Jews Against Israel

...Titles include Heaven at Bay, a critical study of Zionism by British journalist Emile Marmorstein...

...But the current prize offering is The Holocaust Victims Accuse by Aguda ideologist Moshe Shonfeld, charging Zionist collusion with the Final Solution...

...Diehard members were outraged...

...Instead, Neturei Karta prefers the more direct—and much costlier—"appeals to the world's conscience," hortatory display ads in the New York Times, Washington Star and Jewish newspapers...

...The damning evidence, it is claimed, can be seen in the permanent battleground that the Zionists have made of the Middle East and the disastrous erosion of God's law in the Holy Land itself...

...The State has no worth and no substance," writes the Satmar Rebbe, "either to the Holy One Blessed Be He or to the Jewish people...

...Der Yid has condemned Neturei Karta for presumed indiscretions like the Wald-heim letter and a number of young worshipers associated with the sect have been expelled from Satmar congregations...

...In the characteristically vivid imagery of Neturei Karta, Zionism is the modern face of Satan, the new Golden Calf, the falsest in a long line of false Messiahs...

...The result has been a permanent state of friction with anti-Zionist purists like Satmar and Neturei Karta members that occasionally heats up to the combustion point, an unsettling irony for a community already simmering with explosive tensions between Jews and their Third World neighbors...

...arche-ological excavations of ancient cemeteries...

...Aguda set up political parties, published newspapers and ran schools...

...In the war years, Neturei Karta gained control of Jerusalem's Ash-kenazic religious community, the edah ha-haredit, a position it holds today...

...What is Neturei Karta...

...These spokesmen do not represent a substantial part of the Jewish community," it read, going on to laud the President for his "efforts for a just and sound peace in the Middle East...

...In more recent years, the sound and fury have hardly diminished...

...Neturei Karta itself is riven with factions...

...It was not always so...

...At one time, Orthodoxy was virtually synonymous with anti-Zionism...

...When we do talk to them, it is only out of concern for Jewish people in Arab lands...

...Though the skirmish had all the earmarks of a spontaneous eruption and Neturei Karta itself strongly denied any involvement, the inevitable accusatory fingers pointed to the sect...

...We beseech His Excellency against whatever may be the outcome of the debate in the General Assembly, to clearly distinguish between the Jewish people and Zionist-Israeli...

...But this is no longer true...

...Indeed, it is often hard to ascertain just who acts or speaks on behalf of a non-organization that demands only a shared idea as a qualification for membership...

...By now, of course, Hitler's ravages and the dramatic transformations within Palestine itself had secured world opinion, among both Jew and Gentile, to the Zionist camp...

...Neturei Karta, firmly disclaiming any responsibility for the act, has been absolved from suspicion...

...They have gained special notoriety among Jews the world over for their alleged habit of stoning cars that dare the narrow streets of Mea Shearim on Shab-bat—a charge they deny—thus violating the day of rest they seek to save...

...It's a one-way battle," charges Lubavitch Rabbi Krinsky...

...You can't put fire out with gasoline," says a representative of the latter point of view...

...Another ad, a 1975 open letter to UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim titled "Zionism Is Not Judaism," joined the ecumenical fray after the UN vote equating Zionism with racism...

...But in Palestine, the Zionists' increasing dominance of the Yishuv forced Aguda into a troubling series of accommodations, to the point where Agudists helped Zionists run for office and Agudist schools adopted secular curricula...

...But they retain this as a very important sacrament...

...For the next two decades, Aguda was the Orthodox establishment, both in the West and in Palestine itself...

...If they hadn't come here, the confrontation wouldn't have taken place...

...It is part of a long, even honorable anti-Zionist tradition within Judaism that has included elements as disparate as the (Orthodox) Aguda, the (Reform) American Council for Judaism, the (Socialist) Bund and contemporary critics like Rabbi Elmer Berger of Jewish Alternatives to Zionism, I. F. Stone and Noam Chomsky...

...Supposedly, the sect did agree to seek UN observer status, similar to the PLO's, if Israel were expelled...

