Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief
Last Modified: 23:09 PM EDT, 19 March 2012
UNITED STATES – When people think of Jews, the general consensus is that the community is monolithic and closed, and that all Jews unilaterally support the State of Israel and its policies.
As one of our readers reminded us, Jon Stewart, who is Jewish, has a syndicated program called “The Daily Show,” and he is the rare exception in the American media landscape, because he has built a significant audience using political satire, which often pillories Israel’s policies.
Also, there are a number of American Jews, Israelis, and NGOs established to lobby for the Rights of Palestinians and Ethiopian Jews, but these voices of moderation are often drowned out by the cacophonous clamor of politicians and military strategists.
Unlike Islam and Christianity, and because of the Holocaust, any dissension by a Jew is tantamount to treason, viewed as a great betrayal, and the dissenters branded as anti-Semitic. This is particularly the case when a Jew speaks out against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in particular, and its military policies in general.
This is not to say that there aren’t contentious factions in Islam, which has seen a great deal of blood shed between the Sunni and Shiites.
The rift centers primarily around the rule of succession and the belief that the Mahdi, “the rightly-guided one” whose role is to bring a just global caliphate into being has already been here according to the Shiites, but has yet to emerge for the Sunnis.
The Sunni branch believes that the first four caliphs–Mohammed’s successors–rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims. They recognize the heirs of the four caliphs as legitimate religious leaders. These heirs ruled continuously in the Arab world until the break-up of the Ottoman Empire following the end of the First World War.
Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. In 931 the Twelfth Imam disappeared. This was a seminal event in the history of Shiite Muslims.
According to R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, ‘Shiite Muslims, who are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, [believe they] had suffered the loss of divinely guided political leadership” at the time of the Imam’s disappearance.
Not until the ascendancy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1978 did they believe that they had once again begun to live under the authority of a legitimate religious figure.” (Source: George Mason University, History News Network)
By contrast, at the turn of the millennium, “Global Christianity had 33,820 denominations with 3,445,000 congregations/churches composed of 1,888 million affiliated Christians.” (Source: World Christian Encyclopedia)
Though there have been some key issues like Gay Marriage and Abortion, which has split Christendom across denomination, the conversations often heated and sometimes contention are not as shocking as the antithetical position Neturei Karta takes against Zionism, which is mistakenly believed to be synonymous with Judaism.
Rabbi Dovid Yisroel Weiss, 56, Orthodox Jew, activist, and spokesman for Neturei Karta, believes that the State of Israel is not legitimate. Based in Monsey, New York, Weiss believes that observant Jews should peacefully oppose the existence of the Israeli state.
“It would be forbidden for us to have a State, even if it would be in a land that is desolate and uninhabited. This is against the will of the Almighty and this is not what it means to be a Jew.” He says that Zionists have hijacked Judaism which is a spiritual movement, and in its place has created “rivers of blood in trying to maintain its ascendancy.” He is also vociferous in his opposition to the occupation of Palestine.
In 2001 he attended the UN-organized World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, as part of the Islamic Human Rights Commission delegation. During the conference, US and Israeli delegates walked out in an unsuccessful attempt to silence condemnation of alleged institutional racism in Israel.
View his interviews below and decide for yourself if he makes a valid argument.
Related articles
- Zionist Hypocricy: Vociferous on Sudan, But Silent on Israel (desertpeace.wordpress.com)
- Rare Video of Israeli Rabbi in Iran (iamiranaware.wordpress.com)
- New Hampshire gets the Neturei Karta treatment (blogs.jta.org)
- Zionism is Illegitimate: Rabbi Weiss (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
- Neturei Karta International: An Urgent Appeal from Jewish Rabbis, to the Candidates Running for the Presidency of the United States of America (prnewswire.com)
![Rehtaeh Parsons, a teen from Nova Scotia, was a gorgeous, kind, straight-A student with her whole life ahead of her. On Thursday, she hung herself in her bathroom. On Sunday night, her family took her off life-support. Approximately a year and a half earlier, in November 2011, when Rehtaeh was 15 years old, she was reportedly gang-raped by four boys, classmates of hers. The trauma did not end there. One of the boys reportedly took a photo of the act and circulated it among Rehtaeh’s school and community where, as noted, by Rehtaeh’s mother, “it quickly went viral.” Authorities reportedly investigated the sexual assault but claimed there was insufficient evidence to make formal charges. Rehtaeh’s mother recalls the investigation: They didn’t even interview the boys until much, much later. To me, I’d think you’d get the boys right away, separate them…. Nothing was done about [the photos] because they couldn’t prove who had pressed the photo button on the phone. [She was told that the distribution of the photos is] not really a criminal issue, it’s more of a community issue. Even though she was 15 at the time, which is child pornography…. The whole case was full of things like that. We didn’t have a rape kit done because we didn’t even know (anything had happened) until several days later when she had a breakdown in my kitchen. She was trying to keep it to herself. Tormented and bullied, Rehtaeh was forced to leave her school and tried to start fresh in a new community. Despite efforts, she continued to struggle, at one point checking into a hospital to cope with suicidal thoughts, anger, and depression. In an extensive post on a Facebook memorial page, her mother Leah Parsons described how the straight-A high school student became depressed and suicidal after the incident. “The person Rehtaeh once was all changed one dreaded night in November 2011. She went with a friend to another’s home. In that home she was raped by four young boys . . . one of those boys took a photo of her being raped and decided it would be fun to distribute the photo to everyone in Rehtaeh’s school and community where it quickly went viral,” Leah Parsons wrote. “Because the boys already had a ‘slut’ story, the victim of the rape Rehtaeh was considered a slut. “This day changed the lives of our family forever.” Rehtaeh, who was a 15-year-old high school student in Cole Harbour at the time, was repeatedly bullied at school and “suddenly shunned by almost everyone she knew.” “She was never left alone. She had to leave the community. Her friends turned against her. People harassed her. Boys she didn’t know started texting her and Facebooking her asking her to have sex with them. It just never stopped,” her mother told CBC.](http://ayannanahmias.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/rehtaeh-parsons-17-canadian-rape-victim-commits-suicide-3.jpg?w=45&h=45&crop=1){kind=small}
10/05/2012 at 23:33
Zionism was created by Theodor Herzel and others at the end of the 19th Century, and in that era it was commonplace to be colonialist, to be racist, to be super-nationalist, to adore the nation-state,so the idea of France for the French, Germany for the Germans, and then some state for the Jews. This all formed the basis for Zionism.
Zionism and Judaism are contrary to each other. Because Judaism is universal and humane, and Zionism is exactly the opposite. It is very narrow, very nationalistic, racist, colonialist, and all this. There is no “National Judaism.” There is Zionism and there is Judaism, and they are completely different.
Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. Because Judaism – a Reform Movement- that is highly, highly ethical. And so, you cannot connect Zionism with “highly ethical.” You can only connect the words “aggressive,” “oppressive,” “stealing,” “robbing” with Zionism. But not “highly ethical.”
“Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves.” Menaheim Begin, 6th Prime Minister of Israel.
Does this narrative sound familiar to you? Think Naz.
Judaism in its correct form is not a religion of hate any more than are Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. Zionism, however, is a secular, geopolitical system of hate…it is NOT a religion. It is a power cult (hiding behind the Jewish faith) of death, greed, lying, avarice and self-aggrandizement which views with contempt and derision all who do not subscribe or submit to its dogma.