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Arson attack on dissident Jews

Neturei Karta HQ destroyed by fire
Members of the Jewish Neturei Karta outside their headquarters in Monsey, New York, destroyed in an arson attack on April 1st 2007

The Neturei Karta sect has long been controversial among fellow Jews. Founded in the 1930s the group, whose name means "guardians of the city" in Aramaic, opposed the creation of the state of Israel and now calls for Israel's "speedy, peaceful dismantlement".

By participating in the December 2006 Tehran conference on the Holocaust, Neturei Karta's leaders put themselves in the firing line alongside historical revisionists such as Ernst Zündel and Robert Faurisson. No matter that, unlike some other conference participants, Neturei Karta's speakers insisted that the Holocaust was a real (though misinterpreted) historical event. Their assertion that Zionists had abused the Holocaust to win international support for Israel was enough to earn the murderous venom of other Jews.

The website of the terrorist Jewish Defense Organization openly proclaims a "JDO effort to wipe Neturei Karta off the face of the map" and provides the home addresses and phone numbers of Neturei Karta leaders.

The JDO cannot be dismissed as harmless cranks. JDO leader Mordechai Levy served a prison sentence after firing several rifle shots at officials of a rival militant group, the Jewish Defense League, including JDL leader Irv Rubin.

(Rubin died in prison in 2002 while awaiting trial for a terrorist bomb plot.)

Rabbi Weiss with President Ahmadinejad
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss with President Ahmadinejad at the Tehran conference on the Holocaust in December 2006

After almost three months of JDO campaigns and incitement, the headquarters of Neturei Karta in Monsey, New York, was destroyed by fire on the evening of April 1st, the eve of Passover.

Fortunately the senior rabbi and his family who lived on the top floor of the building were not at home when the blaze struck.

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, who was among the speakers at the Tehran conference, condemned the suspected arson attack:
They have threatened us, they have warned us, they have harassed us. This fire is a desecration of God's name.

New York police described the fire as suspicious though (perhaps unsurprisingly) they have so far been unable to discover conclusive evidence of arson.

Police examine the wreckage of the Neturei Karta headquarters
Police examine the wreckage of the Neturei Karta HQ

Neturei Karta seems to have antagonised other Jews by the very reasonableness of its position in relation to the Tehran conference. The group's response to the "hysterical" criticism of its leaders' attendance made clear:
Our position as stated throughout the conference was explicit and free of any ambiguity. We affirmed the reality of the mass murder of Jews during the Second World War. And we were not the only speakers there who did so. But (also of enormous significance) we told those assembled that the reality of the Holocaust should not be used as a pretext to strip the Palestinian people, either as individuals or collectively, of their property and land.

Just as importantly Neturei Karta defended the much maligned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
Our beliefs were confirmed when the Iranian President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at our meeting with him after the December Conference, condemned anti-Semitism in no uncertain terms.
He stated (and his words were carried by the Iranian news agency IRNAJ) that "vigilant and just human beings will not blame the Jews for the crimes committed by the fake Zionist regime and its supporters in the occupied territories, including genocide of defenseless and oppressed women and children."
And, in contrast to the stereotype perpetrated by the would-be mind controllers of the media, the President's solution to the conflict in the Holy Land was to suggest that "a free referendum to establish a government based on the will of the Palestinian nation in which all Palestinians, including Jews, Christians and Muslims will be given the chance to vote."
Obviously two paths lie before the Jewish people. There is the path of Zionism that summons Jews to a state of perpetual war in order to "protect" Jewry and there is the path of the Torah which calls upon us to seek peace and dialogue with all men. To us the choice is elementary.

"Mainstream" Jewish opinion in the United States seems to have made a very different choice, and the attack on the Neturei Karta's headquarters shows that the JDO and its fellow travellers have no interest in "peace and dialogue".

An earlier arson attack targeted Ernst Zundel's home
An earlier arson attack gutted the home of Canadian revisionist Ernst Zündel

Many participants in the conference were already familiar with the fanatical Jewish terrorist response to historical revisionism. Professor Robert Faurisson has been assaulted eight times, including a particularly vicious attack in 1989 which left him hospitalised with a broken jaw, broken ribs and severe head injuries. After that attack the "respectable" Jewish campaigner Serge Klarsfeld said: "Someone who has provoked the Jewish community for years should expect this sort of thing."

Canadian revisionist Ernst Zündel was unable to attend the Tehran conference since he was in a German prison awaiting trial. Two months later he received a five-year jail sentence for the "crime" of publishing revisionist material.

Like Prof. Faurisson, Ernst Zündel is familiar with terrorist attack as well as legal persecution. In May 1995 his home in Toronto was gutted in a firebombing carried out by an "antifascist" group.

As the Bush-Blair axis and their media mouthpieces gear up for war against Iran, Americans and Britons should take notice of last weekend's attack on Neturei Karta and ask themselves: Who are the real terrorists?

Torah rescued from Neturei Karta building after arson attack
A Neturei Karta member rescues the Torah from the destroyed
headquarters building in Monsey, New York

 

Neturei Karta Rabbi Cohen
Neturei Karta Rabbi
Ahron Cohen

The arson attack in New York is the worst of several attacks which Neturei Karta members have suffered since their participation in the Tehran conference.

Octogenarian rabbi Ahron Cohen has had to endure sustained vilification from fellow Jews.

Up to one hundred Jews have gathered every night since the conference outside Rabbi Cohen's home in Salford, Lancashire, pelting the house with eggs, and the elderly rabbi has been refused service in local shops.

Rabbi Cohen has requested police protection, which is not surprising when one recalls that during the 1990s militant Jewish "antifascists" in his home town regularly collaborated with the gangland assassin Dessie Noonan.

Rabbi Cohen's comments to the press after his return from Tehran seem to have particularly incensed fellow Jews. He told The Times:

There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too many eyewitnesses. However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering is obviously guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another. We have to look within to improve and try to better ourselves and remove those characteristics or actions that may have been the cause of the success of the Holocaust.

In March 2006 Rabbi Cohen was among a group of Neturei Karta members who travelled to Tehran and appeared on Iranian television to support President Ahmadinejad.

 
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