A number of organizations claiming a Jewish membership receive substantial coverage in the media for their attacks on the idea of a Jewish National Home. While these groups are quite small, they receive a disproportionate amount of attention. Apparently small size is irrelevant when Jews can be shown to be opposed to Israel.
Anti-Semitic attacks on Israel by Israelis and Jews are frequently indistinguishable from those by gentiles. Among the specific aspects in the anti-Israel writings of some Jews are the use of their family's Holocaust experiences, their references to being Jewish, or an association of some kind with Israel.
So far there have been many rewards and few penalties for most Jews who attack Israel. They have positioned themselves in society in such a way that they are applauded by part of the non-Jewish environment. They are wined and dined by Arab States, Iran, and the international network of anti-Israel organizations. They apparently don’t lack in resources, and quite often receive substantial salaries for their anti-Israel efforts, which come from NGOs and wealthy anti-Israeli contributors.
Indeed, many anti-Israel organizations make use of statements from Jewish defamers as a way of legitimizing their attacks on Israel or Jews. The few members of the radical branch of Neturei Karta with their distinctive Jewish Hassidic dress are often displayed at anti-Israel demonstrations in Iran, in Lebanon, and in Ramallah. Or the anti-Israel “Jewish Voice for Peace” that show up with their “I am a Jew” signs at any anti-Israel rally. This small number of anti-Israel Jews, also, enables the media to present a Jewish community divided on key Israeli policy issues such as the threat of Iran when the Jewish community is actually almost universally cognizant of threats to Jewish survival.
These Jewish groups are clearly anti-Semitic despite their own identities given The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) working definition of anti-Semitism in 2005, that includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and applying double standards requiring behavior of Israel not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Ideological bases for anti-Israel Jewish groups
1. Groups opposed to Israel for Leftist/Marxist views that deny the need for a Jewish homeland and favor “oppressed peoples” struggling for their freedom.
Jewish organizations built on New Left ideals oppose the State of Israel on anti-imperialist and human rights grounds. For these leftist anti-Zionist organizations, the Jews are not a nation or a people but only a religious group - despite the fact that the Jews have always been both. In this sense, even though leftist anti-Zionists may sincerely believe that they are championing human rights and social justice, they deny the Jewish people's right to sovereignty and independence in the Jewish homeland of Israel and instead seek the Jewish state's abolition in one way or another.
The New-Left is anti-colonialist. The belief that colonialism was an absolute evil is so deeply engrained in their psyche that all enterprises bearing any parallels to it are automatically censored. For them, it is clear that Zionism is a colonial project, and there is no need to confuse them with the facts of the history of the Jewish people. In addition, they are ready to accept Islamic terrorism against Jewish which they call armed self-defense.
To make the argument that Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East invites allegations that it pursues apartheid policies. To counter all these claims is time-consuming and requires a taste for nuances. But why should anyone trade nuances for the facile certainty that colonialism is inherently evil?
Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin describe leftist groups: "To this day, almost the only tenet which virtually every Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyite, and Maoist movement shares is the need for the disappearance of the Jews as a distinct entity. This is the main reason they consider every national liberation movement ‘progressive' except that of the Jewish people, Zionism, which they label ‘reactionary.'"
Dr. Wistrich, a professor at Hebrew University and head of its Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism described the history of the left and found that a key feature of today’s leftist mindset is the growing alliance between Marxists and Islamists – a sign, said Wistrich, of “just how far removed the contemporary left is from the roots of its own credo.” Zionism and Israel are “relentlessly blackened as dark reactionary forces and the greatest current threat to world peace.” The New Left seeks to redeem the contemporary world from the sinister ‘plots’ of American imperialism and the yoke of Zionist ‘oppression.’”
2. Ultra-orthodox Jewish groups that claim that Israel should not be rebuilt until the arrival of the Messiah
These Jewish religious groups maintain the view – basing it on the Babylonian Talmud – that any form of forceful recapture of the Land of Israel is a violation of divine will. They believe that the restoration of the Land of Israel to the Jews should only happen with the coming of the Messiah, not by self-determination. Human attempts to establish Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel are sinful. In this view, Zionism is a presumptuous affront against G-d.
