Former Indonesian President Describes Lynching of Jews in Iraq

From Former Indonesian President Describes Lynching of Jews in Iraq via DailyAlert:

Abdurrahman Wahid, 67, the former Indonesian president and a leading Muslim scholar, revealed the root of his understanding of the risks and perils of Jewish existence. Wahid was a student at Baghdad University in 1966, earning his keep as a secretary at a textile importer, when he befriended the firm's elderly accountant, an Iraqi Jew he remembers only by his family name, Ramin. In 1968, the Iraqi government effectively had come under the control of Saddam Hussein, who at that time was deputy to the president, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. At Saddam's behest, Iraqi courts had convicted 14 Iraqis - nine of them Jews - on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel, and they were hanged in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, just steps away from where the textile firm had offices.

Wahid has gained prominence for his insistence on introducing Muslim nations to certain truths about the Jews. He has called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "liar" for denying the Holocaust. Wahid says moderate Islam stands a greater chance of triumphing over Islamic radicalism once Western leaders stop trying to accommodate Islamic extremists. Saudi Arabia, in particular, remains the primary funding source for the global spread of fundamentalist Islam.

Anti-Semitism among Palestinian Authority Academics

From Anti-Semitism among Palestinian Authority Academics:

PA efforts to delegitimize Israel are evident throughout Palestinian society and involve television, schoolbooks, and culture, incorporating hate messages and the denial of Israel's right to exist. Academics including professors, religious scholars, teachers, and schoolbook authors are all participating.

Palestinian academics, recognizing the futility of attempting to erase the documented history of the Jews, literally stole the identity of the Jews by identifying ancient Hebrews as both Arabs and Muslims and denying their connection to today's Jews in Israel.

Many PA academics teach that the killing of Jews by Muslims is a precondition of world redemption.

Anti-Semitic Hate Speech in the Name of Islam

From Anti-Semitic Hate Speech in the Name of Islam:

Farfur, the cartoon character on Hamas' children's television program, is a carbon copy of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse. But the Hamas version does something that Mickey would never do: He entertains children while propagating the murder of Jews.

Farfur's appearances are typical of Hamas' anti-Semitic propaganda, which the organization also exports to Germany via satellite, hoping to breed new generations of fanatical anti-Semites and suicide bombers.

According to a 2007 study by the German Interior Ministry on the worldviews of "Muslims in Germany," "anti-Semitic attitudes were found among young Muslims far more often than among non-Muslim immigrants or domestic non-Muslims."

Teachers in Berlin are sometimes confronted with Muslim students who refuse to take part in school trips to concentration camp memorials. During one excursion to the German Historical Museum, a group of Muslim youth gathered in front of a replica of a gas chamber in Auschwitz and applauded.

Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism

Deconstructing the mythology of Islam's historical love for the Jews. From Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism:

The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism by Andrew Bostom refutes the claim that Islam, unlike Christianity, had not entertained a systematic persecution of the Jews, with a well-tailored survey of the theological, historical and juridical origins of Islamic anti-Semitism.

A trove of anti-Jewish stereotypes that have become the Sharia-based uncontested "truth" about the People of the Book are invariably cited in sermons during Friday prayers, thus assuring their universal diffusion among Muslim constituents and the constant poisoning of the souls of young and adult Muslims alike, something that renders their fundamentally negative attitudes to Jews and Israel unchangeable.

See also Islam's History of Anti-Semitism:

The historical documents make clear that, from day one, Jews and Christians have been systematically treated as second-class citizens, "dhimmis," in the regions conquered by Islam.

Even if there were some sort of Andalusian "golden age" - as academics are fond of reminiscing and insisting - that's exactly all it was, an "age," an "aberration."

Far from being a by-product of Western anti-Semitism or the creation of Israel, animosity toward the Jews has a firm doctrinal base tracing back to Islam's most authoritative texts.

I must be doing something right

I must be doing something right.

Yesterday, the politically depraved Daily Kos linked here and called this site a right-wing swampland.

Today, the politically depraved Israel-bashing site PhilipWeiss [dot] org, edited by Philip Weiss who himself is a Jew, commanded his readers to praise anti Israel writers, like the Israel-bashing journalist Scott Wilson, who was dissected in my post here. Weiss calls Wilson "noble".

