The Jewish group Neturei Karta on Tuesday issued a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people on the occasion of Nakba Day, which marks the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians during the establishment of Israel in 1948.
“Throughout the world there are untold numbers of believing Jews who are horrified by the Zionists’ criminal and racist treatment of the Palestinians,” reads the statement from the fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish group based in “New York, London, Jerusalem and around the world.”
“We seek the return of all the land, of course including Al Aqsa, to Palestinian rule,” continues the statement issued by Neturei Karta, which is affiliated with the Central Rabbinical Congress of the US and Canada.
According to the Jewish Student Press Service, Neturei Karta’s leaders have “organized public demonstrations in opposition to ‘sinful,atheistic practices” such as mixed…public swimming pools, public transportation on Sabbath, drafting women for national service…and the sale of pornography.”
The organization’s anti-Zionist advertising campaign in the US claims “hundreds of thousands” of supporters in the US and Israel, including an unspecified number of rabbis.
“The most important rabbis, and the majority of religious Jewry are opposed to Zionism, but their voice is not heard because of Zionist control of the American news media,” read the advertisements, which the group has been placing in newspapers for decades, according to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
The website of www.jewsnotzionists.org, which espouses beliefs similar to those of Neturei Karta, lists 22 anti-Zionist Jewish organizations and groups, as well as the names of specific rabbis.
Neturei Karta “broke away from Agudat Israel (a movement of Orthodox backlash to modern Jewish trends) in 1935 when the latter refused to support the former’s demand for an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem completely separate from the Zionist community,” according to the Jewish Student Press Service.
“Zionism’s first advocates were athiests, men who rejected and betrayed their Jewish faith,” reads the statement released on Nakba Day, which adds that “we see the ongoing repression and humiliation for decades of the Palestinian people, especially what is happening currently through the criminal policies of Sharon, as a monstrous evil.” – Albawaba.com