While most of these groups choose to simply ignore the State of Israel, a fringe element take proactive steps to condemn it and bring about its eventual dismantling until the coming of the Messiah. They are ready to cooperate with those who are working toward the destruction of the Jewish State. The radical faction maintains that a community of (Haredi) Orthodox Jews can and should be a viable minority in an Arab-controlled non-sectarian Palestinian state of all its citizens.
They believe that if the Jews in Israel dismantled the state and instead lived under Arab rule, Jews in the Middle East would be safer and Jews around the world would suffer less anti-Semitism. They explain the Arabs hatred of Israel is due to Jewish immigrants coming to the region over the last 100 years and acting to disenfranchise and subjugate the local Arab population. Therefore, if the Jews cede control to the local Arab population, Arab antagonism toward the Jews will subside.
3. Groups that place great importance on Diaspora Judaism and deny the centrality of Israel to the Jewish people
Jews who sought integration and/or assimilation within the European nation-state context saw Zionism as a threat to their efforts to facilitate Jewish citizenship and equality. Particularly active was the Reform Judaism movement in Germany which “modernized” the Jewish religion to better integrate into Germany society. In the Russian empire, there was the Jewish Labour Bund, a Jewish secular and socialist party in Eastern Europe which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, and was generally opposed to Zionism.
The Bund’s principle of combining Jewish cultural specificity and inter-ethnic solidarity based on shared class interests (doykayt (here-ness) has given definition to the efforts of Jewish social justice organizations across the USA. They reject placing the state of Israel at the center of Jewish life because it would devalue and erase diasporic cultures and histories, reducing two millennia of Jewish life to a lacuna punctuated only by mass murder and redemptive nationalism. In a universalized Judaism there would be no place for Israel. Jews would not need a refuge, for they would fit in everywhere.
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz is a writer advocating what she terms “radical diasporism” (in her “The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism”). She recommends that we ‘‘conceive of the Diaspora as the center that includes but does not privilege Israelis.’’ As a socialist and a Jew, she found it powerful to resurface the Yiddishist strand of Jewish tradition to challenge Zionism’s claim on Jewish identity.
What matters ‘‘is not the blood-line but culture, history, memory.’’ A Jew, in her eyes, is anyone who is raised Jewish, whether he or she has a Jewish parent or not. Far from being concerned with Jewish continuity in anything like a racial sense, she ‘‘welcomes intermarriage, embraces mixed-race, mixed-culture babies
Kaye/Kantrowitz’s vision of the Jewish future, then, is built around widely dispersed, multi-tongued, many-hued, groups of combatants for social justice in their respective countries. United only in so far as they retain some kind of attachment to Jewish history, culture, and memory, these people would be more outward than inward looking.
They would regard individuals who might desert them and pursue social justice altogether outside of any particularistic Jewish framework not as heretics or renegades but as entirely admirable ‘‘non-Jewish Jews,’’ allies in the cause even if they chose not to think of themselves as such.
4. Anti –religious Jewish secularists
Anti –religious Jewish secularists are sub-group that includes gays and feminists who are against various precepts of the Jewish religion that they see as dominating Israeli society – irrespective of the wide diversity actually found within Israel. Their opposition to Israel is expressed by adopting New-Left ideologies and/or assimilationist ideologies.
Gloria Z. Greenfield described the time when she was active with the feminist community: “It was clear to me that even though the radical feminist community claimed to have disengaged politically from the male Left, it did not purge itself of the Left’s virulent and historical anti-Semitism.” “The anti-Semitic instances I encountered within the feminist movement are too numerous to list.”
1. New Left Groups
1.1 Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
JVP founded in 1996 is the most active and influential of Jewish anti-Zionist groups. It describes itself as "a diverse and democratic community of activists inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, and human rights [to] support the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians for security and self-determination."
JVP seeks "an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem." It calls for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, and accuses Israel of "apartheid" policies. It has published articles criticizing what it describes as the "severe human-rights violations that Israel engages in every day," such as the construction of the Israeli West Bank Security Fence , the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
JVP, however, instead of furthering notions of peace “has become a leader in the American anti-Israel movement and has assumed a particularly visible role in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel,” notes the Anti Defamation League (ADL). While JVP's activists try to portray themselves as Jewish “critics” of Israel, their ideology is nothing but a complete rejection of Israel.
