. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. xv + 253 pages. Appends. to p. 260. Notes to p. 305. Bibl. to p. 318. Indices to p. 329. $34.95. Reviewed by Akiba Covitz The broad subject matter of this important, and remarkably timely, work of democratic political theory and Israeli legal thought and political practice, is the damage caused to Israeli democracy by the activities of many "Kahanist" groups on the radical right, and the nature and degree of toleration that should be afforded them. Raphael Cohen-Almagor begins his preface to The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance by disclosing both his political predilections and the personal experience that gave him his primary focus for his doctoral research, of which this work is a revised version. In the first sentence of the text, CohenAlmagor informs his reader that he participated in a 1985 rally in the Tel Aviv-Yafo suburb of Givatayim to protest against an appearance by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who had been elected to the Knesset in the previous year. Cohen-Almagor wastes no time making it clear to his reader where he stands in regard to Kahane and those who share his views: In the same first sentence of the preface, he describes Kahane as "a religious, quasi-fascist propagandist" (p. xiii). Cohen-Almagor had just returned from a summer in the United States and was surprised and uneasy at the tone and methods employed by his fellow protestors. They whistled, shouted, and screamed so that Kahane's voice could not be heard. This incident illuminated what CohenAlmagor calls a "paradox" for him, in that these demonstrators, in the name of democracy, were denying Kahane (who himself had "raised his voice against democracy" (p. xiii), his freedom of speech-what Cohen-Almagor calls one of democracy's "basic tenets. " Cohen-Almagor reminds his reader of a wellknown but disturbing dialectic in the study of politics and government: that through the application of a given political system's fundamental principles (that is, through the active, developing life of a polity) may come about its endangerment and even its death. This is what Cohen-Almagor refers to as the "catch" of democracy. In this ambitious work, the author sets for himself both theoretical and practical goals. One of these is the formulation of "precepts and mechanisms" that will set boundaries for liberty and tolerance in a liberal democracy, with an eye toward safeguarding that political system. After the development of this theoretical framework in Part One, he applies it in the shorter Part Two to a careful and insightful review of the history of Kahanist movements within the Israeli political and legal system. He calls the Israeli struggle against Kahanism "a case of a democratic selfdefense" (p. xiv). The framework used in Part One, "Theory: Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance," raises many of the traditional questions (taken largely from the influential work of John Stuart Mill) on political and constitutional theory to analyze the complex issue of tolerance in a democratic society. Cohen-Almagor offers a number of penetrating and thoughtful prescriptions for setting boundaries for liberty that do more than simply restate the centuries-old arguments, but actually move the theoretical debate considerably forward. It is on this level that Cohen-Almagor's work will have its greatest and most lasting impact. It is also in this regard that his work will be as important to students of numerous Middle Eastern politics wrestling with the question of tolerance and liberty (such as in the Algerian, Egyptian, and Palestinian cases) as it is to students of political theory and Israeli politics. …