Showing posts with label Agudat Yisrael. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agudat Yisrael. Show all posts

4 April 2026

Israel is to the 21st Century what Nazi Germany was to the 20th Century – The Death Penalty Law for Palestinians is Just One More Sign of Zionism’s Sickness

From Ethnic Cleansing to Genocide, Apartheid to Extermination, Child Killing to Starvation, Torture & Rape, There is No War Crime Israel Doesn’t Excel In 



The Horrifying Torture of a One Year Old Baby by the 'most moral army in the world - Sky TV

Though one should note that the only complaint of Adam Langleben of the Jewish Labour Movement is the offence given to the Jewish religion. He has nothing to say about the Death Penalty for Palestinians legislation itself.

Even hardened Zionists and Genocide supporters have become uncomfortable at the pictures of Itamar Ben-Gvir and fellow Judeo-Nazis celebrating the passage of a law that reserves the death penalty for Palestinians whilst Jewish murderers are immune from even the mildest reprimand.


Under Labour Zionist governments only one law explicitly discriminated again Israel’s Palestinians – the Law of Return. All subsequent discrimination built upon that one law. Discrimination was indirect. Today the far-right is more explicit and also more honest.

Israel liar liar pants on fire


So we should thank Israel’s Judeo-Nazi Police Minister for making explicit that which was implicit. As the Times of Israel said

The law effectively enshrines capital punishment for Palestinians alone, as it explicitly excludes Israeli citizens or residents, and only Palestinians are tried in military courts. Israelis are tried in civilian courts.


Knesset Members voted 62-47 to mandate death by hanging as the punishment for Palestinians convicted of ‘terrorist’ acts by military courts. Judges can opt for life imprisonment under “special circumstances” which are undefined but otherwise the death penalty is mandatory and will be carried out within 90 days of sentencing without appeal.

Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu, a secular far-right party that is not part of the government, voted in favour of the bill. The Ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism, which is part of the government was split. Its Degel HaTorah (Lithuanian non-Hasidic) faction voted in favour wheres its Agudat Yisrael (Hasidic) faction voted against.

Settler Attacks on Palestinian Homes – BBC

Unlike Israeli settlers who are tried in civilian courts Palestinians are tried in military courts where there is a 99.74% rate of conviction. Confessions under torture are admissible. Even the Nazi Peoples’ Courts had a higher rate of acquittal. In 1940 it was 7.3%, falling to around 5% until 1944, when it rose to almost 12% They were set up by Hitler to bypass the ordinary court system to try political offences.

'I want to kill more, more, more' - Israeli female soldier boasts of having killed 2 Palestinians


So we have a situation whereby even the Nazis treated its accused more fairly than Israel’s rubber stamp military courts.

West European countries issued a pro forma statement condemning the passage of the law, whilst doing nothing to countermand it such as sanctions. The Trump Administration didn’t even do that. Instead the State Department issued a statement saying that:


The United States respects Israel’s sovereign right to determine its own laws and penalties for individuals convicted of terrorism.” 

The Death Penalty Law for Palestinians reflects the fact that Jewish terrorism is not a crime in the eyes of the Israeli police and army which are often complicit in the attacks.

Burnt out Palestinian home after a settler attack

Mua’yyad Sha’ban of the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC) stated that settlers had carried out 192 attacks in the first two weeks of March, resulting in the murder of 6 Palestinians. This is in addition to the murder of Palestinians by the military. However no settler or soldier has been punished for killing a Palestinian since 2020.

Israeli soldier throws bike into trash bin

In other words settlers have a license to kill Palestinians but if Palestinians strike back then they will be hanged as ‘terrorists’ and the US administration will support it.

This is not so different from Nazi Germany and before that Czarist Russia where authorities only intervened if Jews defended themselves. What happened to the Jews in Europe is now taking place in Greater Israel to the Palestinians. As Primo Levy was reputed to have remarked, the Palestinians are the Jews of Israel.

Settler attack in Tayasir 30 3 26

Israel has had a policy of extra judicial executions for the years. The law that has just been enacted will simply put what Israel has already been doing on a ‘legal’ footing. As the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights observed:

Extra-judicial execution is a policy which is not new or exclusively used since 2000. It is an old, bloody policy that had been implemented by the Israeli army against Palestinian civilians for decades.

Israeli Police Violently Break Up Anti Genocide protests in Arab TOWN

Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, wrote that:

Politicians and senior police officers have also openly called for the extra-judicial killing of suspects, and have urged civilians to carry guns in statements that effectively endorse the extra-judicial execution of Palestinians. 