...To me, Zion doesn't mean a thing even theologically...

...David Ben-Gurion grudgingly acknowledged: "Everyone who respects an upright and sincere belief of the heart cannot help respecting this attitude of Neturei Karta...

...The various Zionist parties are fanatical in their views," it pleaded, "and are attempting to uproot the foundations of the faith and make a fundamental change in the conception of the Jew...

...Vicious beasts threatened to annihilate them, and murderers who call themselves 'rescuers' abandoned the victims' lives...

...The two rabbis called the king "the rightful owner of the Wall and the roads leading to it," having concluded that "nothing substantial" would come from the Begin-Sadat peace initiative...

...In the spring of 1977, Brooklynites were treated to the unlikely spectacle of a Chassidic rumble when Satmar youth of Williamsburg, many of whom were new to the Neturei Karta line, clashed on the street with their Lubavitch counterparts from adjacent Crown Heights...

...The Brooklyn branch also makes a small mail-order library available...

...Satmar youth, many of whom claimed allegiance to Neturei Karta, have culminated recent Purim celebrations with hanging effigies of the Lubavitcher Rebbe or street burnings of the Israeli flag...

...According to reports, the two groups had discussed possible joint activities "in the event of Israel's being ousted from the United Nations...

...We are 100 percent behind the flag burnings," says Neturei Karta of USA Executive Director Joseph Becher...

...It asked the UN to internationalize Jerusalem and grant special protection to religious Jews...

...Its representatives decline to cite figures, claiming it is more of a shared state of mind than a formal organization...

...Indeed, it appears that sufficient numbers of older traditionalists and passionate youth among Satmarer support Neturei Karta activities, so that while the overlap is not perfect, (and while, too, many Neturei Karta members are non-Chassidic), there remains a sizable convergence...

...They reject Zionism and support the national rights of Palestinians...

...Yet at the same time they deny the Orthodox pioneer settlers of the Holy City the right to have their meat slaughtered ritually under the personal supervision of their own rabbis...

...The Neturei Karta are irritating reminders that activism can lead to the illusion of total self-sufficiency, and self-sufficiency to arrogance, and arrogance to presumption...

...Hassan Rahman, PLO representative in New York, declares: "We respect Neturei Karta...

...The twin common denominators are Orthodox belief and anti-Zionism...

...A more hard-nosed outside estimate, however, counts 5,000 members in Israel and up to 30,000 elsewhere...

...They are really the most authentic Jewish anti-Zionists in the world," says Reform Rabbi Elmer Berger, himself considered by many (depending on their viewpoint) the dean or devil of American-Jewish anti-Zionism...

...Other Jews, however, tend to dismiss Neturei Karta as a handful of crackpots or, at best, the sincere but fossilized remains of an archaic faith...

...Neturei Karta must be regarded as more than an annoying curio of Jewish life...

...They are not the Arab League or the Palestine Liberation Organization, but an aggregate of ultra-Orthodox Jews based in Israel and the United States known as Neturei Karta, or "Guardians of the City...

...A special sore point has been the links, real and alleged, between Neturei Karta and anti-Israeli Arabs...

...For example, Neturei Karta of USA's Joseph Becher repudiates the curious stickers echoing Neturei Karta sentiments New Yorkers saw strewn throughout the city transit system a few years back...

...Some Skeletons in the Zionist Closet," "Peace, Peace, But There Is No Peace...

...On the last day of Passover 1977, 2,000 Lubavitcher Chassidim took their customary stroll from their home ground of Crown Heights to Satmar turf in Williamsburg...

...How are the ads paid for...

...Sect doctrine believes the Redemption is entirely in God's hands, to be inaugurated in a blaze of miraculous acts...

...The moderate majority is closer to the Satmar ideal of vigilant passivism...

...The Zionist fraud and deception has increased by its usurpation of the name of Israel and by the Zionist pretense of representing the Jewish people," the letter read...

...They claim that the history of the Zionist movement from the beginning has been one of vicious manipulation...

