Who Are Neturei Karta, the Jewish ultra-Orthodox pro-Palestinian Activists

Online and on the streets, these fiercely anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewish activists keep quiet about their authoritarian goals of a complete return to Torah law. For now however,  their ‘Stop the persecution in Gaza’ message is warmly welcomed at progressive demonstrations in the U.S.

ed note–If life’s success is measured in small victories, then the ‘victories’ found within the pro-Palestinian/anti-Zionist ‘truth movement’ are even smaller, and this is one of them, at least in terms of what it is that we at this humble little informational endeavor try to do here.

Virtually alone, and by that we mean–

ALONE…

…We have been warning–for over a dozen years now, at least, that the entire Neturei Karta clown show was a SHAM…That the illusion they cast as ‘Torah True Jews’ who oppose the creation of a Jewish state was not AT ALL what it appeared to be on the surface, and that the only thing necessary for any critical thinker to do for him/herself was to sit down and read the SPECIFICS making up the ‘anti-Zionism’ of the NK stance, and in so doing, would see in a microsecond that it was as rotten and hollowed out as a tooth that had gone to abscess 20 years ago.

As the writer of the piece below makes KRISTOL CLEAR (and remember folks, this OpEd didn’t appear on David Duke’s website, but rather in Haaretz) is that the ‘opposition’ that NK maintains towards the Jewish state is not rooted in love, concern, compassion, or the desire for justice for the Palestinian Gentiles whose lives have been run through the Judaic meatgrinder for the last century, but rather one of TIMING. Despite calling themselves ‘Torah True Jews’, they base their opposition to the creation of a Jewish state on the Talmudic teaching that the arrival of the ‘Moschiac’–Messiah–must precede the creation of this ‘state’, and that to create this ‘state’ beforehand is the equivalent of sex before marriage and therefore, immoral and heretical.

HOWEVER, as their position goes, AFTER this ‘Moschiac’ has arrived, it will be perfectly fair, right, moral and just for the tribe of Judah to go ahead and do everything that it has done for the last century–all the murder, theft and mayhem–and yahweh help anyone who says anything different.

All of this and more has been sitting there as an open secret now for any critical thinking Gentile to examine for him or herself, and yet, no one–repeat, NO ONE–outside of this humble little informational endeavor (to the best of our knowledge) has pointed these troublesome facts out.

At every rally, every conference organized around ‘raising the consciousness’ of the world viz the suffering of the Palestinian people, one will find these stinking posers and imposters who are given not only the red carpet treatment, but as well, are pushed to the forefront of any and all discussions as ‘proof’ that there exists ‘true Jews of conscience’.

But it’s actually much worse than that, ladies and Gentile-men…

Besides acting as posers in lipsticking the pig of Torah Judah-ism and in creating the mirage of the ‘compassionate Jew of conscience’, the smart money says that long ago, LONG AGO, one or more of them was brought into the offices of Mossad and/or Shin Bet where they were given ‘the offer they couldn’t refuse’, which was to act as the eyes and ears of Israel’s intelligence services in ‘filling in the blanks’ of exactly ‘who was who’ and ‘what was what’ within the pro-Palestinian/anti-Zionist community. Doubtless that money was thrown at them (how DO they manage to finance everything they do, after all?) as well as having laid out before them all the compromising material dredged up by Mossad/Shin Bet, material that if made public, would destroy their credibility and with it, any and all acceptance they may have previously enjoyed on the part of the pro-Palestinian community.

Anyone who doubts this should consider the following pics–

–NK sitting alongside the founder of Hezbollah, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour…

–Neturei Karta meeting with Hamas Chief Ismael Haniyeh in Gaza…

–Neturei Karta meeting with Iranian Presidents Ahmadinejad and Raisi…

–Neturei Karta meeting Turkish President Erdogan…

–Neturei Karta attending the 2017 International Conference in Iran (also attended by yours truly) where was found virtually EVERY LEADER within the Middle East and throughout the entire world that supported the Palestinian cause…

…And then, in light of all of this, ask the following question–

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES THAT GIVEN THIS GROUP’S FRONT DOOR ACCESS TO SUCH PLACES AND PERSONS OF POLITICAL IMPORTANCE THAT MOSSAD/SHIN BET WOULD NOT TAKE AN INTEREST IN PULLING THEM INTO THE WEB OF ISRAEL’S INTELLIGENCE CIRCLES?

Rachel Fink for Haaretz

On October 10, just three days after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel that left over 1,400 people dead or taken hostage in Gaza, a quote by rabbi Yoel Ekstein appeared on X–

‘At a pro-Palestine demonstration today in NYC, anti-Zionist Jews called for the peaceful end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine that began in 1948 and has since been the cause of suffering and bloodshed for Arabs and Jews,’ it said.

‘The existence of the State of Israel is the main obstacle to peace.’ The post was retweeted hundreds of times, mostly by pro-Palestinian accounts.

On the surface, the tweet echoed the ideas of far-left groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, whose messaging was similar after October 7. And if you didn’t scroll any further you might have assumed that Ekstein and the group he represents aligned themselves with these secular organizations that don’t believe that Israel has a right to subjugate the Palestinian people.