It quoted Jerusalem District Police Commander Moshe Edri as saying:

Anyone who stabs Jews or hurts innocent people is due to be killed.

Note that the Police Commander was not concerned about anyone stabbing non-Jews.

Try as they might to deny it, the Zionists were the favourite Jews of the Nazis - as even Zionist historian Lucy Dawidowicz proves

There are those who decry the comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany yet the similarities are striking. The level of racism against Palestinians in Israel is far higher than the level of anti-Semitism in Germany which was largely confined to the Nazi party. See for example Ian Kershaw’s "Popular Opinion and Political Dissent": whose central thesis was that the German public's reaction to the persecution of Jews was characterized by "indifference" rather than fanatical hatred.

Although it is played down today, Hitler came to power despite, not because of his anti-Semitism and unlike the far-right in Israel, which command a clear majority in the Knesset of about 80 seats, the Nazi party never gained more than 37% of the German electorate in a free election (July 1932).

David Bankier concluded that most of the German public:

“did not attribute to antisemitism the importance that it had in the eyes of the National Socialist Party, and placed it in a secondary place in its order of priorities....

The decreased hopes of victory and the fear of the retaliation of the Jews or the Allies led many ordinary Germans to distance themselves from the propaganda, and particularly from the subject of the Jews. The attempts of the Nazis to incite antisemitic feelings did not only fail to calm the fears of the public but actually increased them, and thus the more the information about the mass extermination filtered through the more the public wished to be less involved in the Final Solution.

The level of racism in Israel against Arabs is staggeringly high. According to Dahlia Schendlin, a survey conducted by Professor Tamir Sorek of Pennsylvania State University examined "eliminatory" attitudes among Jewish Israelis and their theological roots.

It found that 82% of Israeli Jews supported the transfer of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries. 56% supported the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel. When asked whether they agreed with the idea that the IDF,

when conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants? 

nearly half, 47 percent, agreed. Polls such as these have been remarkably consistent over the years.

An opinion poll (27.3.07) found that over half the Jewish population believed that marriage to an Arab was ‘national treason’. Note that they didn’t oppose inter-marriage on religious but racial and national grounds. Many religions historically, whether Jewish or Catholic, have frowned upon inter-marriage. This is religious chauvinism not racism but when that becomes the policy of a state then that is racism. It becomes a quest for racial purity.

Over 75% of participants did not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. 60% said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home. About 40% agreed that “Arabs should have their right to vote for Knesset revoked”. Over half agreed that Israel should encourage its Arab citizens to emigrate from the country and a similar percentage said they would not want to work under the direct management of an Arab. 55% said “Arabs and Jews should be separated at entertainment sites”. 31% said they felt hatred, while 50% said they felt fear in the company of an Arab.

The Nazi concept of Lebensraum 'Living Space' is Alive & Well in Israel

Over 56% of participants said they believed that Israel’s Arab citizens posed both a security and a demographic threat to the country, in other words that the Arab presence in a Jewish state caused them to fear that one day there might be more Arabs than Jews. When asked what they thought of Arab culture, over 37%replied, “The Arab culture is inferior.”

YNet described how the annual 2006 Democracy Index found that 62% of Israelis wanted the government to encourage Arabs to leave the country.

Only 14% of respondents said ties between Arabs and Jews are good, while 29% said a Jewish majority is required for decisions of crucial national significance.

This was 20 years ago. Today the situation is that much worse. Zionism has embarked on a one-way journey which, left to its own devices, will end up in further genocide and further ethnic cleansing. The role of liberal Zionists is to prettify and justify what is happening in the name of ‘the only Jewish state in the world’, the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ and other self-serving, meaningless tropes.

Why has Zionism and Israel morphed into a 21st century version of Nazi Germany? It is because a ‘Jewish’ ethno-nationalist state was based on race, not religion. It was not intended to be a theocracy but an ethnocracy, although it may also end up as a theocracy. The one thing that Israel won’t become is a democratic state of its citizens. Being a Jewish state precludes that.

This is why, from the very start of the Israeli state, the Zionist militias ‘cleansed most of the areas they controlled of its Palestinians. Without that there could not have been a Jewish majority state. The Nakba was a precondition for the formation of their ‘Jewish’ state and everything since has flowed from that.

