DISGRACEFUL: Radical anti-Zionist ‘rabbis’ cozy up to ‘Butcher of Tehran’

Members of radical anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement meet with President Ebrahim Riasi, who praised them for their opposition to Israel.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A pair of fiercely anti-Zionist ‘rabbis’ met with Iran’s president in New York Wednesday to praise the Islamic Republic for differentiating between Israel and Judaism and allegedly supporting its Jewish community.

Video footage of the brief meeting shows two elderly, bearded men who introduced themselves as being part of the Neturei Karta movement – a radical ultra-Orthodox organization dedicated to the dismantling of the State of Israel and Zionism – can be seen greeting Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi in a corridor, with one kissing each of his shoulders in a show of respect.

“We have found that throughout the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you have protected the Jewish community, and you are only distinguishing that Zionism is nationalism, nothing [to do] with religion,” said the man, who was wearing a scarf-like keffiyeh over the shoulders of his suit.

Just last week, prior to the Rosh Hashanah holiday, Iran’s Jewish leadership warned its community not to gather in the streets after synagogue services due expected anti-government demonstrations that might turn violently against them, although they couched their language carefully and lauded “the loved ones of the police force for their unquestionable and constant help.”

Iranian Jews who have fled the country have attested to the fear that the community lives with, as arbitrary arrests, or worse, are a constant threat.

Neturei Karta has come under fire from mainstream Orthodox Jewish groups for offering its support to the Iranian government throughout its decades of anti-Israel actions and threats to destroy the Jewish state, seeing an Israeli state as an affront to God’s true plan for the Jewish people.

Neturei Karta leaders have even gone to Iran to meet with senior government officials, while the sect’s members attend Iran-backed anti-Israel demonstrations in the West.

The Iranian president told his guests, “I have heard that there are anti-Zionist Jews, and this is a great thing.”

In meetings of interfaith dialogue, he continued, “we always reiterate the fact that we have no issue whatsoever with the Jewish faith, with the Torah, and in Iran Jews are free to practice their religion.”

“Our only issue is with the Zionists,” he continued, saying that “anyone who enters the arena under the auspices of violence, and bring[s] about oppression” is “an issue for us.”

He offered that Iran never recognized ISIS as Muslims, despite the religion being the basis of all the terrorist organization’s actions, because of “the crimes it committed as so-called Muslims cannot be justified in anyone’s faith.”

He immediately followed this with the statement, “Today, the Zionists wish to discredit the Jewish faith,” and so the men’s announcement that they “are Jewish but against Zionists is something to be commended.”

Raisi is known in the West as “the Butcher of Tehran” for his leadership role in the 1980s execution of thousands of political prisoners. According to Iran’s Fars new agency, the president met the Neturei Karta leaders at the hotel where he is staying during the opening of the UN General Assembly.

Anti-ZionistsEbrahim RaisiIranNeturei KartaNew York City