But the photos below his words are disorienting–Dozens of men wearing the traditional ultra-Orthodox uniform of white shirt, long black coat and black velvet hat, complementing the bushy beard and curly sidelocks – not exactly your typical ‘#ceasfirenow’ supporters.

Ekstein and the men in the photos belong to a small but vocal sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews known as Neturei Karta. While they’ve been a fixture on the anti-Israel circuit for decades, they’ve ramped up their protests worldwide during the war in Gaza – along with more traditional pro-Palestinian activists.

Their very visible participation at these rallies is often touted as proof that ‘even religious Jews oppose the Israeli occupation’, but a closer look at the group’s foundational beliefs reveals that they may not be as closely aligned with the Palestinian solidarity movement as they purport to be.

What’s the full story behind the organization’s virulent hatred of Israel, and how far do other activists showing solidarity with Gaza understand the ideology that motivates them?

Early anti-Zionist roots

Neturei Karta, whose name comes from an Aramaic phrase in the Jerusalem Talmud meaning ‘guardians of the city,’ was founded in 1938 by rabbis Amram Blau and Aharon Katzenellenbogen. Like similar ultra-Orthodox movements at the time, the group took a hard-line stance against Zionism based on the belief that the Jewish people were exiled from the biblical Land of Israel because of the sins of secular Jews and that therefore, they were forbidden to reconstitute Jewish rule there until the arrival of the Messiah.

Neturei Karta can trace its anti-Zionist roots all the way back to the Old Yishuv, the religious Jewish communities in Ottoman Palestine, largely to the holy cities of Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron, and Tiberias. These communities eschewed the secular orientation of the newly emerging political Zionists, whom they viewed as a threat not only to their religious way of life but also to the largely peaceful relations they enjoyed with their Arab neighbors.

Neturei Karta cozies up to Israel’s enemies, implying that Jews can live and worship safely under Arab rule, negating their need for a sovereign state.

In 1921, many of the Old Yishuv’s most devout Ashkenazi members came together to form the Haredi Council of Jerusalem, also known as the Eda Haredit. Council members vehemently opposed the new British-created Chief Rabbinate, which they saw as a capitulation to the secular Zionists and their nationalist aspirations. Today, the Eda Haredit remains an umbrella group representing the most conservative elements in the ultra-Orthodox community including the worldwide Agudath Israel movement, in whose Jerusalem chapter Blau was an active member.

When it formed, Agudath Israel stood firmly against the establishment of a modern Jewish state, going so far as to discourage its European members from moving to Palestine. But in the 1930s, as antisemitism spread across Europe, the group adopted a more compromising approach to the Zionist movement, including participation in some of its institutions.

Blau, who categorically opposed these compromises, hoped to influence policy from within. But eventually Agudath Israel’s leniencies proved too much for him, and in 1937, he and Katzenellenbogen broke off and founded an organization that was quickly renamed Neturei Karta.

A post-1948 Neturei Karta

After the State of Israel was established in 1948, Neturei Karta staunchly refused to recognize the new Israeli government and its institutions, as far down as local municipalities.

Also during this time, Neturei Karta put into practice what would become one of its defining characteristics: public protests. These demonstrations, which often deteriorated into violence, mainly focused on what members of the group saw as the secularization of Jerusalem. They protested the violation of Shabbat in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, the opening of a public pool where men and women could swim together, and the establishment of mixed-gender preschools.

In fact, it was not until the late ’60s and early ’70s, as Israel moved from the victory of the Six-Day War to the mixed result of the Yom Kippur War, that Neturei Karta began to focus on cultivating friendly relationships in the Arab world. In 1969, as members of the group burned Israeli flags in Jerusalem’s city center, a few American members protested against Israel outside the UN building in New York. A year later, the protest at the UN took place in association with an unlikely ally: the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

In the ’80s, as PLO leader Yasser Arafat started moving away from the use of violence and terrorism towards negotiations to achieve Palestinian statehood, Neturei Karta leader Rabbi Moshe Hirsch managed to befriend the man whom many Israelis still considered their number-one enemy. Hirsch was awarded a symbolic post in Arafat’s cabinet: Jewish affairs minister. According to a New York Times article at the time of Arafat’s death in 2004, Hirsch received a monthly salary of $30,000.

Hirsch and the other Neturei Karta leaders realized that a photo of an ultra-Orthodox Jew shaking hands with the kaffiyeh-clad Arafat wouldn’t only thrust Neturei Karta’s message into international headlines, it would imply that Jews could live and worship safely under Palestinian rule, negating their need for a sovereign state.

Neturei Karta’s cultivation of ties with fierce opponents of Israel went far further than Arafat, and continued for decades. Neturei Karta leaders traveled to arch-enemy Iran several times to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his presidency between 2005 and 2013.