The Useless words of British Diplomacy - Since Israel's Government is Sponsoring the Settler Terror What is Needed is Sanctions & No More Arms Shipments

Today the Palestinians are not willing to vacate Palestine which is why Zionism has turned to terror, pogroms, violence and genocide. The same was true of Nazi Germany. From 1933 to 1939 the policy of the German state was one of ethnic cleansing. It was only when this became impossible that the Nazis turned to genocide.

Israel and anti Arab incitement –Mosques

What we are seeing in the West Bank, with the settler pogroms, is another stage in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. I have little doubt that if these pogroms are unsuccessful in stimulating an exodus of the Palestinians then the Zionists will increasingly turn to genocide there too.

Israel has derived enormous political advantages from the Nazi holocaust which at the time they consciously played down. The Zionist leaders used the Nazi holocaust to maximum advantage in order to demonise the Arabs as anti-Semites. This ruse has been increasingly hard to maintain as the spotlight has turned on their actions.

Elli Valley Captures the Victim-Perpetrator Syndrome of Israeli society

As Idith Zertal, an Israeli New Historian wrote in her book The Politics of Nationhood

‘The transference of the holocaust situation on to the Middle East reality… not only created a false sense of the imminent danger of mass destruction. It also immensely distorted the image of the holocaust, dwarfing the magnitude of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, trivializing the unique agony of the victims and the survivors, and utterly demonizing the Arabs and their leaders.

Meir Kahane (Centre) voting in the Knesset

Ben Gvir comes from the tradition of Meir Kahane, the rabbi who was the leader of Kach. In 1984 he was elected to the Knesset. The other Zionist parties immediately boycotted him and walked out of the Knesset whenever he spoke.

Kahane was elected on a programme calling for the expulsion of Israeli Arabs and the deportation of the Palestinians in the West Bank. He called for five year prison sentences for Arab men who had sexual relations with women, which was straight out of the Nuremberg Laws.

However Kahane, who was an embarrassment to the Zionists then, has been proved right in terms of Zionism. Kahane had no time for those who spoke of Israel as a Jewish-Democratic state. He said, quite correctly, that Israel could be a Jewish State or a Democratic State but it could not be both. It was the hypocritical ‘left’ Zionists who maintained that Israel could be both Jewish and democratic when the essence of a Jewish state was that Jews not Palestinians had the power.

Today virtually the whole political scene in Israel has been Kahanised and Kahane lives on in Itamar Ben Gvir, the Police Minister who had on his wall until recently a picture of the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, who opened up with an automatic weapon killing 29 worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

It should therefore be no surprise that Ben Gvir’s proposal for a racially selective death penalty commanded a majority in the Knesset.

The Dehumanisation of the Palestinians and the murder of their children

All forms of racism dehumanise their victims. But some societies dehumanise them so completely that ethnic cleansing and genocide is the logical outcome.

This is as true of Israel as it was of Nazi Germany. There have been many examples of this in the Gaza genocide but one particular characteristic of it is the dehumanisation of Palestinian children.

Zionist rabbis in Israel have emphasised that the extermination of the Palestinians will only be complete if their children are also killed.

In 2009 a book Torat Hamelech was published by two Chabad Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur with an introduction by Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh. It was a guide to how to legally kill non-Jews according to Jewish religious law, Halachah.

It also justified the killing Palestinian children. Torat Hamelech argued that:

1.          children may be killed if it is believed they will "grow up to harm us".

2.          Harming the children of a "wicked leader" is permissible if it exerts enough pressure on that leader to stop fighting.

3.          Harming innocents, including infants, is allowed if their "presence and their killing is actually beneficial and helpful" to the war effort.

4.        ‘Ruthless acts’ of revenge to create a "correct element of fear" among enemies.

The book said that “The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder” applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew”. This is because non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”

Israel's Judeo-Nazi Rabbi Dov Lior

The book was endorsed by dozens of Israeli rabbis including Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his son Ya’akov Yosef, who were both influential in Shas, a Sephardic party in Netanyahu’s coalition as well as the most influential rabbi of all, Dov Lior.

Dov Lior is famous for having said that

“There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them … A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

Dov Lior is the spiritual mentor of Itamar Ben Gvir. This is an example of how Israeli rabbis act as the ideological and religious enablers of Israel’s neo-Nazi politicians. Today in Israel, and to a large extent outside Israel, the Jewish religion has become a religion of genocide.