Jews who loathe themselves are deficient. Deficient Jews actually enjoy embracing palestinian arabs and other unevolved cultural groups because it makes them feel better about themselves. Why any human being - a Jew especially - could proclaim his support for an Islamic movement whose goal is to annihilate all the world's Jews, is hard to answer. It's shocking to the normal observer, this behavior, that a Jew could take such an anti-Israeli anti-Jewish position. That a Jew like Weiss would, seems all the more astounding - and attention-grabbing.

Philip Weiss says this about himself:

"I know that some Jewish readers will say, [I] care about the opinions of a Palestinian graduate student and an Irish atheist more than [I] do the opinion of [my] coreligionists. They are right."

Why are we right, Weiss? Why does Philip Weiss frame himself as a "progressive"? Why doesn't he just wear Elect Palestinian Arabs for President buttons? He should just be honest.

The substance of what Philip Weiss has to say - the conduct of Jews who despise their own people - spans the full spectrum of political depravity.

Paul Bogdanor says that:

There are anti-Zionist Jews who peddle vicious libels about Israel. There are anti-Zionist Jews who compare the Jewish state with Nazi Germany. There are anti-Zionist Jews who support the PLO, Hamas or Hizbullah. There are anti-Zionist Jews who collaborate with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. There are anti-Zionist Jews who defend suicide bombings, anti-Zionist Jews who support the destruction of Israel, and – incredibly – there are even anti-Zionist Jews who advocate measures against other Jews that could plausibly be described as genocidal.

It must be noted, with all due caution, that some anti-Zionists appear to harbor genocidal intentions toward their fellow Jews.

Decades ago Arie Bober, leader of the Israeli communist Matzpen party, boasted of his support for an "Arab revolution" that would either split the Jewish workers from Zionism or slaughter three million Israelis in "another Holocaust."

Today we can detect similar ideas in the writings of Norman Finkelstein, who has invoked the destruction of Japanese cities in World War II as precedent for holding the Israeli people "accountable for the crimes of the Israeli state"; he also regards hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers, including pregnant women and helpless invalids, as "legitimate targets for armed resistance."

Competing in his genocidal frenzy was the Israeli leftist Yigal Tumarkin, a founder of Peace Now, who disclosed: "When I see the black-coated haredim with the children they spawn, I can understand the Holocaust."

And if these outpourings seem to be the products of deranged minds, let us not forget that even the impeccably liberal Tony Judt displays a striking indifference to the practical consequences of his proposals for the people of Israel. For Professor Judt, and for other advocates of the "one-state solution," it is perfectly acceptable to leave millions of Jews helpless before the armies and suicide bombers of the Middle East ("Things change"), just so long as faculty dinners and cocktail parties are no longer spoiled by the latest controversy over Israeli military tactics.

Such are the ideas exposed to the light of day in The Jewish Divide Over Israel. Our book's contributors – who range from left-wing supporters of Peace Now to right-wing advocates of peace through strength – are united around one principle: whatever their views on the future of Israel, they maintain that the Jewish homeland no more deserves to become a provisional country whose "right to exist" is the subject of legitimate discussion than the Jewish people deserve to be a pariah nation whose survival is conditional on the approval of anti-Semites.

In repudiating the Israel-haters in our ranks, we affirm not only our solidarity with embattled Israeli Jews, but also our own basic self-respect.

Deficient Jews have no self-respect. They are merely self-elected policeman, telling the rest of the world that "Islamic fundamentalism" is a reaction to various factors. Yet before all those factors existed, jihad terror existed. But of course, Weiss and his minions have no idea of that.

Apparently, self-loathing Jews are too busy berating Israel and Jews for defending themselves against "palestinians" to take much notice on how Muslims are reciting from the Koran to justify their murder of "infidels" all around the world.

Currently there are 30 conflicts around the world and 25 of them involve Muslims. If anything, that fact alone deconstructs all other mythologies - for example, "occupation" - as the root cause of Muslim terrorism.

It is time that self-loathing deficient Jews learned that real Jews reject the politics of leftwingers. We reject their views on immigration, culture, religion, ideology, law enforcement, and military strategy.

Self-loathing Jews do not take their proper place in the family of nations. Instead, they will be like hyena, scurrying off into the brush with their tails between their legs, because their apathy and self-loathing placed their fellow Jews into a dangerous, self-imposed ghetto, surrounded by 23 nations of Islamic theocracies and brutal dictatorships, run by racist madmen.

