Some people would call them Jews. But I’m not so sure they deserve that lofty title. Oh… they are Jews by blood. They are Halachic Jews. But they are the kind of Jews who bring tragedy upon tragedy on their own people and unworthy of the name.Neturei Karta and many other Meah Shearim type Jews who sympathize with them are on a virtual wall to wall campaign of protest in Israel - raising hell for its residents. Many of those residents are religious Jews and might themselves sympathize with their cause. But they unwillingly suffer the toxic fumes of garbage dumpsters burning on what seems like a daily basis of late.
The monsters of Meah Shearim (and their ideological brethren in other parts of Israel) don’t care. What’s a little toxic smoke in your lungs compared to riding the land of Israel of its evil? The ends justify the means. They have their eyes on the prize.
The prize? The destruction of the Jewish State. Lest anyone say that I exaggerate - I do not. They fully admit that this is their goal. They are very open about it. Whether it is Neturei Karta, Toldos Ahron, the Edah HaCharedis, or even Satmar – nothing would make them happier than the State of Israel’s downfall.
They all claim that Israel’s existence is against the will of God. The late Satmar Rebbe, R’ Yoel Teitelbaum, actually put it in writing. Without getting into his theological reasons he stated that the Jewish people have no right to govern in the land of Israel until the arrival of Moshiach. Until then it violates Halacha to do so.
To illustrate just how serious the Satmar Rebbe was about this - when asked about the miracles of the 6 day war and the miraculously quick victory - he said that there were no miracles and that the victory was a Maaseh Satan – the work of the devil!
Of course Satmar Chasidim – who have a right to hold an opinion even as repugnant as this – do not act on it. They live with the existence of the state – cursing it all the while - and even reside in it benefitting from the the state’s protection. But we all know where their sympathies lie. They lie with the protesters.
And protest they do – at the drop of a hat! They look for any excuse to curse the government and protest it. Their most recent protest was over the removal of graves in the construction area for a new state of the art fortified emergency room at Barzilai Hospital.
Barzilai is located in Ashkelon which is not far from the border with Gaza. The need for a facility that can withstand rocket attacks and be state of the art is as obvious as the sun. Any delay can cost lives. And yet when graves were found a Charedi Knesset member, Yaakov Litzman (who is a Chasid of Ger) halted construction for two years saying that it was forbidden to move the graves found there. He demanded that the construction site be moved – at great expense – to a site less beneficial to potential patients.
In the meantime the Israeli rabbinate - based on scientific archaeological findings - determined that those graves did not contain Jewish bones but rather the bones of idol worshippers. They thus permitted the removal of those ancient bones to another site. Sephardi Gadol, Rav Ovadia Yosef, Paskined the same way. But Charedi opposition continued insisting that those buried there were Jewish. After much protest after violent protest by haters of the Jewish State - the graves were finally moved.
Somehow Meah Shearim activists took over the mission of reburying those remains. They tried to bury them in Jewish cemeteries. But those remains were refused as not being Jewish corpses and eventually buried in a cemetery designed for corpses of questionable Jewish lineage.
Meanwhile the protests go on. In the most recent event, Interior Minister, Eli Yishai of Shas was pelted with stones by extremist members of Neturei Karta as he was on his way to pay a condolence call in Jerusalem.
It should be clear by now that the Jewish graves issue is just an excuse. The protest of graves is secondary to the real goal of destroying the State. They will protest anything they can get away with to make trouble for the state and then blame it for police brutality when the police enter the scene trying to restore law and order.
These people should be seen not only as criminal thugs. They should be seen as subversives and treated no better than anyone whose goal it is to destroy the country. They have that in common with Hamas. Both want the same thing. The only difference is in the means.
If the government of Israel doesn’t get serious about dealing with these people (and I used the term ‘people’ loosely) they are going to win the war!