If an Arab cleric were to publish such a book he would suffer the same fate as Raed Salah, who was demonised by Zionist groups in this country. Salah denied that his comments at a demonstration even applied to Jews but was gaoled for ‘incitement to racial hatred’. But when it came to the rabis who wrote Torat HaMelech, the Attorney General refused to prosecute and Israel’s High Court said ‘there was no basis’ for such a prosecution.

Limor son Hamelech - who dressed up as an Executioner for Purim (right) with settler leader Daniella Weiss

In Israel the laws against racial incitement are only applied to non-Jews. Jews can say whatever they wish.

In the current genocide in Gaza Orthodox Rabbis have played a key role in legitimising the murder of Palestinian civilians including children.

Prime amongst them was Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of the Shirat Moshe yeshiva in Jaffa, who called during a conference on 8 March for the Israeli army to kill ‘all residents of Gaza’. When asked whether this included babies he said:

“Those who create the terrorists” should also be killed, in reference to Palestinian women. Despite these genocidal remarks Israel’s police recommended dropping the case. Elderly people were also legitimate targets, according to Mali.

"There is no such thing called innocent creature. By the way, the elderly man is capable of carrying a rifle and shooting. Therefore, the Torah is very clear in the ruling."

And who was it who placed Israel’s racist rabbis in a position of power in Israel if not David Ben-Gurion, its Labour Zionist Prime Minister. As Adam Shatz wrote in his review of Tom Segev’s biography, Ben-Gurion

gave the Orthodox rabbinate considerable authority over religious affairs.... the rabbis were given the power to define who was and wasn’t a Jew, and which marriages would be recognised. (His own feeling was that Jewish women shouldn’t be allowed to marry Arab men ‘because as I see it an Arab is still not on the human level that I would want for a man who marries a Jewish woman.’)


We see the Nazi behaviour of the Israeli military in Lebanon today. The IDF has decreed that Shi’ite Muslims cannot live in the south of Lebanon.

Some have taken shelter with Christians in neighbouring villages. This has resulted in the Israeli military going into Christian villages, searching for them and warning Christians of dire consequences if they harbour Muslims.

Lying Ruth Justifies Murder of Journalists

Such behaviour was reminiscent of the Gestapo who warned non-Jews of the consequences of sheltering Jews.

The law reserving the death penalty for Palestinians has its roots in the ‘socialist’ Zionism that European social democrats embraced. Ben Gvir and Netanyahu did not come out of nowhere. Labour Zionism gave birth to the monstrosity that is the Israeli state today.

Tony Greenstein

See

‘War crime’: Global condemnation as Israeli ministers celebrate death penalty law targeting Palestinian prisoners

Israel’s death penalty law marks a new phase in its dehumanisation of Palestinians

