“He has a packed schedule in The Land of Israel until next Thursday, when he will return home,” said The Yeshiva World News.
By World Israel News Staff
A leading rabbi of a hasidic sect, Satmar, which rejects the existence of the current State of Israel arrived in the Jewish State on Tuesday.
“Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Teitelbaum, better known as Rabbi Zalman Leib,” landed Tuesday morning in Israel, reported the Arutz 7 website.
He had flown “on a private plane from Heathrow airport in London,” according to the report.
He stopped in the British capital on Monday to visit Satmar institutions in Stamford Hill and Golders Green, on his way to the Land of Israel, said The Yeshiva World News, not referring to Israel as a modern state.
The Williamsburg community in Brooklyn, New York, where the rabbi is based, was “near gridlock” on Sunday afternoon as “the Satmar Rebbe prepared to leave on his trip,” it reported.
Followers filled the streets. A motorcade transported him on the highway to New York’s JFK Airport, as seen on a video published by “All About Wedding.”
A massive gathering was scheduled to take place in Jerusalem later on Tuesday.
“He has a packed schedule in Eretz Yisroel [The Land of Israel] until next Thursday, when he will return home,” said The Yeshiva World News.
The Satmar movement was founded in 1905 by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, originating in Hungary.
“The Satmar Rebbe develops a comprehensive accusation, arguing that it was Zionism that caused the Holocaust, whether directly or indirectly: first by highlighting the Jewish issue as a political matter, then by creating an excuse for the nations not to take in Jews as refugees, since they had a place of their own,” according to Rabbi Tamir Granot, in a lecture published on the etzion.org.il website.
The State of Israel was established in 1948, a few years after the end of the Holocaust, but the movement to return Jews to their homeland was established beforehand.
In Israel, some politicians voiced displeasure over the rabbi’s arrival on Tuesday, saying that if Arab and pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) activists who are anti-Israel are barred from entering the Jewish State, the Satmar rabbi should also be prevented from visiting.
“Have we all gone mad? Closing roads in Jerusalem for the arrival of the anti-Zionist Satmar leader who objects to the existence of the State of Israel. I don’t understand how he is permitted to enter the state?” said Israel Beiteinu MK Yulia Malinovsky, as cited by Arutz 7.