Kahane publicly called Arabs “dogs” and who was once part of a crowd in Israel that chanted “Kill the Arabs!” and attempted to lynch two Arab passersby. He called for the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories and was convicted in the U.S. for making a bomb. He also formed the Kach political party in Israel, which was later deemed a violent terrorist organization by both Israel and the U.S.
Hikind speaks admiringly of Kahane in his statement. He said he was “no longer involved” with Kahane when the rabbi moved to Israel in the early 1970s, but noted that “the truth is I continued to watch and admire Rabbi Kahane from afar.”
“Did I agree with him on everything?” Hikind said. “Alas, I don’t even agree with my own wife Shani on everything. Almost everything.”
Four days after the Daily News published Hikind’s op-ed, the paper published another by Dr. Barat Ellman and Ellen Lippman, two rabbis who defended Sarsour against all of the assemblyman’s allegations. They wrote that Hikind’s “sloppy attempt to demonize her reeks of anti-Muslim bias.”
Hikind addressed the two rabbis toward the end of his statement to HuffPost, appearing to take umbrage that “two women rabbis” challenged him.
“How would Rabbi Kahane respond today hearing that two women rabbis attempted to kosher someone as transparently dangerous and anti-Semitic as Linda Sarsour? ‘I warned you!’” he wrote.