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22 December 2018

The Rabbis’ Intifada – An Unbroken Chain of Jewish anti-Zionism and Solidarity


Neturei Karta - the Orthodox Jews who refuse to accept Zionism

Neturei Karta take part in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, titled March for Gaza, August 20, 2014. Photo by Heather Tenzer.
Neturei Karta, the Orthodox Jewish Anti-Zionist group are both a historical anachronism as well as an enduring phenomenon. At a time when much of Jewish Orthodoxy has morphed into the vilest Jewish neo-Nazism, with its doctrine of racial hatred, genocidal paradigms and blood worship, Neturei Karta has stood out as the jewel amongst the Jewish Orthodox dross.
There was a time when 90% of the Jewish Orthodoxy were opposed to Zionism.  Zionism was held to be a blasphemy, an attempt to force God’s hand.  Exile had been decreed by God and it was not for man to defy this condition. Agudat Yisrael, which was founded in 1912 to oppose Zionism, ended up in coalition governments in Israel. See Early Opposition to Zionism
The founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was unable to win over any significant support from the Hasidic or Orthodox Jews of Europe.  His own Chief Rabbi Morris Gudeman of Vienna opposed him and it was the Orthodox Jews of Munich who led the opposition in 1897 to holding the First Zionist Congress there (it had to be transferred to Basel in Switzerland).
However as time has gone on much of the Orthodox opposition to Zionism has dissipated.  Not so with Neturei Karta. There are now efforts to document the history and contribution of Neturei Karta.
Certainly NK represent the right-wing of the Palestine solidarity movement. They are not progressive on questions such as women or gays. However they are also no different from their Zionist religious counterparts in that respect. Where they differ from the latter is that they don’t use the Jewish religion and the Bible in order to rationalise a form of Nazi style racism against the Palestinians.
Whereas the most adored part of the Zionist bible is the story of Joshua, the mythical Jewish leader who wiped out the City of Jericho and all its inhabitants, yeah unto every suckling babe, NK disavow such racism.
Grand Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira - fiercely opposed to Zionism
Religious Zionism is the most racist and bigoted of any wing of Zionism. It has morphed into the most atavistic settler ideology. Leaders such as Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, famous for saying that a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand Palestinian lives and that ‘during warfare, killing non-Jewish civilians is permitted if it saves Jewish lives’.
There is Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Safed who issued an edict barring Jews from renting property to Arabs. In 2007, Eliyahu advocated mass slaughter of Palestinians in order to deter rocket fire from Gaza, while defending a ruling by his late father that Israel was permitted to indiscriminately kill civilians. “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand,” Shmuel Eliyahu advised, adding, “And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”  Some people will say it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to call such a monster a Jewish Nazi but I can’t think of another more accurate description.
There was the Chief Military Rabbi and settler Brig.-Gen. Avichai Ronski, who distributed material to soldiers invading Gaza such as
“it is forbidden under the [Jewish] Law to concede one millimetre of the Land of Israel to the Gentiles. We will not leave it in the hands of another people, not even a finger of it, not even a fingernail”.
Ronski told the soldiers that
“there is no innocent population ... the morality of the Torah says ‘woe unto the wicked’ [Isaiah 3:11] and woe unto his neighbour. We appeal for the disregard of foreign doctrines and orders of all kinds that distort the logical process of combat - the destruction of the enemy.”
In other words the civilian population, including women, children and old people was part of the enemy that must be destroyed.
Rabbi Eyal Karim
Or there is Rabbi Eyal Karim the Israeli Army’s Chief Rabbi. Karim implied that it was permissible to rape ‘attractive’ non-Jewish women during wartime in order to keep the morale of soldiers up.  Further that it is permitted to kill wounded suicide bombers and gay people should be treated as people “sick or disabled.”
Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia  Yosef
Not forgetting of course Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef who believed that gentiles (non-Jews) should be treated thus:
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”

“In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

“This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”

“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… That is why gentiles were created.”

There can be no doubt that compared to these savages Neturei Karta are a model example of anti-racism. They have for example gone to Gaza and been welcomed by the population and Hamas thus demonstrating another Zionist lie that Hamas and Palestinians are inherently anti-Semitic.
Those who are involved in Palestine solidarity will be aware that NK regularly appear at Palestine solidarity demonstrations and are thus living proof that to be Jewish is not to be anti-Semitic. In recent times, of course, more and more secular Jews have moved into opposition to Zionism so there is, in a sense a competition between the different forms of Jewish opposition to Zionism, not in itself a bad thing when some idiots in the Labour Party still believe that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same thing.
Tony Greenstein
Neturei Karta’s long history of solidarity with Palestinians is subject of upcoming documentary
Emmaia Gelman on December 3, 2018


Heather Tenzer is a filmmaker straddling three worlds: she grew up in a modern Orthodox Jewish community that was Zionist, she left it for non-religious life in New York, and she’s an activist for Palestinian freedom. Her upcoming film, The Rabbis’ Intifada (http://therabbisintifada.com), uniquely stitches together these three vantage points. Tenzer follows the strictly-Orthodox rabbis of Neturei Karta – long-time supporters of Palestinian rights, and opponents of Israeli colonialism – from the US to Jerusalem and Gaza. 

In this interview, Tenzer talks about navigating tensions in the Palestine solidarity movement between religious and progressive frameworks for liberation – and about her own challenges as a female documentary filmmaker making boundary-pushing work.

