US To Remove Radical Right-Wing Kach Movement From Foreign Terrorist Group List

The United States will remove the radical Jewish right-wing Kach movement founded by former Israeli lawmaker Rabbi Meir Kahane from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The State Department, which designated the group Kahane Chai (or Kahane Lives) as a terror group in 1997, informed Congress it will withdraw the designation. It has not been linked to a terrorist attack since 2005, the AFP news agency reported, citing an unnamed State Department official. AFP reported that the official said that the State Department also was removing from the foreign terrorist organization list the Mujahidin Shoura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, a Palestinian jihadist umbrella group placed on the list after several rocket attacks on Israel a decade ago. The Kach movement was banned from running in elections for the Knesset in 1988 over its incitement to racism, and was completely banned in Israel in 1994. Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was first elected to Knesset in 1984 and held US citizenship until the Knesset passed a law in 1987 declaring that a Knesset member could not hold foreign citizenships, was assassinated in New York 1990. Kach is still designated as a terrorist group by Israel, the European Union, Canada, and Japan.