Ron Kuby, Daniel Barenboim, Deborah Fink, Adam Shapiro, George Soros, Stanley Cohen, "Rabbi" David Weiss, are just a sampling of self-loathing Jews especially when it comes to their acknowledgement and pride in being Jewish. Just Google each of them and read what each says about Israel and Jews.

Manfred Gerstenfeld at The Jewish Center for Public Affairs writes:

Anti-Jewish attacks on Israel by Jews are frequently indistinguishable from those by non-Jews. Among the specific aspects in the anti-Israel writings of some Jews are the use of their family's Holocaust experiences, their references to being Jewish, or an association of some kind with Israel. Assaults on Israel and Jews by non-Jews often use statements from Israeli or diaspora Jewish defamers as a legitimization. In order to fight verbal attacks against Israel by Jews more effectively, a much better understanding of their background, motives, and methods is required.

Much of the Jewish world is ignorant of their precious heritage. The results are catastrophic: apathy, shame and self-loathing. If this is indeed a Jewish problem then the siege upon us will not be lifted until we as Jews acknowledge our rightful place in history and correct the mistakes we have made by denying them.

Commonalities between Anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist Discourse

From Commonalities between Anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist Discourse:

Anti-Zionism is not in principle anti-Semitism, but it is time for thoughtful minds to be disturbed by how much anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism share, how much the dominant species of anti-Zionism encourages anti-Semitism. And so:

If you judge a Jewish state by standards that you apply to no one else; if your neck veins bulge when you denounce Zionists but you've done no more than cluck "well, yes, very bad about Darfur"; if there is nothing Hamas can do that you won't blame 'in the final analysis' on Israelis; then you should not be surprised if you are criticized, fiercely so, by people who are serious about a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians and who won't let you get away with a self-exonerating formula - "I am anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic" - to prevent scrutiny. If you are anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, then don't use the categories, allusions, and smug hiss that are all too familiar to any student of prejudice.

"Historical insight" from a Jewish self-loather

An excerpt from the excellent, must-read essay by Seth Frantzman, currently in the doctoral program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and whose master's thesis was on the 1948 war, in a counterpoint rebuttal of Ilan Pappe, a communist anti-Zionist self-loathing Jewish historian at Haifa University who has defended a student, Teddy Katz, for written essays documenting a fictitious Israeli massacre at the village of Tantura in 1948, and presenting it as truth. Via JPost:

It has become fashionable in recent decades to frame the 1948 war as one in which the Arabs were victims of Zionist aggression. Anti-Zionist scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khalidi and Ilan Pappe have presented the war as if the only important events were Deir Yassin and the flight or expulsion of Arabs from Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, west Jerusalem, Jaffa and numerous villages.

These views are those of the "new historians" - leftist scholars who in the 1980s began to reinterpret Israeli and Palestinian history. He is the author of six works on the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Middle East. In his recently released book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappe claims that Israel prepared a special plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arab population known as Plan D for dalet. Pappe's "evidence" is derived from his interpretations of files found in the Hagana and Israel state archives.

But Pappe makes one egregious mistake. He never bothers to ask the same question of the Arabs he does of the Jews: What about their lists, their intelligence reports and their ethnic-cleansing plans? What were Arab intentions in the five months between the passage of the UN partition plan on November 29, 1947, and the birth of Israel?

The archives of The Palestine Post, now The Jerusalem Post and then the newspaper of record of Mandatory Palestine, provide some of the answers and tell a very different story from the one presented by Pappe.

-- Sixty-two Jews were murdered by Arabs in the first week after the UN partition plan was passed, and by May 15, 1948, a total of 1,256 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. These deaths were caused by Arab militias, gangs, terrorists and army units which attacked every place of Jewish inhabitation in Palestine.

The attacks succeeded in placing Jerusalem under siege and eventually cutting off its water supply. All Jewish villages in the Negev were attacked, and Jews had to go about the country in convoys. In every major city where Jews and Arabs lived in mixed neighborhoods the Jewish areas came under attack. This was true in Haifa's Hadar Hacarmel as well as Jerusalem's Old City.

Massacres were not uncommon.