JVP activists regularly attend anti-Israel events wearing t-shirts and holding signs proudly broadcasting their Jewish identity. JVP recognizes its role as such, specifically noting that the group's Jewish nature gives it a "particular legitimacy in voicing an alternative view of American and Israeli actions and policies" and the ability to distinguish "between real anti-Semitism and the cynical manipulation of that issue."
Jewish Voice for Peace is affiliated with the leftist/Marxist United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), an anti-war coalition of 300 international and U.S.-based organizations founded in October 2002. It is opposed to USA “policy of permanent warfare and empire-building." Several Marxist organizations are involved in the UFPJ leadership but the most influential is the Communist Party USA.
JVP was formed in September, 1996 by Julia Caplan, Julie Iny, and Rachel Eisner who were students at the University of California, San Francisco Bay Area. The organizers said they began JVP in response to what they claimed was Israel's construction of a tunnel under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on September 24, 1996 that set off bloody riots in East Jerusalem, Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Over the subsequent few weeks, around 70 Palestinians were killed and 17 Israeli soldiers.
The organizers of JVP, though Jews, were nevertheless ready to accept the incitement of the Muslim world against the Jewish State and not consider the actual facts. The tunnel was not new, it is adjacent to the Western Wall and does not go underneath the Temple Mount, and the incident began merely when a new exit was opened.
The trio organized a rally outside the San Francisco Federal Building to protest that project. In subsequent years, they continued to stage small-scale awareness-building and fundraising campaigns. While it was still locally based, JVP gained significant publicity in 2002 when some 200 of its activists blocked traffic in San Francisco while protesting alleged Israeli transgressions; sixteen people were arrested.
JVP became a national organization in 2005, with 27 local chapters as of 2011. The organization also claimed to have “over 90,000 supporters and members.” Today, JVP claims a mailing list of 100,000 people and more than 4,000 financial supporters.
Mitchell Plitnick was Director of Education and Policy from 2003-2008 and instrumental in the organization's expansion. He has been described as a "Former Sixities radical." He joined JVP in 1999 and eventually became a board member as well as the lead spokesman for the organization.
In 2001 Plitnick signed a statement designating Israel as an “apartheid state.” Two years later he signed a statement supporting a Palestinian “right of return.” Plitnick characterizes as a myth the notion that Palestinians “teach their children to hate.”
Rebecca Vilkomerson became JVP’s first permanent executive director in September of 2009, although she had been an active member of JVP since 2002, and lived in Israel with her family from 2006-2009. In 2010, the Forward recognized her as one of the 50 most influential Jewish leaders in the U.S.
Vilkomerson played a leading role in the organization of a handful of high-profile campaigns to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Most prominently, the group circulated a petition among American artists in support of the Israeli artists who refused to perform at a new theater built in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.
In pursuit of its anti-Israel agendas, JVP has created a significant Internet presence. Its main website promotes divestment from Israel, and encourages IDF soldiers to desert the military.
JVP created a youth wing called Young, Jewish and Proud that debuted at the 2010 Jewish General Assembly where five members disrupted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech. YJP spearheaded so-called “Occupy Birthright” disruptions targeted at the organization that offers American Jews free trips to Israel to help connect them to the Jewish people. See video by hitting here.
During 2004 and 2005 Jewish Voice for Peace protested against Caterpillar Inc. for selling bulldozers to Israel because the bulldozers were used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to demolish the homes and weapon-storehouses of Palestinian terrorists.
In 2006, Jewish Voice for Peace helped organize a demonstration outside the meeting of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The stated purpose of the protest was to argue that AIPAC doesn't represent the views of all American Jews regarding Israel.
The JVP position on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict was that Israel's actions are "an opportunistic agenda for short-term political gain at an immense cost in Palestinian lives" which are "illegal and immoral and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms." JVP joined marches and demonstrations condemning Israel in many cities, including Racine, Wisconsin, Seattle, and others.
In 2008 JVP helped the Carter Center gather signatures to support former President Jimmy Carter’s controversial meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al.
In March-April 2010, leaders of JVP actively backed a University of California, Berkeley divestment campaign.
In June 2010, JVP launched a divestment campaign to get the pension fund TIAA-CREF to stop investing in companies whose business dealings with Israel are objectionable to JVP.
In 2010, JVP roundly condemned Israel's interception at sea of a Free Gaza Movement flotilla of supply-laden ships that to dock in Gaza, whose seaport was under an Israeli blockade aimed at keeping arms shipments out of the region.