Emmaia Gelman: Why is Neturei Karta important in the Palestine solidarity movement?
Heather Tenzer: Neturei Karta has a long history of standing in solidarity with Palestine. Over the years, they’ve built a reputation among Palestinians and their supporters as a Jewish voice with a consistent presence at Palestine solidarity demonstrations. They unequivocally express support for Palestinian rights. They speak out against Israeli occupation, violence, and colonization. Because of that, they are appreciated by many many Palestinians – but especially religious Palestinians.
Documentarian Heather Tenzer, at Israel Day Parade – May 2018. Photo by Alex Laser.
Palestinians are diverse. The Palestine solidarity movement is perhaps even more diverse. And I think that Neturei Karta has a unique role to play in that movement. Because NK are deeply religious Jews with socially conservative values, they are able to identify with and relate to the sector of the Palestinian community which is also deeply religious and also socially conservative. Muslims in Gaza who are suffering under Israeli occupation were so touched by NK’s visit and by their expressions of support.  I saw it with my own eyes – not just in Gaza, but also in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan… Religious Middle Eastern communities appreciate their support, perhaps even more deeply than expressions of support from Leftist or secular communities.
Neturei Karta often meet people who don’t necessarily know that Judaism and Zionism are different. For example, when I was with the rabbis in Gaza, the children there were initially afraid of them because they look religious Jewish. For a lot of people around the world, Jewish means Zionist or even Israeli. It means an occupier and an attacker and a purveyor of violence. Israel is pretty effective at creating that illusion. Neturei Karta disrupt that.
I was one of the people Neturei Karta reached! My first experience with Neturei Karta was when I was a kid, marching in the Israel Day parade. I grew up in an Orthodox community. Neturei Karta appeared to be very religious, much more religious than my community. I was shocked to find out that religious Jews opposed Israel.
Neturei Karta protest Israel Day Parade – May 2018. Photo by Alex Laser.
EG: There are many critiques about Neturei Karta. A big one is that they’re not actually interested in Palestinian human rights, but instead – what?
HT: The critique – and the myth, actually – is that they’re just interested in following the Torah text, and everything that they do is about allegiance to their Rebbe, and they can’t think for themselves, and they’re backwards, and they don’t care about Palestinians, they just care about being anti-Zionist. The only reason for supporting Palestine is because they oppose Zionism, and the only reason they oppose Zionism is because in the Torah is says that you must wait till the Messiah comes in order to have a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
EG: That critique would put them in the company of the Christian right: trying to hustle the messiah into place.
HT: Neturei Karta – like all religious Jews – are waiting for the coming of Messiah. I don’t think there is a universally accepted idea among religious Jews of what will happen when Messiah comes. However, there is an idea that Jews would be returned to the Holy Land by God. That idea of return, as I understand it, is completely the opposite of Zionism. It is not a violent forceful man-made return to the land of Palestine, in which Palestinians are massacred or dispossessed. It is a peaceful return of Jewish people to the Holy Land carried out by God. That does not require violence against Palestinians. It does not require a nation state at all, and we may well be living without nation states at all during this imagined anarchic future.
EG: Neturei Karta are controversial on the Left because their gender politics don’t sit well with progressives. But their anti-Zionism puts them to the Left of major Jewish groups in the Palestine solidarity movement on that issue. They also break pretty sharply with other forms of Jewish Orthodoxy. Do you think of Neturei Karta as radicals?
HT: Like other anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, Neturei Karta oppose a Jewish state for theological reasons. But, Neturei Karta are unique in that they also support the rights of Palestinians to live in peace in their homeland, to be free of Israeli occupation and violence. Neturei Karta are unique in their efforts to speak out around the world in support of Palestinian rights and liberation. That’s a step further than most other Haredim.
I think it’s a mistake to talk about them in terms of Right and Left, because it’s not how they define themselves. Their actions emanate from religious and moral convictions. But if you look at Neturei Karta as a whole, often their language and beliefs are more radical than other parts of the Palestine solidarity movement. I can compare a Neturei Karta demonstration in Jerusalem with a Leftist demonstration I saw on the streets of Tel Aviv. The Neturei Karta demonstration was much more radical and clearly anti-Zionist. They held signs calling Israeli actions in Gaza a “massacre.” At the Tel Aviv protest, some progressives carried Israeli flags. They were critical of Israeli policy, but still supported a Jewish state
So, yes, I think Neturei Karta’s approach is sometimes more radical than that of those on the Left, whether that’s in Israel or here in the United States. Interestingly, in the Israeli Left, now there are people slowly making coalitions with Neturei Karta. They’re breaking with decades of animosity and hostility.
EG: How did Palestinians in Gaza respond to Neturei Karta?
HT: Religious Palestinians were incredibly appreciative of Neturei Karta’s words and actions. When Neturei Karta would visit Muslim families impacted by Israeli violence, I saw how deeply their presence there was appreciated. Some people who identified more as Leftist or communists or whatever were a little bit more on the fence, and not really sure about how they felt about Neturei Karta.
I think the social conservatism of Neturei Karta is very similar to what you find in a lot of different religious communities in the Middle East. And that’s why, when they go there, one of the reasons they’re so welcome is because of this cultural similarity and similarity in world view.
Neturei Karta take part in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge, titled March for Gaza, August 20, 2014. Photo by Heather Tenzer.

