Expel the Arabs or Kill the Arabs?

(This blog will be updated roughly once a month. Please remember to return in four weeks' time.)

Many otherwise unimaginative people whose hearts lie in the right place sometimes suggest implementing what they claim is the "Kahane solution": Kick out the Arabs. No more Arabs in Israel = no more terror in Israel.

I submit that were Kahane alive today, he would never settle for simply kicking out the Arabs.

Consider: What prompted Kahane to suggest expelling the Arabs? Answer: The future Israeli Arab demographic threat. For most of his life, Kahane never even considered West Bank and Gaza Arabs to be much of a problem.

As much as admitting this pains us Kahane followers who consider him to be a modern-day prophet of sorts, the fact remains that for most of his life Kahane did not consider West Bank and Gaza Arabs to be nearly as big a problem as they are today. What drove Kahane to suggest expelling the Arabs -- the reason he himself gives in most of his books, articles and interviews -- was the demographic threat.

Thank G-d, for various reasons, the demographic threat has not gotten much worse in the last 20 years since Kahane's death. What has gotten exponentially worse is the terror menace of West Bank and Gaza Arabs. "So, expel them!" people say. And here is my point: Yes, of course expel them, but first, justice. It is morally perverse and unJewish in the extreme to suggest that a people (or a tribe, or whatever the "Palestinians" or their enemies or friends wish to call them) should not suffer for having killed thousands of Jews and maiming countless more.

Furthermore, anyone who attacks Israel attacks G-d. And anyone who degrades and shames Israel degrades and shames G-d. Rabbi Kahane would never, ever, stand for letting these desecrators of G-d's name go unpunished.

When G-d wished to free the ancient Jews enslaved in Egypt 3,300 years ago, he could have done so easily and swiftly. And yet, he chose to first afflict Egypt -- all of Egypt, not just the "guilty" ones -- with 10 plagues. "Why? What's the point?" the liberal angels in heaven must have asked G-d. "Will afflicting Egypt with plagues bring back all those Jews they killed? Will it erase their pain?" And of course the answer is "No." And yet G-d decided to afflict them anyways, just like Israel -- in one of its rare sane moments -- decided to execute Adolf Eichmann even though his death brought none of the six million martyrs back to life.

Yesh din v'dayan. Justice exists. G-d keeps a score, and we, who are supposed to follow His path, should do so as well. Kick out the Arabs? Sure, but first they must suffer. They must feel the Yad Hachazaka expressed through the guns, bombs, and rockets of the IDF. No one who dares attack and shame Israel should be allowed to simply move to another country without first suffering bitterly. So what should Israel do? Should it kill hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Should it completely obliterate Arab cities? I leave that an open question.

But that some strong revenge is necessary is unquestionable. Anyone who has read Kahane knows that kicking out the Arabs was only a small pragmatic derivative of a much larger and all-encompassing philosophy. Anyone who has read Kahane's writings on revenge and chillul Hashem knows that Kahane's boiling, zealous blood would never stand for letting the chillul Hashem of the last 20 years go unavenged. Kahane was more, so much more, than "Expel the Arabs."

So, yes, kick the Arabs out, but the true Kahane follower knows that Judaism -- authentic Judaism -- requires an evening of the score first. Revenge.