On July 5, 2012, activists from Jewish Voice for Peace spearhead a failed effort to have the Presbyterian Church boycott three U.S. companies doing business with Israel
On Aug. 14, 2012, Sacramento Jewish Voice for Peace came out against Sacramento, California becoming sister city to Ashkelon, Israel. The California capital already has joined up with nine cities, including what it calls “Bethlehem, Palestine,” and has been discussing adding an Israeli town for several years.
1.2 Breira
While Breira is no longer active, it had a significant impact on the media in its time with a left-wing position on Israel. It was founded in 1973 and lasted until 1977. Breira became a national membership organization of over one hundred Reform and Conservative rabbis and a number of important American Jewish writers and intellectuals. There was an overlap of leadership with Americans for Progressive Israel.
Breira called for Israel to make territorial concessions and recognize the legitimacy of the national aspirations of the Palestinian people in order to achieve lasting peace.
1.3 Jews Say No: Not In Our Name!
Jews Say No! is a group of Jews in and around New York City that formed in December 2008/January 2009 to express opposition to the siege of Gaza and to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
Demonstrations and street actions include signs that say: “Am I a self-hating Jew if I oppose illegal and inhumane policies of the Israeli government?” They joined and supported a wide range of projects–from the global BDS campaign to the U.S. Boat to Gaza.
1.4 American Jews for a Just Peace
American Jews for a Just Peace (AJJP) was founded in Boston in September, 2008 as an alliance of activists in the United States working to ensure equal rights, safety, and dignity for all the people of historic Palestine.
1.5 The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) is a socialist, anti-war, and anti-imperialist organization pledged to "oppose Zionism and the State of Israel,"
It is an international network in 10 countries including the USA, Canada, India, Argentina, and several European countries. It is committed to the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of Palestine.
Sara Kershnar, based in San Francisco, co-founded the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network in 2008. She founded IJAN because Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and colonization of their land was contrary to what she understood to be the Jewish values she grew up with and to her understanding of Jewish participation in social justice that she was taught.
She initially joined a local organization in San Francisco (‘Jews for a free Palestine’) but on travelling to Palestine in 2004 felt that local actions were not enough and that something was needed to rival the international scale of Zionism.
During the Gaza War (2008–2009) six members chained themselves to the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, while around 40 others protested in front, shutting it down for two hours. Members of IJAN have taken part in many protests in London and elsewhere.
In 2011 IJAN was one of a number of organizations that organized a 13-city speaking tour of the USA, which compared Israel’s relations with the Palestinians to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews during the Holocaust."
1. 6 Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP)
JfJfP is a pressure group founded in February 2002 that is based in the United Kingdom and advocates human and civil rights, and economic and political freedom, for the Palestinian people. It opposes the policy of Israel towards the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and seeks a change in their political status. The membership of JfJfP is primarily made up of British Jews.
1.7 Independent Jewish Voices
On 5 February 2007, a group of prominent British Jews, including Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman, launched an organization called Independent Jewish Voices to counterbalance what they perceive as uncritical support of Israel by major Jewish institutions in the UK, criticizing particularly the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The launch of IAJV was followed by a great deal of media coverage under such headlines as “New group takes on Jewish lobby”.
1.8 Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) (IJV(C))
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) (IJV(C)) was founded in 2008. It advocates a withdrawal from land Israel occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967, respecting the universal right of refugees to return to their homes or receive compensation, dismantling the Separation Wall and Israeli settlements on the West Bank and Golan Heights, and correcting laws and practices within Israel which allegedly discriminate against the rights of non-Jews. In June 2009, the IJV came out with support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
In April 2008, IJV Coordinator Diana Ralph stated that "I think there's lots of evidence that suicide bombings and violence coming from Palestinians are often planned, and directly provoked, by the Israeli government. So I think taking down the wall would actually increase Israeli security. Obviously, Israel is the instigating power."
Diana Ralph also contributed a chapter to The Hidden History of 9-11, in which she wrote that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were an American and Israeli conspiracy to "seize control of Eurasia, and thereby the entire world."
1.9 Independent Australian Jewish Voices
Independent Australian Jewish Voices was founded on 5 March 2007. Its statement of principles was published in various Australian newspapers with 120 signatories, including prominent Australian academics, writers and lawyers. Three weeks after the launch, the number of signatories had grown to 450.
