MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) called on Attorney- General Yehuda Weinstein on
Monday to investigate members of the Neturei Karta movement following reports
that they met with senior Hezbollah officials in Beirut.
Eldad is seeking
the prosecution of any Israelis who took part.
A fringe ultra-Orthodox
sect established in Jerusalem in 1938, Neturei Karta (Aramaic for “Guardians of
the City”) believes Israel can be reestablished only after the coming of the
Messiah. The group therefore rejects Zionism and opposes the existence of the
State of Israel.
The Arabic-language pro- Hezbollah radio station al-
Nour (the light) reported on Monday that senior Hezbollah official Sheikh Nabil
al- Kauk received a delegation from Neturei Karta in the Lebanese
capital.
American Neturei Karta leader Yisroel Dovid Weiss met with
al-Kauk, the Hezbollah official in charge of southern Lebanon, as part of his
group’s participation in Friday’s Global March to Jerusalem, al- Nour
said.
The pro-Hezbollah station reported that Weiss used the visit to
call for the “demise of the so-called State of Israel” and said Jewish identity
had been ‘stolen by the global Zionists.”
According to al-Nour, Kauk
called Weiss’s visit a “slap in the face for the Zionist apartheid entity in
Israel” and called on Neturei Karta to “expose the usurping entity’s anti-
Jewish, anti-Islam and anti- Christian [stance].”
Hezbollah said that
Atallah Hamoud, deputy chief of its Palestinian department, had also been
present during Weiss’s visit.
The terror group said in a statement that
Weiss congratulated Hezbollah on its “resistance” to Israel.
According to
Hezbollah, Weiss said the Jews had been “expelled from the Land of Israel
because of their sins” and added that “no Israeli state should be established
before the advent of the Messiah, and the Palestinian nation is fully entitled
to establish a state on its own soil.”
Neturei Karta’s participation in
Friday’s Global March is still being widely reported in the Arabic press,
particularly in Jordan and Lebanon, with several news outlets featuring videos
of the rabbis at the event.
On Sunday, the Lebanese newspaper as-Safir
published a lengthy interview conducted in Beirut’s Golden Plaza Hotel with six
Neturei Karta rabbis, citing the movement as saying Israel was “Zionist and not
Jewish” and that Jews should live in exile, including in a Palestinian
state.
The rabbis told the paper that “Israel is doomed to extinction”
and that their participation in the Global March had been a “message to the Arab
world and the Palestinian people.”
In the past, Weiss has given
interviews to Iran’s state-owned news agency IRNA in which he expressed his
desire for Israel’s demise.
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