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The pro-Israel influencer's post quoting Rabbi Meir Kahane sparked backlash, reigniting debates over extremism in Jewish discourse.
By BEN SALES FEBRUARY 26, 2025 01:49
Ira Savetsky and Lizzy Savetsky attend a Thomas Ashbourne Craft Spirits and Fleishigs Magazine event on Sept. 18, 2022 in New York City.
(photo credit: Sean Zanni/Getty Images for Fleishigs Magazine)
When she posted a clip of Rabbi Meir Kahane to her 407,000 followers on Instagram, Lizzy Savetsky expected some blowback.
Kahane was an American Jewish extremist who wanted to rid Israel of Arabs and was barred from Israel’s parliament after one term for inciting racism. Before posting the clip, Savetsky said in an interview, she had known Kahane was a “pretty polarizing figure” who had founded the Jewish Defense League. Later, she said, he “had gone pretty far out, and was kicked out of the Knesset.”
But she still felt the message in the clip was worth sharing. In the footage Kahane tells an audience that it is impossible for Israel and “the Arabs” to make peace diplomatically.
“If you’re good to them, you’re not good — you’re weak. And if you’re weak, you’re dead,” he says. “And if you’re strong, they listen to you.”
In a caption, Savetsky added, “Rabbi Meir Kahane, of blessed memory, was labeled as a violent extremist, but he was right. This is the truth right here. The only language the Arabs understand is force and fear.”
Savetsky gets backlash
The post, as she predicted, sparked a response that was instant and largely negative: “So you do support terrorism after all, as long as the terrorist is Jewish?” one commenter asked. “No. Just no.” wrote another. A few agreed with her.
Savetsky’s post and the reaction to it are emblematic of how Jewish online discourse has shifted after a week in which Israel saw Hamas parade the coffins of two young boys, Israeli hostages Ariel and Kfir Bibas, across a stage in Gaza in a macabre ceremony.
It also comes after President Donald Trump repeatedly proposed depopulating Gaza and bringing it under American control. And it is happening in an era when Kahane’s followers have gained an unprecedented foothold in Israel’s government — with Itamar Ben-Gvir, who got his start in the movement, serving as national security minister until last month.
The footage of the Bibas’ coffins led some Jews to abandon hope of any accommodation with Palestinians in Gaza. And for a number of them, Trump’s plan offered a concrete way to avoid one. Taken together, those developments have led some voices to endorse people or perspectives long considered outside the bounds of mainstream American Jewish discourse.
“When we’re entering an environment where increasingly extreme ideas are being expressed across the public sphere, those are now in bounds to be discussed,” said Josh Pasek, a professor of communication, media and political science at the University of Michigan. “When things are normalized, when they show up more, they’re now part of the discourse.”
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Savetsky — a pro-Israel influencer who left the cast of “Real Housewives of New York” in 2022, saying she had experienced antisemitism — says she’s no Kahanist. But she said in an interview that she stands by her decision to post the speech, which she felt struck a chord after an agonizing week in Israel.
“I just thought that that message was so important because we’ve been doing the same thing for so long,” she said in an interview. “We continue to take these diplomatic measures with terrorists who don’t care about diplomacy, and it just doesn’t work.”
After Hamas’ ceremony with the Bibas’ coffins, which was attended by a crowd that appeared to include many civilians and was accompanied by festive music, she said, “A lot of us have had our eyes opened.”
She also praised Trump’s plan, first saying, “If it can happen, I support it,” then adding later, “It’s not necessarily about his idea itself, as it is about his strong words and strong message. I think that that ultimately has a ripple effect to bring different parties to the table.”
In a followup video and an interview, Savetsky said she did not agree with all of Kahane’s views, and said her endorsement was limited to the specific message she shared. But to many viewers, she was platforming one of the most notorious Jewish extremists of modern times.
Before he was assassinated by an Egyptian-born American citizen in 1990, Kahane founded the militant Jewish Defense League in New York, which is tied to a series of terror attacks; he was convicted of making bombs. He then led a far-right party in Israel, where he was best known for calling for Arabs to be expelled en masse from the country. It was eventually banned from running in elections.
“Meir Kahane was a monster,” read a post by the pro-Israel group Zioness, echoing a stream of reactions across Instagram. “He was rejected by the Jewish people. He was rejected by the State of Israel… If you endorse him, support him, or platform his views, you are a terror supporter.”
Savetsky was not the only influencer to praise Kahane last week. In a video shared by the militant pro-Israel group Betar US, actor Michael Rapaport said, “Kahane was always right.”
