Quick Facts
Biography
Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane (Hebrew: בנימין זאב כהנא; 3 October 1966 – 31 December 2000) was a rabbi and the son of Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Born in New York City, he emigrated to Israel with his family at the age of four, in 1971. He was a young Israeli Orthodox Jewish scholar and rabbi who was most famous for his leadership of Kahane Chai, a far-right political party that broke from his father's Kach party after Meir Kahane's assassination in 1990. He was convicted several times by Israeli courts for advocating violence against Arabs.
Kahane was the author of The Haggada of the Jewish Idea, a commentary based on his father's teachings of the Passover Haggadah read at the Passover Seder. He wrote a Torah portion sheet called Darka Shel Torah ("The Way of the Torah") that was distributed for the weekly Torah portions.
He and his wife Talya were shot and killed near the Israeli settlement of Ofra on 31 December 2000. The Prime Minister's Office subsequently announced the arrest of three members of Force 17 – Talal Ghassan, Marzouk Abu Naim and Na'man Nofel – who were believed to have carried out the attack under the instruction of PLO leader Col. Mahmoud Damra. However, in 2007, Khaled Shawish was arrested for the attack.
Kahane's six children, Yehudis Leah, Meir David, Batya, Tzivya, Rivkah, and Shlomtziyon, are being raised by Talya's younger sister and her husband in the family's home in Kfar Tapuach.