Interview with Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss

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• published: 28 Apr 2008
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Yisroel Dovid Weiss (born 1956), a United States Haredi Rabbi, is an activist and the spokesman for Neturei Karta International, an anti-Zionist grouping of Haredi Jews. Based in Monsey, New York, he 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." In late 2006 Weiss was condemned by other anti-Zionists, such the Edah HaChareidis and Satmar, for attending a Holocaust conference in Tehran. Weiss often speaks at rallies and conferences in the United States and internationally, criticising Israel and Zionism. In 2001 he attended the UN-organized World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa as part of the Islamic Human Rights Commission delegation.[9] During the conference, US and Israeli delegates walked out over an unsuccessful attempt to condemn Israel for racism. In December 2006 Weiss spoke at the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, held by the Iranian government in Tehran which was described by media sources such as NPR as a gathering of Holocaust deniers. In his five minute speech, Rabbi Weiss addressed the issue of holocaust denial as well: Now maybe I can say that at the discussion of the holocaust, I may be the representative, the voice of the people who died in the holocaust because my grandparents died there. They were killed in Auschwitz. My parents were from Hungary. My father escaped and his parents remained. He wasn't able to get them out of Hungary and they died in Auschwitz as were other relatives and all the communities that they knew. So to say that they didn't die, to me you can not say that. I am the living remnant of the people who died in the holocaust and I am here, I believe sent by God, to humbly say, simply to speak to the people here and say, 'You should know that the Jewish people died, and do not try to say that it did not happen. They did die!' There are people throughout the Jewish communities, still alive in their seventies and eighties and every one of them will tell you their stories. It is something which you can not refute, but that being said, it doesn't mean that the holocaust is a tool to use to oppress other people.[2] Weiss states that though Israelis have used the Holocaust to gain sympathy and advantage, he does not believe the Holocaust toll is exaggerated. Weiss said that "The Zionists use the Holocaust issue to their benefit. We, Jews who perished in the Holocaust, do not use it to advance our interests. We stress that there are hundreds of thousands Jews around the world who identify with our opposition to the Zionist ideology and who feel that Zionism is not Jewish, but a political agenda...What we want is not a withdrawal to the '67 borders, but to everything included in it, so the country can go back to the Palestinians and we could live with them..." American Jewish organisations including Agudath Israel of America and the Orthodox Union, have also issued statements distancing themselves from Weiss. The executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, has called the group 'embarrassing', and Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, called Neturei Karta's public display of affection for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 'graphic and disgusting.' Since returning to the U.S. from the conference, Weiss and other individuals who attended have been ostracized by synagogues, denied service at kosher stores, and have been the subject disparagement in some communities with strong Orthodox Jewish populations such as Brooklyn and Monsey. A demonstration outside a Neturei Karta synagogue on the 7th of January was met by a counter demonstration attended by "a much smaller contingent" of supporters of Rabbi Weiss ______________________________ Happy anniversary? Israel at 60 Sunday, 4 May 2008 This week will be a time to remember the dramatic history of a country born of an ancient culture and a political movement -- Zionism -- only a little over a century old. It will be recalled that Britain gave crucial support to Zionism through the Balfour Declaration of 1917, then tried to resist its logical outcome, the birth of a Jewish state. Within hours of that state being proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion in 1948, Israel was at war with its Arab neighbours. It won that time, and in 1956, 1967 and 1973, acquiring the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Gaza and east Jerusalem. That legacy still governs the politics of the region, for good or ill.