Solutions and responses once considered extreme are getting a hearing in other fora as well. Liel Leibovitz, a conservative writer for Tablet, penned an essay last week calling for “Trump’s plan, or some other arrangement that leaves Gaza empty of Gazans.” Paraphrasing another Jewish thinker, he wrote, “hate, too, is a Jewish virtue.”
Those proclamations have, in turn, prompted backlash from Jews who hope to hold the line against Kahanism or mass expulsion — even as they too grapple with the anguish surrounding the Bibas’ deaths.
Essays like Leibovitz’s, wrote Joe Schwartz in a widely shared Facebook post Sunday, are “riding a wave of agony and horror among Israelis and Jews following the gruesome spectacle of the return of the Bibas family’s bodies.”
Schwartz, an American-born rabbi who lives in Tel Aviv and works for the Jewish Agency for Israel, continued, “If ever there was a time when we should expect mass radicalization, it is now. And that is why we must be on our strongest guard precisely now, as we break down in tears over our innocent victims.”
He concluded, “Kahanism is a shortcut to a dead-end for us. We must say no to it.”
Savetsky has never had a problem ruffling feathers on Instagram or off, and said she isn’t trying to appeal to a broad audience. “I speak to my own people,” she said. “When I make my videos, I’m talking to my fellow Jews.”
Before last week, an endorsement of Kahane’s words may have seemed out of character for Savetsky. Eleven months ago, she wore a corset to a New York Jewish federation gala in homage to Rana Raslan, an Arab Israeli who was crowned Miss Israel in 1999 and originally sported the look. She has praised Israel’s “tolerance” and “diversity” — not qualities Kahane espoused.
Savetsky says her views haven’t fundamentally changed. In an interview, she said she opposed expelling Israeli Arabs or stripping them of citizenship. She said she believes there are innocent civilians in Gaza — though she added that she believes there are “plenty of civilians in Gaza who have acted with terrorism.”
“The main point is that for me it wasn’t about platforming him, Kahane, but it was about opening up the conversation about a new approach, and that’s how I saw it,” she said. “These ideas maybe once seemed radical, but maybe they aren’t so radical. Not him and every idea he had — that specific idea.”
But to her critics, parsing Kahane’s words doesn’t pass muster. Alana Zeitchik, a cousin of hostage David Cunio who lives in New York, said she went to Savetsky’s home in November 2023, shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, to record a video advocating for the hostages. She said she appreciated Savetsky taking the time to do that.
But now she says she’s “appalled” by Savetsky’s posts, which, she said, run counter to the messages families of hostages are trying to send. She noted that Yigal Amir, the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, associated with Kahane’s followers.
“That is not part of how we advocate,” said Zeitchik, who also posted a video to Instagram opposing Kahanism. “We don’t invoke the words of terrorists to talk about our loved ones who are being held hostage.”
She added, “It doesn’t really matter if someone actually believes the ideology that they are promoting. It still emboldens it, it makes it OK and it then normalizes it.”
Other pro-Israel influencers also shot back at Savetsky, though few did so by name.
“As Kahanism forces its way into mainstream discourse, it’s incumbent upon voices in the Jewish space to call it out and to pressure Jewish organizations to not pedestalize those who invoke his name with favor,” Blake Flayton wrote to his nearly 100,000 followers on X. “Do not invite influencers to your conferences who want to deport my Arab friends and neighbors from our country.”
On Instagram, a group of four Jewish content creators likewise posted a message implicitly criticizing Savetsky.
“We have been following with shock the surge in Kahanist rhetoric in the past few days on social media,” the message said. “Meir Kahane stands as the only politician in Israel’s history to have his own party barred from the Knesset and designated as a terrorist group by Israel itself for racist incitement against Palestinians… His memory is not “blessed,” and his words are not to be invoked in any way, shape or form.”
To both Zeitchik and Pasek, the discourse around Savetsky’s post was reminiscent of Elon Musk making a gesture resembling a Nazi salute at a presidential inauguration rally last month. The gesture itself was damaging, each of them said, regardless of Musk’s intent.
“There are so many things about the fact that it happened that it renders borderline irrelevant the true question of the underlying motivation,” Pasek said. “When you take an action, you’re having the effect and you’re just as responsible for it. And to say, ‘Well I didn’t mean it to go there, but it is what I said,’ is kind of beside the point.”
Savetsky rejects the idea that she effectively endorsed Kahanism — and said that what she desires is peace in the region and an end to Jewish suffering. In light of last week, she said, that should mean considering a different set of ideas.
“Anyone who follows me knows what I stand for and knows that that is not who I am,” she said. “So if people take that to mean that everything I’ve ever said or done is now kaput, it’s just not the case.”
She added later, “I’ve never hid my passion for love and diversity and my hope for peace but what we’ve done has not worked. I want to wake people up.”
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