"WARNING!" screamed the flyer being thrust into my hand by a concerned-looking young religious man as I entered the hall. "American Jews are in danger!" it continued. "Countless Neo-Nazi groups are spreading their venemous [sic] message ... at public demonstrations calling for violence against Jews ... and praising Hitler as a 'true hero'!"

Fair enough, I thought - that's a pretty sobering prospect, and something worth taking heed of as a Jew who cares about his brethren, and who hates to think of them in danger. That the same boy was then in the midst of a 500-strong crowd yelling "Arabs out! Arabs out!" less than an hour later, and screaming deliriously at footage of the late Meir Kahane, was as ironic as it was despicable.

"Who is wise ... those who see the future," was written halfway down the same flyer, quoting Pirkei Avot in an attempt to exhort the endangered American Jews to make aliyah to Israel and escape the Nazis' evil clutches. The wise man also sees the present though, I think - and knows when to call a spade a spade. Which is why I have no qualms whatsoever about describing the baying mob at the Kahane memorial earlier this week as the closest thing we Jews have to home-grown fascists.

For those unfamiliar with the odious, late Rabbi Kahane, he was the leader of the now-outlawed Kach party in Israel, and his politics included advocating the forcible expulsion of all Arab citizens of Israel. A former member of Knesset - until his party was banned in 1988 - he was gunned down after giving a speech in the United States in 1990. His followers have been responsible for numerous terror attacks against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, most notably Baruch Goldstein's bloody massacre at a Hebron mosque in 1994.

At the memorial service, the mere mention of Goldstein's name received thunderous applause from the audience - all of whom were ultra-orthodox, and all of whom had not the slightest remorse at singing the praises of Israel's most notorious mass-murderer. Dozens of men wore T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Now everyone knows ... Kahane was right", a message every bit as repulsive as a group of German neo-Nazis wearing similar attire with Hitler's name replacing that of Kahane's.

Because, make no mistake, the politics of Kach and those of the National Socialists are chillingly similar in their vicious racism and call to arms. Footage of Kahane's more incendiary speeches were shown throughout the ceremony, as he ranted and raved to his enraptured acolytes, fists clenched and raised in triumph whilst he spat his venomous message of hate.

"There is no such thing as an Arab village in Israel," he thundered from beyond the grave, "only a Jewish village that is temporarily inhabited by Arabs." The crowd went wild, stamping their feet and giving piercing whistles, regardless of the fact that most of them had seen the footage countless times before. An impromptu chant of "Kahane still lives" was started by a boy in the row behind me, and soon the entire hall was singing as one, from the youngest schoolchildren to the most gnarled and wizened old men in the room.

The women, on the other side of the curtain mechiza (divider), were no casual bystanders to the furore. The delirium was just as fervent amongst them in response to the various speakers at the dais whipping the audience into a frenzy. One rabbi, well-known in Kach circles, took to the stage with a huge orange Star of David pinned over his heart, to the delight of those looking on. (In a sick send-up of the Yellow Star that the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust, the far-right, anti-disengagement settlers have adopted the emblem for themselves, in protest at the detested IDF and Israeli government's evacuation of Gush Katif).

The service went on for nearly two hours, and showed no sign of abating when I'd had my fill and headed for the exit. Interspersed with the speeches were video montages put together by Kach propagandists designed to reinforce the feeling that their underground movement was the victim of obscene oppression on the part of the authorities. Like something out of A Clockwork Orange, film of riot police beating settlers and religious youths was juxtaposed onto a soundtrack of plaintive Jewish song, as children looked on in horror and their fathers shook their heads mournfully.

"But we're not beaten," cried the next speaker up. "We've got to mobilise better - every one of you here must spread the word of Kahane, and only in this way will we bring about the true Jewish State that he dreamed of." That same state, according to Kahane when he was in parliament, would have included a ban on all sexual activity between Jews and non-Jews, and seen only Jews eligible as citizens of Israel.

His assassination, and the subsequent murder of his son and daughter-in-law at the hands of Palestinian terrorists, only strengthened the resolve of his die-hard followers, who formed the Kahane Chai offshoot which is currently listed as a terrorist organisation by the FBI. It is similarly viewed in Israel too, although the blurred boundaries between Kahane Chai and the original party mean that the police are powerless to ban events such as tonight's memorial.

For my part, I'm glad they didn't, since the opportunity to witness the fascist hordes for myself was massively instructive as to how low certain elements of Israeli society have sunk. By hailing Baruch Goldstein as a latter-day saint, they're every bit as repulsive as the Hamas supporters who revere Sheikh Yassin, or the far-right Europeans who mourn Hitler's passing every year on his birthday.

As much as I sang the praises of the OneVoice volunteers in my last piece, so do I just as passionately hate each and every one of those sitting alongside me at tonight's event. These are our extremists, these are our terrorists - and this is our dirty secret that is a stain on the state that was founded as a refuge from similarly-minded fascists. If the likes of the Kachniks get their way, then the wheel will truly have come full circle, when the hunted becomes the hunter and history repeats itself once more.

Source: Comment is Free