...It was definitely the work of professionals," says Jacobson, "people who know their business...

...Though Mizrachi and Agudist forces were frequently forced into painful compromises, Neturei Karta never wavered from its strident resistance to what it termed "Jewish secular National Socialism...

...Its triumphs may, in the nature of things, go to its head, and militarism may someday turn from an unwanted necessity to a way of life...

...Says Rabbi Rotten-burg: "Burning an Israeli flag is no worse than the Zionists themselves giving Israel a black eye, like that television show that 100 million Arabs could see showing Jewish soldiers killing Arabs...

...Yet, insists Rabbi Rottenburg, "Neturei Karta is Satmar and Satmar is Neturei Karta...

...They have publicly burned the Israeli flag and hung the pro-Israeli Lubavitcher Rebbe in effigy...

...In 1935, some Agudists, led by Rabbis Amram Blau and Aharon Katzenelbogen, walked out to form Hevrat Hayyim, proclaiming unswerving opposition to the Zionist heresy...

...The latter declined the offer, however, reluctant to wander too far from the protective mantle of Torah...

...The PLO invited Neturei Karta to join a government-in-exile as "consultants...

...The realities of the Mideast cold war thwarted his request...

...Neturei Karta of USA puts out an irregular newsletter, the Jewish Guardian, filled mostly with variations on the basic anti-Zionist theme (sample articles: "Let My People Go—to Where...

...From time to time Neturei Karta issues calls for the internationalization of Jerusalem and return of the occupied territories, allowing for a binational entity as a possible alternative to the present Jewish State...

...If we do get involved in demonstrations, it is against religious persecutions, not the state per se...

...Neturei Karta is a living remnant, even though embalmed and congealed, of this Judaism...

...As the war ended and partition became a looming certainty, devotees demonstrated, fasted and appealed to the UN to abort the plan for a Jewish state...

...The Statehood years saw Neturei Karta in the forefront of the fierce and frequent battles between secular and religious forces...

...Like us, they are a group discriminated against," Rahman continues...

...Thus, any Jew who happens to oppose the Zionist state for religious reasons is conveniently swept up in the Neturei Karta's wide-cast net...

...Most disturbing of all is the still-unsolved bombing, three years ago, of the Algemeiner Journal, the Lubavitch- . leaning Yiddish weekly...

...The Massada complex would have then, as now, condemned the Jewish people to complete physical annihilation...

...Nevertheless, the incident has served to underscore Neturei Karta's front-line position in an old, fiercely fought and still far from quiet war between Jews...

...For its part, Neturei Karta publicized the assembly with enthusiastic fanfare...

...Neturei Karta is quantitatively insignificant when stacked against the legion of religious Zionists, themselves just a small part of the world Zionist movement...

...Occasionally, the Guardian forays into other territory, as in its sulfurous campaigns against the English-language weekly Jewish Press and the Equal Rights Amendment ("The so-called 'women's liberation' movement stands opposed to everything advocated by Judaism and Torah law...

...a halt to pressure for Jewish emigration from Russia (and elsewhere...

...We make appeals in Satmar shuls," says Joseph Becher, "or we go from home to home...

...In January 1978, Reb Amram's son Uri joined Moshe Hirsch in an appeal to Jordan's King Hussein for permission to visit the Wailing Wall, which Neturei Karta has shunned since its recapture by Israeli forces in 1967...

...and Domb's aforementioned The Transformation...

...More recently, to counter Jewish criticism of President Carter's harder line on Israel, Neturei Karta published an open letter to Carter...

...In Israel, Neturei Karta adherents spurn all the trappings of citizenship, including the everyday use of Hebrew, military service and government-minted currency and Lehman Weichselbaum is a freelance writer in New York City...

...In the wake of the July 1976 Entebbe raid, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneer-son, marked decisively the distance his sect had come from its once-implacable anti-Zionism when he hailed the rescue as an authentic miracle...

...All, charges the Satmar Rebbe—echoed by Neturei Karta—have been brazenly violated by the Zionists...

...in fact, measures that extreme are not its style...

