Meir David HaKohen Kahane (/kəˈhɑːnə/ kə-HAH-nə; Hebrew: רבי מאיר דוד הכהן כהנא; born Martin David Kahane; August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990) was an American-born Israeli Orthodox ordained rabbi, writer and ultra-nationalist politician. Founder of the Israeli political party Kach—whose legacy continues to influence militant and far-right political groups active today in Israel—he was convicted of multiple acts of terrorism in the United States and in Israel.

Born in 1932 in Brooklyn, New York City, to an Orthodox Jewish family, Kahane received his education there, starting with Jewish scripture studies, and eventually gaining an M.A. in International Relations from New York University. In 1968, he founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in New York City, whose self-described purpose was to fight anti-Semitism. Several JDL members, including Kahane, were subsequently convicted of acts related to domestic terrorism, including leading the attack on the Soviet United Nations mission in 1975. Later that same year, Kahane was convicted of conspiring to kidnap a Soviet diplomat, bomb the Iraqi embassy in Washington, and ship arms abroad from Israel. He consequently served a one year imprisonment, albeit in a hotel.

In 1971, Kahane moved to Israel and became a citizen, where he initiated protests calling for the expulsion of both Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians of the Israeli-occupied territories, which led to his arrest dozens of times. In the same year, he founded Kach, a political party that initially failed to gain any seats in the Knesset. In 1980, Kahane was arrested for the 62nd time since his emigration, and he was jailed for six months for planning armed attacks against Palestinians. Kahane was held in prison in Ramla, where he wrote the book They Must Go. In the 1984 elections, his Kach party gained one seat in the Knesset, which was taken by Kahane, but he was later barred from running in 1988. In 1990, he was giving a speech to an audience of Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, urging American Jews to emigrate to Israel, when he was assassinated by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-American national. Kahane was buried in West Jerusalem.

During his lifetime Kahane publicized his Kahanism ideology throughout the United States. In Israel, he proposed enforcing halakha (Jewish law) as codified by Maimonides and hoped that Israel would eventually adopt it as state law. While serving in the Knesset in the mid-1980s Kahane proposed numerous laws, none of which passed, to emphasize Judaism in public schools, reduce Israel's bureaucracy, forbid sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, separate Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, and end cultural meetings between Jewish and Arab students. He went so far as to demand that non-Jews in Israel either become slaves or face deportation. He also popularized the slogan "For Every Jew a .22." He supported the restriction of Israel's democracy to its Jewish citizens, and endorsed the annexation of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Meir Kahane was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Orthodox Jewish family. Kahane was a member of an established rabbinic family, including his father, who was head of the Flatbush Board of Rabbis. His father, Yechezkel Shragei (Charles) Kahane (1905–1978), was the rabbi of a large synagogue in Brooklyn, author of the interpretive Torah translation Torah Yesharah, and a strong supporter of the Revisionist Zionist movement. Kahane's grandfather was Nachman Kahane (1869–1937), a leading rabbinic scholar in Safed, who was the son of Baruch David Kahane (1850–1925), the author of Hibat ha-Eretz, and a disciple of Chaim Halberstam of Sanz. Baruch David was a direct descendant of Simcha Rappaport (1650–1718), of the Rappaport rabbinic family, who were allegedly able to trace their ancestry back to Eleazar ben Azariah, a 1st-century sage in the Land of Israel. Baruch David immigrated to Ottoman Palestine from Poland in 1873. Kahane's father was born in Safed while his mother Sonia was born in Latvia. An uncle of Kahane's was killed in Safed during the 1929 Palestine riots.

As a teenager, Kahane became an ardent admirer of Eri Jabotinsky and Peter Bergson, who were frequent guests in his parents' home. He joined the Betar (Brit Trumpeldor) youth wing of Revisionist Zionism. He was active in protests against Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary who maintained restrictions on the emigration of Jews, even Holocaust survivors, to Palestine after the end of the Second World War. In 1949, Kahane was arrested for throwing eggs and tomatoes at Bevin, who was disembarking at Pier 90 on a visit to New York. A photo of his arrest appeared in the New York Daily News. In 1954, he became the Mazkir (Secretary) of Greater New York City's 16 Bnei Akiva chapters.^{[citation needed]}

Kahane's formal education included Yeshiva of Flatbush for elementary school and Brooklyn Talmudical Academy for high school. Kahane received his rabbinical ordination from the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, where he was especially admired by the head Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz. He was fully conversant in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), the Talmud, the Midrash and Jewish law. Subsequently, Kahane earned a B.A. in political science from Brooklyn College in 1954, a Bachelor of Law – LL.B. from New York Law School, and an M.A. in International Relations from New York University.

In 1956, Kahane married Libby Blum, with whom he had four children: Tzipporah, Tova, Baruch, and Binyamin. Binyamin became an Orthodox Jewish scholar, rabbi, and far-right political leader aligned with Kahane's political movement, and was later killed in 2000.