[UPDATE and apology by Brian: I tipped this story to Varda without noticing it was from June of 2013. We wrote about it then. This post stays up, all the points are valid, but it’s not a new story.]
I don’t like to talk about the Neturei Karta. They are what Jews like to call, “A shonda for de goyim,” an embarrassing spectacle for non-Jews.
But what happened here is instructive, more for Jews than for non-Jews. The head of the Neturei Karta in Holland, Rabbi Joseph Antebi, was beaten by a group of Muslims. The beating was so severe that Antebi was hospitalized with internal bleeding.
The Neturei Karta is a fringe Jewish anti-Zionist group that wears the trappings of the ultra-orthodox while embracing such figures as Ahmadinejad and Yasser Arafat.
The embrace by these people of such arch villains, those who call for the annihilation of their own people, fails to protect them on even the most minimal level, as they themselves are “Jewish enough” for the Jew-haters, just as assimilated German Jews, even those who converted, were Jewish enough for Hitler, may his name and memory be erased.
The Jew-haters don’t care if your politics are to the left or right of the spectrum. They don’t care if you are willing to give away the Jordan Valley or the settlements. They don’t care if you prefer Zahav Gal-On to Bibi.
The context will never matter except that it gives the Jew-haters their pretext—their excuse— for hunting down the Jews.
All of them. Anywhere, at any time.
Forever.
