As mainstream figures adopt his ideas, and even the President of the United States recognizes the need to remove enemies of the Jewish State, it’s high time that Israelis get used to the idea that Kahane wasn’t just right. He was prophetic. Instead of witch hunts against those who recognize his prescience, it’s time to terminate the taboo on appreciating the man and his legacy.

The massacre of October 7 didn’t just kill Israelis—it shattered illusions. The idea of peaceful coexistence with those who chant for our death and raise their children to hate Jews is now, for most Israelis, a grotesque fantasy. As the IDF fights a necessary and just war in Gaza, and the government quietly supports voluntary emigration for those who don’t wish to live under Israeli sovereignty, a name long reviled in polite society is rising again in hushed tones: Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Kahane, assassinated by a terrorist in New York in 1990, was demonized during his life and banned from the Knesset for racism. His views on Arab–Jewish relations, population transfer, and national identity were treated as extremist—even taboo. But in the wake of the horrors inflicted by Hamas and the growing realization that there is no peace partner on the other side of the fence, many now ask: Was he right all along?

In his most famous book, They Must Go, Kahane wrote: “Democracy is not a suicide pact. A country has the right, the obligation, to survive. And if that means removing from its midst those who would destroy it—then so be it.” He believed that a Jewish state must remain Jewish, and that the presence of a large, hostile Arab population within and around Israel made that impossible. Kahane predicted—with uncanny accuracy—that the dream of Oslo, of two states living side by side in peace, was an illusion built on sand.

Today’s headlines bear him out. The Israeli government has approved a directorate to help Gazans voluntarily emigrate to third countries. The public overwhelmingly supports this policy. Even the United States, through the words and actions of Donald Trump, has shown openness to “resettlement” as a realistic and moral alternative to endless war and terror. The ground has shifted.

And yet, while the country changes, its internal organs resist. Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar has reportedly tasked agents with rooting out “Kahanism” among police and prison officials, as though loyalty to the Jewish people and concern for national security were signs of subversion. What Bar doesn’t seem to grasp is that it’s not Kahanists who have infiltrated the system—it’s reality that has vindicated Kahane.

Figures like Rehavam “Gandhi” Ze’evi and Rafael “Raful” Eitan carried aspects of Kahane’s vision into the military and political mainstream. Today, Itamar Ben Gvir openly embraces Kahane’s legacy and sits in Israel’s cabinet. What was once called extremism is now government policy. The people, not the elite, have moved.

And it’s not just in Israel. Donald Trump, too, shares part of this legacy—calling out anti-Israel sentiment among immigrants, opposing appeasement of jihadist regimes, and unapologetically supporting Jewish self-defense. Like Kahane, Trump is hated by the globalist class and beloved by those who have had enough of weakness dressed up as virtue.

Critics still call Kahane racist. But racism implies a belief in inherent superiority. Kahane didn’t say Jews were better. He said Jews had a right to live—and that those who seek their destruction must not be allowed to live among them. After October 7, can any serious person still disagree?

The time has come to speak the truth. Kahane was not a prophet of hate. He was a prophet of survival. He saw what others refused to see: that the conflict is not about land, but about identity, and that coexistence with a people indoctrinated to hate is not coexistence at all—it is suicide.

“They must go,” he wrote. And perhaps now, finally, Israel is beginning to understand and appreciate why.