-- Thirty-nine Jews were killed by Arab rioters at Haifa's oil refinery on December 30, 1947. On January 16, 1948, 35 Jews were killed trying to reach Gush Etzion. On February 22, 44 Jews were murdered in a bombing on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda. And on February 29, 23 Jews were killed all across Palestine, eight of them at the Hayotzek iron foundry.

-- Thirty-five Jews were murdered during the Mount Scopus convoy massacre on April 13. And 127 Jews were massacred at Kfar Etzion on May 15, 1948, after 30 others had died defending the Etzion Bloc.

-- In Arab countries more than 100 Jews were also massacred and synagogues were burned in Aleppo and Aden, driving thousands of Jews from their homes.

Back in Palestine many small kibbutzim were subjected to attacks, including Gvulot, Ben-Shemen, Holon, Safed, Bat Yam and Kfar Yavetz - all in December. In January and February, it was the turn of Rishon Lezion, Yehiam, Mishmar Hayarden, Tirat Zvi, Sde Eliahu, Ein Hanatziv, Magdiel, Mitzpe Hagalil and Ma'anit.

In March and April these attacks culminated with an assault on Hartuv by 400 Arabs based in the village of Ishwa and an attack on Kfar Darom by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Arab attackers also bombed The Palestine Post in February. In March, the Jewish Agency, the Solel Boneh building in Haifa and an Egged bus were also bombed.

Some of today's scholars prefer to present every massacre of Jews as a "response" to some Jewish deed, and to portray as a "myth" the very idea that Israel struggled desperately for existence in 1948.

But it was no myth.

The fact is 1,256 Jews were killed in five months. Even before the first Arab villages were captured in April, 924 Jews had already been killed.

Ilan Pappe should have pondered what might have been if those Jews had not been slaughtered.

For more on the scourge known as Illan Pappe, see this, this and this.

Click here to read the full essay, Ethnic cleansing in Palestine?

Sweeping Anti-Semitism in South Africa Under the Carpet

From the author of It's Almost Supernatural:

I have been waiting for weeks for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the South African Jewish report to publicize the findings of the South Africa Anti-Semitism report,06 by the Institute of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University. And I will most likely continue waiting until the Messiah comes so I have decided to take the liberty of publishing its disturbing findings myself.

Disturbing is not descriptive enough. Read the complete post here.

Dozens of celebrating Jews threatened by Israeli Arab mob

Via IsraelNationalNews:

An Arab mob of several thousand - including young men on horseback and others waving PLO flags - surrounded and threatened about 150 Jews from Haifa who to a public forest to celebrate Israeli Independence Day. A Jewish young man was lightly injured in the ensuing clash.

On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after the group of Haifa families made their way to the Megiddo Forest, in the north of the country, a group of Arab youths on horseback accosted the Jewish celebrants, jeered and threatened them. As the young Arab men continued their menacing behavior, they called more Arab youths to join them. Some of the new arrivals were waving flags of the PLO terrorist organization.

At this stage of the incident, a few of the Jewish young men, with Israeli flags in hand, charged the gathering Arab mob. Within moments, a fight broke out, during which one of the Jewish youths suffered a light injury to the face. The Arabs, still threatening the Jewish families, called for more of their comrades to join them.

Within forty minutes of the start of the incident, 6,000 Arabs waving PLO flags and making menacing threats had gathered around the group of Jews in Megiddo Forest. It was only at this point that a border guard patrol jeep showed up on the scene, with just six soldiers.

It appears the Jewish celebrants had unknowingly chosen to hold their Independence Day picnic near the site of the central event held by Israeli Arabs to mark 'Nakba Day' - 'the day of the catastrophe' - as they call Israel's independence. Several thousand Arabs had come to attend the event, and heard speeches from several Arab Knesset Members, bemoaning Israel's 1948 War of Independence. Interestingly, the Arab leadership appears to be marking its 'alternative' day based on the Jewish calendar.

In response to an Arutz-7 query, the regional police department said that they were aware of the incident; however, "both sides promised they would press charges with the police, but neither side did. Therefore, the matter was not handled [by the police]." In August of 1999, Megiddo Forest, a planned fir forest located adjacent to Kibbutz Megiddo and the Arab-Israeli city of Umm El-Fahm, was the scene of a terrorist ambush and double murder. Two young hikers from Haifa, Yechiel Finfeter and Sharon Steinmetz, were murdered there by an Israeli Arab carrying out what was called "a nationalistic crime of opportunity.

