January 19, 2007--Fanaticism LXXXI--A Jew Not a Zionist

Ironically, the ultra-orthodox Hassidic groups in Israel, who frequently have a controlling voice in the Knesset, do not believe in or recognize the very state of Israel. So much so that they are exempt from military service. Yet many live there and serve in the parliament where they often use their swing votes to select and influence the Prime Minister.

In other words—they are Jews but not Zionists.

But in spite of this, without their political influence, there would be no fence or settlements in the “occupied territories or such strong resistance to even the idea of a Palestinian state.

This inconsistency (some might consider it hypocrisy—having things both ways) not only plays out in the Middle East but also right here at home.

In what might seem like a detour, let me take you back to last month when in Iran President Ahmadinejad hosted a conference on the Holocaust. In effect, to bring together “scholars” who deny it ever existed. Among them was Ku Klux Clan leader David Duke. Much was made about that. But overlooked in the crowd was a Hassidic rabbi from New York. One Yisroel Dovid Weiss. The NY Times spotted him there but made only scant reference to his presence and only in the New York-Metro section. (Article linked below.)

What pray tell was he up to at this so-called conference?

Some would claim, in a perverted way, being consistent with Hassidic anti-Zionism. Others, most, including the Brooklyn Hassids, have such a different view of him and what he did that they have made his life miserable.

Rabbi Weiss says that his presence in Tehran was to emphasize the point that that Holocaust has been exploited to justify the case in support of the state of Israel.

No Holocaust, no Israel? Is that what he and his followers were saying? Actually not—he and they acknowledge that the Holocaust occurred—in fact his grandparents and many of his aunts and uncles were slaughtered in concentration camps—he was there to indicate to Muslims that Jews are not their enemies and that the fact of the Holocaust should be uncoupled from any rationale for Israel’s right to exist as a governmental entity.

Behind all this, not matter how clumsy the rabbi’s role in Iran was, is the Hassidic belief, including among those in Israel, that there should be no State of Israel until the Messiah appears. And since he hasn’t yet appeared, there should be no such governmental entity.

Back home Rabbi Weiss has been vilified, mainly by other Hassids, who are living comfortably in Brooklyn and in various suburban communities. He has even been denied service in kosher stores and protestors have hounded him and his family in their home. The goal, to quote Mordechai Levy, national director of the Jewish Defense Organization, is to “run him and his followers out of town and out of America.”

Sound familiar?

So, again, it’s all about the Messiah. For Evangelical Christians, for whom the Messiah already appeared, it is all about the Second Coming and doing what they claim was prophesized to be necessary to bring about the conditions for that—which includes the requirement that all Jews, all, return to and occupy Greater Israel (from the Nile to the Euphrates). Muslims too are awaiting the Messiah, who also is expected to appear in the Holy Land. And then of course orthodox Jews have their own things to do to prepare for him, again believing that he will come to the very same piece of Middle Eastern real estate as the other two Religions of the Book.

So yet again it’s all about location, location, location.