...Agudists pledged to seek the "solution of all problems facing the Jewish people in the spirit of Torah"— which, to them, clearly ran counter to Zionism...

...Archaeological diggings are turning the holy places into tourist attractions...

...Neturei Karta, increasingly alone in the spiritual trenches, dug in ever deeper...

...We sympathize with them...

...Similarly, Mizrachi President Rabbi Louis Bernstein declares: "They seem to think that the more anti-Zionist you are, the more religious you are...

...Claimed the UN missive: "The municipality through its Department of Beau-tification sanctions the houses of pornography, licentiousness and worse to defile and debase the Holy City of Jerusalem...

...These Zionists claim to be the proud descendants of the infamous hoodlums who were responsible for the destruction of the Second Temple," wrote founding father Rabbi Amram Blau...

...Torah Judaism and the State of Israel, a scholarly tract by Uriel Zimmer...

...A week later, Journal offices were vandalized, kicking off a year-long campaign of intense harassment that culminated in the separate fire-bombings of both the newspaper offices and its plant...

...When Jerusalem officials ordered the Mea Shearim slaughterhouse closed in 1976, the sect directed a shower of mail to the UN Security Council and to US members of Congress...

...At worst, they're an embarrassment to individual Jews...

...The Israeli government closes down their slaughterhouse in reprisal and their people are beaten...

...We talk less with the Arabs than the Zionists do," Becher says...

...The most intense action, however, passed from Jerusalem and B'nai Brak to New York City...

...Should, Heaven forbid, the Zionists succeed in obtaining a country as they hope," he wrote, "they will defile it and desecrate it with their abominations and evil deeds and thus prolong, Heaven forbid, the length of the exile...

...Venerated names like the Chofetz Chaim, the Gerrer Rebbe, Soloveitchek, and Breuer studded its charter...

...A Neturei Karta member, G. J. Neuberger, did show up at the Tripoli Conference on Zionism and Racism in July 1976...

...Beyond all the clamor, one fact stands as a virtual certainty...

...As long as there is a State of Israel or a Zionist movement, Neturei Karta will continue to blare its disturbing, doomsaying trumpets outside the battlement...

...They include, of course, many Satmar Chassidim, as well as members of other Chassidic sects (particularly those, like the Satmarer, of Hungarian origin), but also several, misnagdim (historical opponents of Chassidut) and Jews of more contemporary garb and habits...

...But generally, the sect, professing more of a spiritual than a political-mindedness, prefers the bearing of critical witness to the drawing up of detailed solutions...

...A national furor was sparked when a motorcyclist was killed as a result...

...The Satmar-dominated Central Rabbinical Congress rejoined with a slashing condemnation of the raid...

...Says the Israeli consulate's Zvi Levine: "They're the same people from the same family...

...For Neturei Karta, passive fortitude is all the battle...

...Three years later, the name changed to the Aramaic "Neturei Karta," drawn from Tractate Hagiga, where scholars are hailed as the true "guardians of the city...

...The rabbis renewed their plea that spring in anticipation of the pending Passover...

...Within the broad historic tradition, Zion has played a more important role for many Jews than America...

...During the War of Independence, a delegation under Amram Blau marched out of the Old City of Jerusalem with white banners announcing "We are for peace," in an unsuccessful attempt to surrender to the Arabs...

...Even the old Luba-vitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Shulem Ber Schneerson, though not a member of Aguda, echoed its line...

...Israel is a fact," asserts Stauber...

...The reigning Lubavitcher Rebbe has, in general, come a long way from his predecessor, sponsoring his own aliyot and even endorsing Israel's hard-line position on the occupied territories...

...But they have also estranged many erstwhile allies, including much of the hierarchy around the aging Satmar Rebbe...

...Neturei Karta unfurled its standard against other alleged Zionist sacrilege: liberal marriage and immigration laws...

...But the Algemeiner Journal talks against our rebbe, which is a big sin...

...To this basic belief Neturei Karta adds further refinements, primarily the "Three Oaths" of the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Joel Teitel-baum...

