Raphael Cohen-Almagor, The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance: The Struggle against Kahanism in Israel (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1994). Pp. 344.

What is it about?

In August 1985 I participated in a demonstration against Rabbi Meir Kahane, a religious, quasi-Fascist propagandist who was elected to the Israeli Knesset (parliament) in the preceding year. Kahane came to advocate his ideas to the citizens of the city of Givatayim, and in the gathering place he was met by thousands of people, led by the Mayor of the city. The small public square was crowded with people who stood against Kahane, screaming, shouting, and whistling in order to prevent him from speaking. I had just returned from a summer school at Georgetown University, and this was not what I expected. I had no idea that the confrontation would take this form, and thus I stood there with increasing unease. I came to protest, but in a different way. The demonstrators were using the same means against Kahane that the man himself would use - if he would have had the power - against any opposition. This person, who raised his voice against democracy, was now demanding in the name of democracy the right to be heard, while advocates of democracy were standing against him, determined to prevent him this same right. The paradox, so brightly illuminated in this incident, of denying in the name of democracy one of its basic tenets - freedom of speech - was the preliminary force which drove me to concentrate my research on this subject and to focus on the tensions that evolve from the very foundations of democracy.

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Why is it important?

The primary aims of this research are (1) to formulate percepts and mechanisms designed to prescribe boundaries to liberty and tolerance conducive to safeguard democracy; and (2) in the light of the theory to analyze a case of a democratic self-defence. Hence, I employ the formulated philosophical principles to the study of the Israeli democracy, evaluating the political and legal measures to which it resorted in its struggle against Kahanism.

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