EG: In the course of your work, what kind of conversations did you have with women or queers inside Neturei Karta?
I have gotten to know several Neturei Karta women and many did not feel comfortable being interviewed. I met one woman on the street in Williamsburg. She talked about her support for Palestinians. I wanted to interview her, but she felt uncomfortable with that. This is for cultural reasons, as women in their religious culture generally feel a sense of modesty that prohibits their participation in such things. Off camera, however, they were always very kind, interested and supportive of my project in ways that pleasantly surprised me. They’ve talked to me about milking their goats, about their children, and sometimes even feminism. In one case, there’s a woman who speaks much more fluent English than her husband. Because of that, she often serves as the translator between us.
One time I was with a woman and her 12-year-old daughter in their backyard. The daughter was jumping up and down so her skirt was bouncing. The mother shouted at her daughter that she wasn’t being modest enough. It’s a very rigid society where the laws of the Torah are in their every day, moment-to-moment lives. To me, that level of modesty feels oppressive, but if it is working for them, then who am I to say that my worldview is better?
One time, two Neturei Karta women were speaking with each other. One woman says to the other something like “the men make the decisions, but the women turn the man’s will.” It was a Yiddish expression that doesn’t translate that well in English, but the idea was that women have the power to control their husbands – in a sense, talking about women’s power. I’m hoping to do more to include Neturei Karta women in the film.
I didn’t meet anyone who said that they were unhappy and wanted to leave the community. But based upon what I have read and what some Haredim have told me, it’s very hard to leave. You’re losing your entire family and community, there’s not a middle ground. And yeah, it’s deeply difficult for those who choose to leave.
EG: LGBTQ rights are a major part of human rights conversations right now. How do you reconcile Neturei Karta’s concern for human rights with their apparent lack of support for LGBTQ rights?
HT: Neturei Karta and many other Haredim don’t use the language of human rights, because they don’t have access to secular education. Some are not familiar with Martin Luther King, Jr. for example. Secular thinking is not a part of their world. They define everything that they do, whether it’s going to sleep at night or joining a Palestine demonstration, in religious terms. To explain their concern for Palestinians’ rights, they’ll quote the Torah text on the most basic things. For example, Rabbi Meir Hirsch of Neturei Karta, who is featured in the film, quotes the Torah – saying in Hebrew: ‘Love thy brother as thyself!’” He cites this text as a reason why Jews are obligated to show solidarity with the Palestinians, and “feel their pain,” as he says.
These are common Torah passages that have nothing to do with anything esoteric, but are passages related to the ethical or moral obligations of Jews about caring for fellow human beings.
As far as LGBTQ rights, as far as I know, nearly all strictly Orthodox Jews don’t support homosexuality. I have a queer friend who was not in Neturei Karta but was in another Haredi community. His Rebbe was, as he explained it, sympathetic toward him in some ways, like: this is your struggle. But in the end my friend who was married to a woman still felt like his identity as a gay man was not reconcilable with living in that community. So, he left.
Interestingly, Jacob Israel de Haan is a figure whom Neturei Karta consider as their martyr. He was assassinated in the 1920s by the Haganah. He was an anti-Zionist Jew from Amsterdam living in Palestine. He was openly gay and wrote homoerotic poetry that was published in Amsterdam. When he came to Palestine, he went from being Zionist to anti-Zionist, and from secular to religious. His was the first Jewish on Jewish political assassination in modern history.
 EG: Are de Haan’s writings part of Neturei Karta life?
HT: His homoerotic poetry is certainly not! He was a journalist/poet/novelist before he came to Palestine, so those writings are not part of the Neturei Karta canon. But he became friendly with Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, the chief rabbi of the anti-Zionist Haredim of Jerusalem. De Haan became the community ambassador. De Haan and Sonnenfeld went to Transjordan to meet with the prince there, to say, “Look, we represent the Haredi community of Jerusalem, and we oppose what the Zionists are doing.” That was the purpose of their visit, to visit the prince and say, “We want to live in coexistence with the indigenous people here.”
Then de Haan wrote to the British to say, “We, the Jewish community of Jerusalem, do not want there to be a Jewish state here.” That was very threatening to the Zionists.
EG: Are there any other surprising characters in Neturei Karta?
HT: There’s Ruth Blau, who was a Christian in the French resistance during WWII. She converted to Judaism, moved to Israel and married Rabbi Amram Blau who was the head of Neturei Karta at that time. It was a very controversial marriage because she was a convert, and much younger than he. Rabbi Amram Blau was a religious guy, and he’s been described to me as fearless. The Israeli police were very violent toward all the anti-Zionist Haredim of Jerusalem since the beginning of the state. Like, very violent. There’s news footage of these attacks. But Rabbi Moshe Beck, one of the subjects in my film who knew Rabbi Blau, recalls how Rabbi Blau would lead the demonstrations – despite the police violence, and be totally fearless, and have all of the followers stand there and urged them not lift a finger against the Zionists.
EG: What was it like to reach out to them, when you’d decided to make this film?
HT: I reached out to Neturei Karta, and to my pleasant surprise, they agreed to meet with me. I first met Rabbi Meir Hirsch in Jerusalem. He’s the leader of Neturei Karta there. I was surprised that the rabbi was so at ease with me and with my friend Sammy who was translating; surprised that he was willing to speak with me as a woman conducting the interview and at his willingness to speak frankly, to trust in our capacity to represent him fairly. But most of all I was very shocked by his forthcoming and radical language around what Israel was doing to Palestinians. Rabbi Hirsch called Israeli actions ‘crimes against humanity.’
EG: Following your first impressions, did your opinions about Neturei Karta change as you worked on the project?


