Meir David HaKohen Kahane (; Hebrew: myr dvd khn; August 1, 1932 - November 5, 1990) was an American-Israeli ordained Orthodox rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who served one term in the Israeli Knesset. His work is influential on most modern Jewish militant and far right-wing political groups. Kahane spent years reaching out to Jews through published works, weekly articles, speeches, and debates on college campuses and in synagogues throughout the United States, and appearances on various televised programs and radio shows.

In 1971, Kahane emigrated to Israel. When he moved to Israel, Kahane declared that he would focus on Jewish education. He later began gathering lists of Arab residents who were willing to emigrate for compensation, and eventually, he initiated protests which advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. In 1972, Jewish Defense League leaflets were distributed in Hebron, calling for the mayor to stand trial for the 1929 Hebron massacre. Kahane was arrested dozens of times. In 1971, he founded the Kach party. In 1973, the party ran for the Knesset (Israeli parliament) during the general elections under the name "The League List". The party won 12,811 votes (0.82%), just 2,857 (0.18%) short of the electoral threshold at the time (1%) for winning a Knesset seat. The party was even less successful in the 1977 elections, winning 4,836 votes. In 1980, Kahane was arrested for the 62nd time since his emigration, and he was jailed for six months following a detention order based on allegations of planning armed attacks against Palestinians in response to the killings of Jewish settlers. Kahane was held in prison in Ramla, where he wrote the book They Must Go. Kahane was banned from entering the United Kingdom in 1981. In 1981, Kahane's Kach party again ran for the Knesset during the 1981 elections, but it did not win a seat, receiving only 5,128 votes. In 1984, the Central Elections Committee banned him from being a candidate on the grounds that Kach was a racist party, but the Supreme Court of Israel overturned the ban on grounds that the committee was not authorized to ban Kahane's candidacy. The Supreme Court suggested that the Knesset pass a law that would authorize the exclusion of racist parties from future elections, and the Anti-Racist Law of 1988 was later passed.

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