Folks, actually this is understandable. If the Jews were manifesting any enjoyment, it would have been an unacceptable threat to the darkness and ignorance that Muslims thrive on.

See, the last thing Muslims can tolerate is a population of Jewish people who enjoy life. Introduce any kind of positive view on life into the Muslim population and the Islamist dies.

To the Islamist, killing a Jew is just a matter of self preservation.

Arabs and erev rav Israelis plan to march against Israel on Yom HaAtzmaut

From INN: On the day most Israelis will be celebrating the 59th Yom Ha'atzmaut, Independence Day, some Arab and left-wing Jewish citizens will march against the foundation of the state.

The Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID) is planning to hold its tenth annual Procession of Return. The march, which last year drew hundreds of participants, is set to take place Tuesday, April 24, in the village of Al-Lajjun, adjacent to the northern Arab-Israeli city of Umm Al-Fahm. ADRID was established with the goal of returning Arabs to the houses and villages they or their families left during and after the 1948 War of Independence.

In the 2006 Procession of Return, Arab and left-wing marchers waved PLO flags and black flags "as a clear and decisive statement in the face of the Independence Day celebrations across other Jewish areas of the country," according to Ido Tzvieli, writing in the website of the Israel-based Jewish-Arab Zochrot organization. Zochrot, which will be taking part in the procession in Al-Lajjun, is dedicated to promoting the Arab view of the establishment of the State of Israel as a "day of catastrophe" (Al-Nakba).

Leading Middle East researchers, however, note statements on the issue made by Arab leaders and spokespeople during and after the War of Independence, indicating that Arabs in the land of Israel mostly fled due to Arab propaganda. The Arab leadership promoted libelous accusations against the Jews of Israel and warned Arab villagers to make way for conquering Arab armies.

For example, the New York-based Lebanese daily Al-Hoda wrote that in 1948, Arab League secretary Azzam Pasha "assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade.... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states."

Also during the War of Independence, hundreds of Jews were forced to abandon towns and communities that were conquered by Jordanian, Egyptian and other Arab forces, such as in Jerusalem, Gaza, Hevron and other parts of Judea and Samaria. The lands and homes abandoned by Jews were quickly taken over by Arab soldiers and civilians. In most cases, the properties taken over by Arabs have remained in their possession, even after the 1967 Six Day War, when Israeli forces returned to the areas in question. In addition, in the aftermath of the War of Independence, acts of official and unofficial retaliation against Jewish communities in Arab countries forced upwards of 700,000 Jews to flee their homes and emigrate to Israel and the West, in most cases leaving their possessions behind.

Anti-Semitic Incitement in Syrian Media

No surprise here. Merely more proof that anti-Zionism is racism. From Anti-Semitic Incitement in Syrian Media:

A cartoon featured in the Syrian daily Tishreen on Feb. 14, 2007, showed a stereotypical-looking Jew digging directly under the foundations of the Dome of the Rock Muslim shrine. A Syrian television channel claimed on Feb. 6 that Israel had destroyed several parts of the Temple Mount. A government minister told a Syrian television reporter on Feb. 13, "We shall not allow those [i.e., the Jews] who killed the prophets to also destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque."
Anti-Semitic incitement in Syria makes no distinction between criticizing Israel and spreading hatred against the Jewish people using "classic" and Islamic anti-Semitic themes. The Syrian media are under strict government control, meaning that anti-Semitic incitement is published with the regime's approval and as part of its policy.

The Illusion of "Peace in Exchange for Territories"

From The Illusion of "Peace in Exchange for Territories":

Since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, Arab leaders have repeated the mantra that peace with Israel hinges upon a withdrawal to the pre-1967 border. Yet it remains unclear whether the Palestinians will be satisfied with a homeland in the West Bank and Gaza following an Israeli withdrawal to the "green line." Palestinian insistence on the refugees' right of return, ending the Jewish majority in the State of Israel, indicates hostile intent.

Relations between Israel and its Palestinian and Arab neighbors are not dominated by the issue of disputed territory, but by the issue of the alleged right of return. The preservation of the refugee ethos through the media and the education system is intended to prevent concession on the right of return.

All Palestinian symbols and illustrations depict Palestine as the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. These illustrations do not show the Palestinian state as Gaza and the West Bank.