In 2006, they took part in the ‘International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust’ in Tehran, otherwise known as Iran’s Holocaust denial fest, which featured keynotes from Ku Klux Klan grandee David Duke and Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. Ahmedinejad was himself fond of calling the Holocaust a ‘myth,’ ‘lie’ and ‘deception,’ while calling for the ‘annihilation of the Zionist regime’ and spreading Elder of Zion-type tropes about a global Jewish conspiracy. Neturei Karta itself believes the Holocaust was a ‘punishment from God’ for the sins of the Jewish people and that further disobedience will result in ‘another Holocaust.’

In 2009, Neturei Karta leaders sat down in Gaza with none other than Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, two years after Hamas had seized complete control of the Strip, and in 2018, they traveled to Lebanon, where they presented a gift to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

In January last year, Neturei Karta members visited Jenin in the West Bank to meet with senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials. During the trip, a member of the delegation declared: ‘We are Palestinian Jews, we want to live under the Palestinian flag and not the Israeli flag, in one country which is the Palestinian state.’

These Neturei Karta members were arrested upon their return to Israel.

Neturei Karta today

The group is notoriously vague about its size, but current estimates put it in the low thousands, with small chapters in cities in Israel, the U.S. and the U.K. with sizable ultra-Orthodox populations, such as Jerusalem, London and Brooklyn. By far the largest concentration of Neturei Karta members is in Israel.

If a virulently anti-Israel organization having its main enclave in Israel feels counterintuitive, then that’s because it is. ‘This is really the heart of the problem,’ says Motti Inbari, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, who has written extensively about the group.

‘The members who live in Israel can’t really disconnect completely from the State of Israel. They need access to basic needs like water and electricity. So even if they’re publicly stating that they don’t acknowledge the state, in some ways they have to.

Online and in public, the group keeps quiet about tenets like its modesty laws for women and its fervent belief that the Messiah will usher in a Jewish theocracy.

‘Plus, many of them travel back and forth to other countries to do Neturei Karta’s anti-Israel advocacy work, so they have to have a passport.’

Since October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza, this advocacy work has been keeping Neturei Karta members busy. These days, if there is a pro-Palestinian demonstration in a major city, Neturei Karta will almost definitely be there, often with kaffiyehs draped over the traditional Hasidic coats they wear. They’ll be holding signs with slogans like ‘Judaism condemns the State of ‘Israel’ and its atrocities’ and ‘Stop the Zionist massacres and persecution in Gaza.’

These posters contain a web address that takes you to Neturei Karta’s very rudimentary website, though its X account is notably more sophisticated. The group has a key foundational tenet that is conspicuously absent from any of its online messaging, namely its fervent belief that the Messiah will usher in a Jewish theocracy that will rule over the Land of Israel. This messianic vision contains it all: the resurrection of the dead, the ingathering of the Jewish exiles from the four corners of the earth, and of course, a complete return to Torah law.

This exclusivist vision of a monarchical Jewish theocracy clearly has no space for a sovereign Palestine. Are these glaring omissions part of Neturei Karta’s attempts to hide its agenda?

‘I wouldn’t necessarily say their agenda is hidden,’ Inbari says. ‘They never deny their belief in a Jewish right to return to the Land of Israel once God allows them. Rather, they’re speaking in two different languages, literally and figuratively.’

That is, Neturei Karta has two very clear ways of speaking. ‘They have a certain way of talking to their own members, and they aren’t interested in recruiting,’ Inbari says. ‘Keep in mind, ultra-Orthodox Jews aren’t even supposed to have access to the internet. Everything they post on social media is clearly intended for consumption by the general public.’

It’s also no coincidence that in recent months, Neturei Karta has honed this messaging to more closely align with the statements one would expect from more liberal Jewish supporters of Palestine. ‘This is what has allowed them to be so widely embraced by the larger pro-Palestinian movement,’ Inbari says.

The group’s tactics are clearly working. Not only is Neturei Karta welcomed at pro-Palestinian marches and rallies, the photos of its members standing among a sea of Palestinian flags get shared widely across social media under captions like ‘coexistence is possible’ and ‘Jews for Palestine.’

‘It’s actually a mutually beneficial relationship. Neturei Karta gets a large platform to broadcast its message that Zionism doesn’t equal Judaism,’ Inbari says. Indeed protesting a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York in July 2010, members of Neturei Karta chanted, ‘Netanyahu is not a Jew!’

‘And pro-Palestinian groups can use Neturei Karta as proof that not only do they have Jews who support the pro-Palestinian cause, but religious Jews. It gives them a certain kind of credibility they wouldn’t otherwise have.’

Still, it seems that few people have a full picture of the group’s belief system or more incendiary actions in the past. When the media reports on them, for example, they’re often referred to simply as ‘Jewish rabbis’ without any further explanation.

For the time being, their objectives align. But in an ironic way, this alliance of convenience mirrors the ‘covenant’ between right-wing Jews and Evangelical Christians, whose pro-Israel fervor is dictated by the country’s future role in the end times.

Inbari doesn’t necessarily think that supporters of the Palestinians, especially the leaders, are unaware of Neturei Karta’s messianic aspirations. Rather, they’re willing to ignore them.

‘I think [pro-Palestinians] are sort of telling themselves, ‘That’s not a problem for now – for now, we have their support. We’ll worry about the Messiah when he gets here.’