...Of course, there were the religious Zionists of Mizrachi, but to Agudists their theology was fatally skewed, and their influence in the world Zionist movement, at least in the early years, was in any case negligible...

...Their polemically free-swinging ads in the New York Times and other major publications, both Jewish and secular, incur the ire of large numbers of their co-religionists...

...Let no one think that in the days of Messiah any of the laws of nature will be set aside," Maimonides wrote in The Laws of Kings, "or any innovation be introduced into creation...

...That creates a common ground for rapprochement...

...Also on the agenda was a fraternal outcry against a recent "pogrom" in B'nai Brak, where young kibbutzniks, incensed over restrictions on Shabbat traffic through town, had attacked Chassi-dim...

...Of all religious interest groups, they have been the noisiest opponents of a host of threatening incursions from modern life, ranging from autopsies and the women's draft to archeological digs and sex boutiques...

...There are no members and there is no president," writes London ideologue I. Domb in The Transformation, "because Neturei Karta represents the spontaneous feeling of Jews whose instincts demand of them that they should adopt this attitude...

...In 1912, the forces of counter-reformation consolidated in Agu-dat Israel...

...Overall, Neturei Karta functions as a small but aggressive international lobby for its "Torah-true" point of view...

...Their center is in the Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem, but they maintain a highly active presence in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Home of the Chassidic Satmar movement, to which they have long been closely linked...

...Rabbi Emmanuel Rottenburg of the Koson Chassidic congregation Beth Levi in the Bronx, one of the rare believers to speak for the record, says: "Everybody in the East Bronx knows I'm Neturei Karta...

...Their goal is nothing less than the total dismantling of the Zionist apparatus...

...In 1975, an alleged case of fraternization with the Arab enemy, when Neturei Karta members purportedly met with Palestine Liberation Organization representatives in Europe, provoked charges of treason in the Knesset...

...A melee ensued, mostly among younger Chassidim, though a number of older men were roughed up as well...

...After the 1967 Six-Day War, as Jews the world over rejoiced at the recapture of the Old City of Jerusalem, Neturei Karta remained as adamant as ever...

...But they wait for us, with garbage pails and sticks, slashing the tires of our 'mitzvah-mobiles.' It's their sin...

...Not all of my congregation agrees with me, but they still support me as their rabbi...

...Partisans of Neturei Karta of U.S.A., though numbering fewer than their Israeli comrades, compensate through even more volatile behavior...

...Neturei Karta's extravagances do draw support...

...Occasionally, Neturei Karta found itself embroiled in a real sensation, like the 1960 case of Yossele Schumacher—a young pawn in a furious custody case between nonreligious parents and secular parties on one side and a devout grandfather and religious interests on the other—that produced an elaborate intrigue complete with kidnapping...

...Zionism, therefore, is a preemption of heavenly right...

...No individual has done as much to help the country as the rebbe has, single-handedly," says Lubavitch spokesman Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky...

...It also took a lot of courage to be anti-fascist in Italy or anti-Nazi in Germany...

...In the transportation controversy, Mea Shearim residents hurled admonitions of "Shabbos...

...Now Neturei Karta is a free-for-all, and the rebbe disavows all responsibility...

...It called a rally (7,000 showed up) at New York's Manhattan Center to drive the point home...

...Amram Blau was a sincere person," says Chaim Stauber, until recently editor of Der Yid, the Satmar Yiddish newspaper...

...Some years after Rabbi Amram Blau's dramatic 1948 surrender attempt to the Arabs, he applied to Jordan for Neturei Karta emigration rights to the Old City of Jerusalem...

...and may or may not have flung stones) at passing cars on Saturdays and strung wires across roadways to deter offenders...

...Though such allegations have been heard elsewhere, from pro-Zionist Ben Hecht to PLO propagandists, Shonfeld's pamphlet speaks with an original rage that is disquietingly documented...

...I have nothing to give up...

...Nevertheless, Neturei Karta is anchored in a time-honored Orthodox principle, an idea far older than Zionism itself: that only the Messiah, God's anointed messenger, can restore the Jewish homeland...