Western negotiators and Israelis tend to brush the refugee problem under the table, but for Arab societies surrounding Israel, the refugee issue is acute. Those who believe that the return of territory will bring peace must analyze and understand what is being said in the Arab media and on the Arab streets.

If a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan and Judea and Samaria (including Jerusalem) were to occur, Israelis would be bitterly disappointed to discover that the main problem between Israel and its neighbors - the problem of the State of Israel's very existence - has not been solved.

The writer, a Begin-Sadat Center research associate, served for 25 years in IDF Military Intelligence.

Neturei Karta "Rabbi" claims Holocaust dead "deserved it"

A British rabbi who angered fellow Jews by speaking at a "Holocaust denial" conference in Iran now says millions did die in gas chambers but may have deserved it.

Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading member of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live.

Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with 1,000 eggs last year because of his extremist views, told The Sunday Times: There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too many eyewitnesses.

However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering is obviously guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another. We have to look within to improve and try to better ourselves and remove those characteristics or actions that may have been the cause of the success of the Holocaust.

Cohen's trip to Tehran along with four American rabbis from the same sect was paid for by the Iranian foreign ministry, which organised the conference entitled The Holocaust: A Global Vision. They were warmly greeted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and had two meetings with him.

Cohen ended his speech to the conference with a prayer that the underlying cause of strife and bloodshed in the Middle East, namely the state known as Israel, be totally and peacefully dissolved.

Satmars: Jews at Iran Holocaust conference are reckless outcasts

The Neturei Karta Jews who attended the conference are often confused with the Satmars, who also are anti-Zionist but acknowledge that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Aside from their shared anti-Zionism, Neturei Karta followers and the Satmars both wear long, dark coats and wide-brimmed hats, and have beards and sidelocks.The Satmars say there is no connection between them and Neturei Karta, a group that sent six delegates to the conference under the banner "Jews United Against Zionism."They were led by a rabbi from the New York area, Yisroel Dovid Weiss. He said that while his group does not entirely deny the killing of Jews in World War II, the figures for how many people who died in the Holocaust are exaggerated. He said that "Zionists are using the Holocaust to brazenly and offensively oppress a people."

Rabbis call to excommunicate Neturei Karta members

Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and the Save the Nation and Land rabbinic organization have called for members of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect to be excommunicated. The unusual calls follow the visit to Iran by a group of senior officials of the small sect to take part in a conference aiming to present evidence that the Holocaust never took place. Photographs of the hareidi-looking Jews happily embracing Iranian President MahmoudAhmadinejad have been widely circulated in many countries. Chief Rabbi Metzger called on all rabbis and communities in Israel and around the world to honor the memory of the Holocaust victims byadhering to the cherem call against the Neturei Karta members.

Statement from Agudath Israel of America

Regarding this disgusting photo, I reprint the following statement from Agudath Israel of America that I received by email:

There should be no need to state the following, but to avoid any misconceptions in the media or among members of the public, Agudath Israel of America proclaims strongly and unequivocally that the visibly Jewish men who regularly appear publicly with virulent anti-Semites and claim to represent Jewish Orthodoxy not only do not represent anyone but themselves but are a disgrace to the Jewish people.

Most recently, they presented themselves at the much and properly vilified Holocaust denial "conference" in Teheran, where widely-disseminated photographs captured the pitiful spectacle of their greeting and shaking hands with Iran's demonic president. Neither their professed determination to protect the interests of Jews nor their haredi garb can obscure the fact that all they accomplish is to offer succor and support to people who eagerly wish to do grave harm to Jews.

There are many groups within the Orthodox community, and they represent widely differing positions on the concept of political and religious Zionism. All responsible Orthodox groups, however, have condemned the group at issue in no uncertain terms. Agudath Israel joins in that condemnation and declares that the group is not only deeply misguided and misleading of the public but dangerous to the true interests of the Jewish People.

Two sides of the same toilet paper

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is already morally corrupt, greets his counterpart, a morally corrupt rabbi at the Holocaust Denial conference hosted in Tehran this past week. This picture is from Der Spiegel.

Update: This is Neturei Karta Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedman shaking hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during Ahmadinejad's meeting with participants of a conference on the Holocaust, in Tehran, December 2006. Another picture of the filthy rabbi is here.