Neturei Karta and other ultra religious sects that hate Israel are irrational on many issues. Why should they be different on the issue of Israel?

If you consider that other religious groups like the Jehovah Witnesses who don’t recognize any State or government are also probably anti-Zionists than you would have to consider them as another group that is not anti Semitic.

But do these religious groups live in the real world?

The real question should be are people engaged with the real world also anti Semitic if they are anti Zionist. The answer is yes.

Mikey’s positions are well argued but his insistence that quoting a group’s doctrines proves his case is in error.

I could quote the Soviet constitution about equal rights all day long, but that doesn’t mean that there was such a thing in the Soviet Union.

Of course, his use of evidence is a lot better than Ben White’s questionable appeal to emotions to make his case.

He has no facts, not figures, just some emotive notions about “evil Zionists.”

Until he answers any of the many questions (I’d settle for his answering three questions) posed to him by posters there is no need to take anything he says seriously.

Yes, Ben, it would be interesing to discuss the Satmar take on the Holocaust. I have been in debate with them and others on this issue, since my bar Mirtzvah, but I suspect we should do so on a different thread.

It seems absolutely clear to me that you have a belief that Zionists created a great crime in 1948 and that you do not recognise any fault in the Palestinian Arab leadership at that time. But it is also clear to me that you have no justification for that belief apart from propaganda that has been fed to you that you lap up. You stated that you would “happily sit down and type out a list of books” to try and justify your position but when subsequently challenged to provide some quotes that backed it up you ran away from the challenge.

Despite numerous requests you have also failed to explain why you believe that Israel is the only country in the world not worthy of existence. Your position is morally bankrupt.

I apologise, you are correct. I may have been overly sarcastic but it was because I was getting a bit annoyed. Quite early on in this thread, I said I was “Hopefully concluding on this matter.” It is absolutely clear that Satmar are anti-Zionist. I ideally wanted to stop there but Shriber came back. Ultimately I requested of him to “Please, give it up.” He did not but continued and gave a source to try and justify his position. I went to the trouble of reading his source. His own source states that “Satmar Hasidim oppose all forms of Zionism.” I am happy to drop the matter now.

Regarding Satmar’s blaming Zionism for the Holocaust, this is indeed very concerning but fits in with their general thesis. To explain why they do, it is necessary to have some background:

The 16th century Talmudic scholar, the Maharal of Prague, warned that “the prohibition against returning from the Diaspora is as strict as any apostasy.” The reason for this is that Jewish exile is a punishment for Jewish sins. God scattered the people of Israel amongst the nations and they must await the coming of the Messiah for their redemption.According to the great eleventh century Jewish scholar and commentator, Rashi “he who leads one to sin is worse than one who kills since killing puts an end to ones existence in this world, but sinning puts an end to it also in the next world.”

The Satmar Rebbe, Grand Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum,believed “sin is the cause for all suffering.” Zionism was a great sin and would lead to a terrible disaster. In his book Vayoel Moshe (And Moses Agreed), which Teitelbaum composed in the late 1950s: “six million of Israel were killed… for this is the bitter punishment as the Talmud makes it clear when it says ‘I am permitting your flesh [to be devoured] like the flesh of the deer and the gazelle’.” He drew the inevitable conclusion: the Holocaust itself was a direct result of Zionism and divine punishment for the Zionists’ sin: “For their hands are stained with blood, and they are the reason for the terrible disaster of the killing of the killing of six million Jews.” He believed Hitler to be a messenger of divine wrath sent to chasten the Jews because of the bitter apostasy of Zionism against the belief in the eventual Messianic redemption.

[NB. I have used a number of sources for this, but it is explained very well and in some detail in Dina Porat’s article, “Amalek’s accomplices” that I have referred to earlier on in this thread. Her essay has also been republished in her recent highly acclaimed book, Israeli Society, the Holocaust and its Survivors (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2008)pp. 358-387]

I am not saying that I agree with any of this, but it explains the theological reason as to why the Satmarer blame the Holocaust on the Zionists.

Regarding Neturei Karta, they are in a world of their own. To the best of my knowledge, other ultra-Orthodox sects want nothing to do with them. According to a report published onynetnews.com in the week of the Tehran conference:

The Satmar Hassidism Court published an unprecedented statement calling on the public to disassociate themselves from the seven Neturei Karta members who visited Iran to attend the Holocaust denial conference this week.

The Satmar movement printed an official placard, with bold black lettering, publicly denouncing “fanaticism, and those committing insane acts to walk hand in hand with the Arabs.”

The court further ordered that the offenders be shunned and their actions be condemned. It slams the offenders for “joining in desecrating the name of the heavens.