HT: I didn’t go into it having a lot of negative stereotypes about religious people, in part because I grew up in a religious community. Still, there were things they’d say that I strongly disagreed with and others that would pleasantly surprise me. Our values are oftentimes deeply at odds and oftentimes overlap. That’s the way things are with most of humanity.

The first time I heard them speaking in a way that I found intolerant of LGBTQ communities, that was hard.
EG: What have been the biggest hurdles in making this film?
HT: When I started the film, almost immediately I got a little backlash. I started shooting in Jerusalem years ago. Some Israeli Leftists were very supportive. But others were like, why are you covering Neturei Karta? They’re horrible people, they’re homophobic, they’re sexist… why? I was surprised by this reaction. It seemed to me mostly immaterial what Neturei Karta’s religious beliefs are… I mean, their religious ideology is followed by hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews around the world. And the fact that they were supporting Palestinians and that Palestinians were appreciating it, that makes it valuable. Whether or not they have values that we would get on board with as Leftists, that felt very secondary.
There are many legitimate critiques that can be made about Orthodox communities at large. But I see secular men pointing the finger at religious communities and being like, “Hey! Those women are really oppressed. Those places are repressive for women and sexist.” While some of that is true, those same critics tend to ignore these ways that women are oppressed in secular society, when right now in the US secular women are fighting serious battles against sexism (the #MeToo movement immediately comes to mind!), which is pervasive in many secular workplaces, including in the documentary film industry, and is often perpetrated by secular men.
I see a Zionist force at play in the effort to discredit Neturei Karta. I think Zionists highlight Neturei Karta’s social conservatism as a way to undercut the power of what Neturei Karta are doing by saying here’s how they don’t measure up to liberal Western standards. Zionists have done the same thing to Palestinians, criticizing them as “not liberal enough” as a way of trying to push the Western Left away from supporting them.
EG: What work are you hoping your film will do in the world?
HT: I hope first and foremost that the film will humanize Palestinians and expand the conversation around Palestine and Israel. A lot of folks in this country and abroad still think that all Jews – especially religious Jews – support Israel and its policies. Neturei Karta help to challenge that myth. Many folks tend to think that what is happening in Palestine/Israel is a religious war between Islam and Judaism. And I think Neturei Karta help to challenge that by talking both about the history of Muslim/Jewish coexistence and about religious texts that prohibit Jews from killing and occupying Palestinians—or any other people for that matter. Neturei Karta come and say that that violence perpetrated against Palestinians is perpetrated by a state which claims to be acting in the name of Judaism but is actually only acting in the name of nationalism. I hope the film will challenge stereotypes about Neturei Karta, Muslims, Palestinians, and Arabs, and about religious Orthodoxy and what it means to be an activist. I also hope that film will challenge American Jews – and Americas more broadly – to learn about the history of persecution of Palestinians at the hands of Israel. And I hope that by showing a community of religious Jews who are critical of Israel, more Americans will feel licensed and safe to also critique it – without fear of being called an anti-Semite.
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