Kanai (Hebrew: קנאי, plural: kana'im, קנאים) is a term for a zealot or fanatic.
Zealotry, described by Josephus as one of the "four sects" of Judaism during his time, was a political movement in first century Judaism which sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force of arms, most notably during the First Jewish–Roman War (66-70 CE).
Starting in the middle of the 19th century, those fighting the attempts of the Maskilim to introduce secular institutions to Jerusalem were known as kanaim.
Among the kanaim was the leader of the Perushim Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin who banned the secular institutions.
Those feelings became more pronounced when a delegation of the Neturei Karta attended the conference in Tehran on Holocaust Denial.