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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Sofer has been closely following the debate about the role of pro-Israel neoconservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz in planning for the war with Iraq. He has devoured articles about a 1996 document that Bush administration hawks Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser wrote for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The report, which argued in favor of overthrowing Saddam Hussein as the first step in a plan to radically refashion the Middle East, has been widely distributed in the past few months and is frequently cited by those who believe American foreign policy is dominated by Israel.
That belief is becoming increasingly mainstream. As New York Times columnist Bill Keller wrote on Sunday: "You hear lowbrow versions of the it's-really-about-Israel theory at protest rallies, especially in Europe, where selective sympathy for the Palestinians runs high. You can hear more sophisticated versions, sometimes whispered or oblique, among scholars, op-ed writers and politicians." Some are doing more than whispering -- on March 3, Rep. James Moran, D-Va., told an antiwar forum at Saint Anne's Episcopal Church in Reston, Va., "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this." He apologized after an outcry from Jewish leaders.
Sofer, who is inclined to see Zionist conspiracies wreaking their mischief on the world, sees comments like Moran's as confirmation of his suspicions. "Something behind this war is related to Israel and to the pro-Israel movement that in essence has captured the Bush administration," he says. "Since this issue is directly related to Jews and Jewish interests, we as representatives of true Judaism have a moral and religious obligation to use all means to say that we are against this war."
Sofer believes this is the only way to save the Jews from a savage backlash if the war goes badly. "We are very afraid that there will come a day when this whole war issue will explode," he says. "The whole world will see it was a tragic mistake and the burden will fall upon Jews as a whole."
Indeed, one of the cornerstones of Neturei Karta's ideology is that most of the world's anti-Semitism is a reaction to Zionism, and that Jews will find real acceptance in the world only when Israel is dismantled. "Zionism is a factory for anti-Semitism worldwide," says Weiss. Deutsch insists that before the Zionists went to Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs lived in peace. Through Sofer, he adds: "My grandmother lived with Arabs. They were babysitting each other's children. They had the best relationship." According to the rabbis, Zionism alone is responsible for destroying that harmony. Now, they fear, a similar chasm is about to open between Jews and gentiles worldwide.
This contention fits into Neturei Karta's stark analysis of recent Jewish history, which they see as a series of punishments for the Jewish rejection of Neturei Karta's beliefs. Some Neturei Karta rabbis even suggest that the Holocaust was God's punishment for the Jews' failure to combat Zionism. Asked about suicide bombings, Weiss, a small man with light brown hair and pale blue eyes, grows vehement. "Every drop of blood I point my finger at the Zionists," he says. "Of course it hurts us, every drop of Jewish blood. It hurts us tremendously. That is one of the reasons we want to take away anti-Semitism and hopefully to save Jewish lives by going out there and telling the Arab world that Zionism and Judaism are not one and the same."
Neturei Karta's insistence on blaming Jews for their own suffering is a big part of what makes them seem so outrageous to mainstream Jewish groups. "Their position tends to scandalize most Jews," says David Biale, a professor of Jewish history at UC-Davis and the editor of "Cultures of the Jews: A New History," a monumental 1,200-page survey published last year. "They tend to see forces like the PLO as more congenial than a Jewish state. Their declared positions are so extreme, they've largely discredited themselves." A Neturei Karta bumper sticker shows a Hassidic boy waving a Palestinian flag with the slogan, "Surrender Is the Torah Solution!" It's hard to imagine a position with less resonance in the Jewish world.
At the same time, says Biale, the rabbis aren't entirely wrong to see themselves as the last remnant of traditional Judaism, preserving an ancient religion from the spiritual transformations occasioned by the shock of the Holocaust. "If you go back a hundred years, the position Neturei Karta is articulating was the position of most Orthodox authorities," he says. Nor has this position disappeared from all Jewish communities. J.J. Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Forward, America's preeminent Jewish newspaper, identifies the Satmars as the largest Hassidic sect in America, numbering between 35,000 and 50,000. Their Grand Rebbe was Neturei Karta's Joel Teitelbaum, who died in 1978. "A very substantial proportion of the ultra-Orthodox community shares the rejection of the Zionist notion," Goldberg says.
Part of the reason this isn't well known to casual observers is that sloppy journalism identifies religious settlers in the occupied territories as ultra-Orthodox. In fact, religious Zionists are overwhelmingly modern Orthodox, a sect of Judaism that accepts a great deal more assimilation into the wider world than the ultra-Orthodox do.
"There's constant reference in the American press to ultra-Orthodox settlers, which is contradiction in terms," says Goldberg. "The term 'ultra-Orthodox' was coined by the Jerusalem Post in 1950s to connote the black hats," the Jews who wear traditional religious garb. "It's been picked up by outsiders to mean anybody who seems really Orthodox."
In fact, Goldberg says, "The ultra-Orthodox, unlike the modern orthodox, have never favored settlements and have never opposed territorial compromise on religious grounds."
