Jewish supporters of Israel rallied against the virulently anti-Israel Neturei Karta on Monday night in the heavily Charedi enclave of Monsey in upstate New York.
A handful of Neturei Karta members, who hold extreme views on Israel and have been going around the country to support anti-Israel encampments on college campuses, gathered outside a synagogue where a video on Israel was being shown.
The carried placards and a megaphone, but were quickly drowned out by counterprotestors.
Supporters of Israel gathered on both sides of the narrow, two-lane road waving giant Israeli flags. A speaker system was set up and Hebrew songs like “Am Yisrael Chai,” filled the air.
Officers from the Town of Ramapo police department, which services the Monsey area, kept the two groups separate.
Just last year, Neturei Karta members removed an Israeli flag that was put up in front of the Ramapo Town Hall in solidarity with the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terror attacks.
Neturei Karta have been ostracized by many Jewish groups for their support of the Palestinians and the Iranian regime. Just last week, members of the group even traveled to Iran for the funeral of that country’s president, Ibraham Raisi—an Iranian hardliner who opponents called a mass butcher for his brutal crackdown on his own people—as a show of their solidarity and support. On their website, NKUSA.org, the Neturei Karta claims that “for decades” they have “experienced the profound respect Iran shows to Jews and Judaism.”
They believe their mission is to educate about the “original Judaism religion” and “rebuild the peaceful co-existence” of Jews and Arabs before the State of Israel was founded.
The group also claims that Zionism seeks to replace Judaism as the “fulfillment of the Torah with allegiance to a political movement as the defining quality of a Jew.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Neturei Karta—Aramaic for Guardians of the Gates—has an “extreme agenda, and has regularly aligned with international antisemites, Islamic extremists and groups that advocate violence against Israel.”
