Arab media play up ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist Jews at Iran conference

[Behind the Aegis]

The photographs of ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist Jews attending the Holocaust conference in Tehran this week were given pride of place in the Arab media.

The television cameras loved the "Jewish, not Zionist" sign worn by one of them, with the Israeli flag crossed out.

Many of the media outlets, however, broadcast the message of these ultra-Orthodox Jews, which is that the Holocaust did indeed take place but does not justify the commission of crimes against the Palestinians, as a British rabbi, Aharon Cohen, said at the conference.

The secret of the conference's success lies in the confusion and blurring it has managed to create in Arab, Muslim and world public opinion between the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

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[aquart]

1. I'm not a bit confused.

As for those ultra Orthodox, all fundies are identical, they just switch the nouns.

[Printer70]

2. There are many Jews who are not Zionists

The two are not one and the same. In fact, many of Israel's loudest critics are American jews.

[progdonkey]

3. isn't that kind of like...

a group of blacks going to a "Lynching conference" held by the KKK with T-shirts reading, "Black, but not uppity"?

Seriously, though, I'm not a huge fan of the actions of the state of Israel, but that's pretty ridiculous. If it had been a more neutral conference held in England, for instance, and these fundies were simply fellow attendees with representatives from Iran, that would be one thing, but to go to a conference run by Iran and held in Tehran is just idiotic.

[Igel]

6. In many ways, yes.

Apparently the (Talmudic) thinking is that with the unset of the Diaspora a kind of contract was entered into: essentially what in Islam would be a dhimma, but with different terms. The Gentiles would let the Jews live in peace in return for their not returning en masse to Israel. There was a third provision, IIRC. This was, apparently, as God ordained.

Secular Jews were Zionists; they didn't bother with Talmudic doctrine. But after the Holocaust, the view is, the contract was broken--Gentiles did not let the Jews live in peace; therefore a mass return to Israel was ok. Another way around it was that the Gentiles themselves authorized the return.

The Nerutei Karta and a couple of other sects deny that the contract could be broken; to re-establish Israel is consequently contrary to God's will. World Jewry may only be gathered together again under the aegis of the Messiah; until then they are to live among the Gentiles and be subject to their laws and restrictions. (So, yes: "Black, but not uppity" ... or, even more aptly, "Black, but devoted to being inferior".)

At least this is how I understood it when I read up on the group a day or two ago.

[progdonkey]

8. okay, that seems to fit in with something I read a while back...

I read a book or article at some point that said that there are some Jewish fundamentalists who basically say that the Holocaust was justified, or rather, that the Jews brought it on themselves. I think it was regarding that "contract" you mention: the Jews were supposed to subject themselves to the authorities of the countries they were in, but the Jews (according to these fundamentalists) became too involved in the local society, causing the locals to react (justifiably, again according to the fundamentalists) against the Jews with pogroms and, eventually, the Holocaust.

[Name removed]

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[dipsydoodle]

5. Was this bunch

http://judaism.about.com/od/denominationsofjudaism/a/netureikarta.htm

BBC News featured them yesterday but bulletin has gone now - was up for a few days.

Here's another general link to Jewish people who actually live in Iran : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5367892.stm

[newyorican]

7. All media are playing it up...

...just for different reasons.