Dissent Of The Day

 A reader writes:

Regarding the ultra-"Orthodox" Jews depicted below the fold in your recent face of the day:  Do you really not know who Neturei Karta are?  You can't seriously be pointing to them in arguing that it's not anti-Semitic to protest Israel, are you?

Well, if you didn't know, Neturei Karta is a sect of cultish Jews who reject the very idea of a state of Israel and believe it's an abomination to God (it stems from the eschatological belief that Jews should not settle in Israel until the Messiah comes).

Four years ago they were invited by and joined Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to participate in his Holocaust "conference". These are the people that anti-Semites and anti-Israelites all over the world point to when they say they're not anti-Semitic when they call for wiping Israel off the map.

Another elaborates:

They reject the Jewish state for reasons of pure fundamentalism, but they only reject it right now. They believe any Jewish state must be established by the Messiah, and therefore any Jewish state established by ordinary men is illegitimate for religious reasons. This does not stop them from accepting welfare checks from the Israeli state, using Israeli passports, and otherwise enjoying all the benefits of the Israeli state. Make no mistake that the theology that drives them is any less poisonous than that of American Christian Zionists. They spring from the same apocalyptic worldview.

All this I know. They are a tiny fringe Jewish sect. And you can find them in America as well. Their attendance at Ahmadi's Holocaust conference was disgusting. And they met him recently in New York as well. But they do exist; they are obviously not anti-Semites (an aside to proof of a theoretical distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism); and I put their picture below the fold for a reason.