The declaration expresses astonishment at how a few people “dared attend a special conference of the nations of the world that despise Israel (may the names of the evil rot), deny the Holocaust, and deny and belittle the immensity of the evil and murder of those killed for sanctifying the lord; they desecrated the name of the heavens.”

Residents of the Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim said that the Orthodox leaders could not stand the fact that those individuals who visited Iran identify themselves as Satmar Jews, and thus stain the name of Orthodoxy.

Its all but indistinguishable (bar literary floursihes, such as meetings in Prague cemetery) from the antisemitic compendium that is the Protocols.

This is antisemitism in the 21st century. It is re-packaged and newly branded as anti-Zionism, but our great grandmothers would have known it exactly for what it is.

There are some people who have far better reasons than others for hating Zionists. I’d certainly include Palestinians & Neturei Karta in that category. I don’t hate these people for their hatred, because its largely understandable: unlike their fellow travellers who claim to know better, but who have allowed their failed ideological rhetoric to lead them down antisemitic one way alleys, and who now reflexively dismiss and deny all mainstream majority Jewish perspectives on identity & antisemitism.

New Statesman’s editor Peter Wilby didn’t know why a gold star of david piercing a union jack was antisemitic. He wouldn’t apologise to mainstream Jewish community groups, and only did so when Jewish anti-Zionists occupied his office. - And we are expected to respect the opinion of Wilby et al as to what is and is not antisemitic. What a sad joke.

Ben:

Sorry, simply saying “I do not subscribe to the Ilan Pappe version of events” is not particularly revealing about your view on a fairly fundamental point here. So I’ll ask again:

“are you saying that it is simply not true that for a Palestinian, Zionism has meant the loss of a village, land, expulsion, enforced exile, and collective dispossession?”

If so, it’s amazing that all these years later, a ‘Z-Word’ blog still boils down to the same point: “It never happened”. (Which doesn’t even have the honesty of the position that says, ‘Yes, it happened, and it was jolly well worth it’.)

For me, the most important point which Shriber makes relates to how the Satmar represent an anti-modernist ideology which, among other things, puts the responsibility for the Holocaust on the Jews. That, perhaps, is the real issue we should be debating.

Also, since both of you seem to know your onions on this one, I am genuinely interested to know more about the fallout of NK’s Iran trip on the other ultraorthodox groups.

Ben White, I do not subscribe to the Ilan Pappe version of events (he, I assume, would head up your reading list).

Regarding your remark about Hamas being irrelevant to a discussion about antisemitism and anti-Zionism, are they really? I raised them in terms of their contribution to the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people, but they are also a wonderful example of how anti-Zionism can be indistinguishable from antisemitism.

Let us see them then - a serious of quotes from scholarly books that suggests that “for a Palestinian, Zionism has meant the loss of a village, land, expulsion, enforced exile, and collective dispossession.” I argue that it the Palestinian leadership at fault, not Zionism. To quote directly from a leading scholar on the matter:

on April 25 [1948], the American consulate in Haifa was reporting that the “local Mufti-dominated Arab leaders urge all Arabs [to] leave [the] city and large numbers [are] going.” Three days later it pointed a clear finger: “Reportedly Arab Higher Committee ordering all Arabs [to] leave.” Writing on the same day to the colonial secretary in London, Sir Alan Cunningham, the British high commissioner for Palestine, was equally forthright: “British authorities in Haifa have formed the impression that total evacuation is being urged on the Haifa Arabs from higher Arab quarters and that the townsfolk themselves are against it.” Finally, a British intelligence report summing up the events of the week judged that, had it not been for the incitement and scaremongering of the Haifa Arab leadership, most Arab residents might well have stayed.

Source:

Efraim Karsh, “Were the Palestinians expelled?” Commentary Vol. 110, Iss. 1 (Jul/Aug 2000) pp. 29-34

Simple, I would ask them why the Palestinian Arabs made war on the Jews who had accepted the UN partition plan. I would also ask them why they refused then and still refuse to accept the legitimate claims of the Jews to the land of their ancestors.

However, Ben White, this is no an innocent question. It is a question posed by an Englishman who has taken the side of the Arabs in their struggle against the Jews.
My question to you, then, is why did you choose one side in this struggle?

It’s also not a simple question because most Palestinians today did not lose their villages or land to the Jews some of their parents and grandparents did for reasons I stated above.

This question begs another: why is there still a “Palestinian Arab refugee problem” and not say a Muslim or Hindu refugee problem in the subcontinent. Whey is there no German refugee problem in Europe or a Greek and Turkish refugee problem?

The answer is simple the Arabs refused to repatriate their refugees while all the other peoples did. The Jews repatriated a half a million refugees from Arabs lands.

The Palestinian refugee problem is weapon used by the enemies of the Jews (including you) in order to continue their war against the Jewish State.