Kahane, the founder of the militant Jewish Defense League and Israel's ultranationalist Kach party, was shot dead moments after finishing a speech at the Marriott East Side Hotel in Manhattan. Egyptian-born gunman El Sayyid Nosair was tried but acquitted of murder, though he was later convicted on related weapons charges; investigators later linked him and his associates to the broader terrorist network responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Meir Kahane had built a career on confrontation. As founder of the Jewish Defense League in 1968, he championed armed self-defense against antisemitism, and after moving to Israel he founded the ultranationalist Kach party, which was eventually banned from the Knesset for its racist platform advocating the expulsion of Arabs from Israeli-controlled territory. He remained a lightning rod, drawing devoted followers and passionate enemies on multiple continents.
On the night of November 5, 1990, Kahane addressed a small gathering at a Marriott hotel in Manhattan. As he finished speaking, El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian immigrant, approached and shot him at close range before fleeing the scene, only to be caught after a brief chase and shootout with a postal police officer.
Prosecutors seemed to have an open-and-shut case, yet a jury acquitted Nosair of murder, convicting him only on weapons charges, a verdict that stunned investigators. Years later, following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, evidence emerged connecting Nosair and his circle to Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman's terrorist network, retroactively reframing Kahane's assassination as an early strike in a wave of Islamist militant violence that would culminate in the September 11 attacks.
Key people: Meir Kahane, El Sayyid Nosair