Ron Paul, one of the candidates vying for the Republican Party's presidential nomination, has met a representative from the extremist anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta.
Mr Paul, who has drawn criticism for a catalogue of controversial remarks about Israel and the Holocaust as well as race and homosexuality, shook hands with Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss at an event in New Hampshire.
The Monsey rabbi, whose grandparents died in Auschwitz, has previously met Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a conference questioning the Holocaust.
The controversial sect, rejected by almost every other part of the Jewish community, was founded in Jerusalem in 1938 in order to fight Zionism and has actively championed Israel's enemies ever since. One Neturei Karta member, Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, even served as Minister for Jewish Affairs in Yasir Arafat's Palestinian administration.