...Neturei Karta of USA is linked to the militant Jerusalem minority led by Rabbis Moshe Hirsch and Uri Blau...

...We don't like arousing the public...

...In the U.S., core Neturei Karta followers run the gamut...

...We hold no animosity...

...Any mortal, "nationalist" attempts in that direction would mean Israel's demotion from its divinely chosen status to a "nation as all the nations...

...Observers from differing vantages agree that, ideologically, Neturei Karta mounts a powerful frontal attack on the most basic postulates of Zionism...

...In February 1975, the A Igemei-ner Journal published photos of the latest public incineration...

...Similarly, the autopsy debate prompted a massive telephone campaign ("How long, Hadassah...

...The Oaths, originally set forth in Tractate Ketubot and brought up to date by the rebbe, announce divine sanctions against militant movements to encourage emigration to the Land of Israel, against rebellion toward the nations of the diaspora and against postponement of the End of Days by sinful acts...

...It takes a lot of courage to be opposed to Zionism in America today," Neuberger, a New York businessman and writer, told the assembly...

...On the other hand, Rabbi Fabian Schon-feld, past President of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America and an American spokesman for Gush Emunim, cites the Maimoni-dean position that nonmiraculous human effort within the land of Israel can hasten the Messiah's coming...

...To date, no suspects have turned up, though both police and Journal editor Ger-shon Jacobson have acquitted Satmar and Neturei Karta elements of responsibility...

...and, in general, unflagging resistance to the State...

...Spiritually and emotionally, Neturei Karta presents a problem—but not physically or politically," says Zvi Levine, religious affairs attache to the Israeli Consulate in New York...

...Even though their wild actions profane the name of Israel and the name of religion, the source of their deplorable actions—the profound traditional belief that the redemption of Israel will come about only at the hands of Heaven—was the faith of the masses of Israel for hundreds of years...

...train tickets...

...Our only recourse is prayer...

...Shabbos...

...We don't want a confrontation," counters one Satmar yeshiva student...

...One typical ad describes the Zionist state as "conceived in atheism, based on materialism, nurtured by anti-Semitism, led by Marxism, ruled by chauvinism, trusting in militarism...

...The world will follow its normal course...

...In the long run Zionism is nothing but a passing aberration in the long history of the Jewish people and the history of the world...

...Sometimes even brothers quarrel...

...Lubavitcher is not welcome because they do us a lot of harm...

...Thus, if the centuries-old Messianic impulse lies at the core of the Zionist movement, even in the secret heart of the most godless Mapamnik, then Neturei Karta's challenge from within the sacred body of Judaism is indeed the most telling of all...

...They call for an end to Israeli military actions...

...Of all the newfangled currents of the Haska-lah—Reform Judaism, Bundist socialism, Yiddish culturalism— Zionism posed the most mortal threat to the old order, siphoning off the cream of once-religious youth to the malarial wastes of Palestine in the name of a frightening secular Messiah...

...The Satmar Rebbe supported him morally and financially...

...You can't fight goyishe idea with goyishe idea...

...Neturei Karta of USA's Joseph Becher denies any such encounter took place...

...At their destination they were met by an equal number of Satmarer, including, again, many Neturei Karta sympathizers...

...The Libyan representative circulated the ad approvingly among his General Assembly colleagues...

...We have no connection with the Zionists," it declared, "we desire no benefit from them, neither deliverance nor protection...

...In Tradition, journal of the Rabbinical Council of America, Yeshiva University President Rabbi Norman Lamm echoes the Maimonidean principle but concedes: "There may be a time when Israel will incline to an inflated view of its own power and prowess...

...aggressive aliyah policies directed toward Arab and, later,'Soviet Jews...

...Neturei Karta does believe in a Jewish state, to the highest degree," adds Rabbi Schonfeld, "but a monarchic state, under moshiach...

...against the facilities in question...

...violations of sexual modesty by co-ed swimming, the women's draft and sex shops in downtown Tel Aviv...