In common with other such groups, IAJV is concerned about what it describes as the narrow range of opinion that is available in the mainstream media concerning Israel and Palestine and with the uncritical allegiance of the leadership of the organized Jewish community to Israeli government policy.
1.10 European Jews for a Just Peace
European Jews for a Just Peace (EJJP) is a federation of Jewish groups founded in Amsterdam in September 2002. It has called for an immediate end of the occupation of the occupied territories with recognition of the 4th June 1967 borders; complete withdrawal of all Jewish settlements in all the occupied territories; Israel should recognize in principle the Palestinian right to return as a human right.
EJJP calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Human Rights, and to rescind the privileges accorded to Israel in trade and research collaboration by the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
In September 2010, EJJP organized a Gaza-bound aid boat, the "Jewish Boat to Gaza", carrying nine Jewish activists. The EJJP chairperson, Dror Feiler, an Israel-born Swedish national, was again aboard the French Dignité-Al Karama ship in the 2011 flotilla for Gaza.
Member organizations of EJJP
• Austria: Jüdische Stimme für einen gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Near East)
• Belgium: Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique
• Denmark: European Jews for a Just Peace - Denmark
• France: Union juive française pour la paix (Jewish French Union for Peace)
• Germany: Jüdische Stimme für einen gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Near East)
• Belgium: Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique
• Italy: Rete Ebrei contro l'occupazione ("Rete ECO", Network of Jews Against Occupation)
• the Netherlands: Een Ander Joods Geluid (A Different Jewish Voice)
• Sweden: Judar för israelisk-palestinsk fred (Jews for Israeli–Palestinian Peace)
• Switzerland: Jüdische Stimme fur einen gerechten Frieden zwischen Israel und Palastina (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace between Israel and Palestine)
• the United Kingdom: Jewish Socialists' Group and Jews for Justice for Palestinians
1.11 Other leftist Jewish organizations against a homeland for the Jewish People
There is no limit to the number of so-called leftist Jewish organizations that regularly appear – and disappear – with a slogan against the Jewish State. Many of these organizations may represent one or several individuals who move from group to group.
The list includes:
American Jews for a Just Peace,
Jews Against the Occupation (NYC Chapter);
Jewish Voices Against the Occupation (US);
Jewish Women for Justice in Israel and Palestine (US);
Jews for Global Justice (US);
Visions of Peace With Justice (US);
Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel (Washington, DC),
Jews for a Free Palestine (Bay Area),
No Time to Celebrate (nationwide),
Another Jewish Voice of Santa Fe
Schalom 5767 (Germany)
Een Ander Joods Geluid (Netherlands)
2. Ultra-orthodox Jewish groups
There are Jewish groups within the ultra-orthodox community that are opposed to Zionism and call for a peaceful dismantling of the State of Israel, in the belief that Jews are forbidden to have their own state until the coming of the Messiah. These include the Satmar Hasidic group and the Edah HaChareidis in Israel.
But the most outspoken has been the Neturei Karta. The name Neturei Karta literally means "Guardians of the City" in Aramaic and comes from the gemara of the Jerusalem Talmud. It is this role that Neturei Karta see themselves as fulfilling by defending what they believe is "the position of the Torah and authentic unadulterated Judaism."
Neturei Karta consists of two branches: a larger and more moderate faction estimated to number 5,000 in Jerusalem. Most of the headlines regarding anti-Zionist activity by Neturei Karta, however, are perpetuated by a fringe radical group of the movement. While most in Neturei Karta chose to simply ignore the State of Israel, the fringe element take proactive steps to condemn it and bring about its eventual dismantling until the coming of the Messiah. Their protests in America are usually attended by, at most, a few dozen people. In Israel, several hundred is typical, depending on the nature of the protest and its location.
At any large pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York, London or Paris, you could see them, three or four men prominently standing in their bekishe robes and shtreimels, making sure the TV cameras catch them.
"Active members there are not so much, because it is very difficult to be an active member," said Chaim Sofer, a Neturei Karta spokesman from Monsey, New York. "They will throw you out of your school, your grocery store. They believe we are doing something bad for the Jews. It takes real mesirus nefesh"-soulful dedication-"to be follow [the radical branch of] Neturei Karta."
The leader of the Neturei Karta extremists in Jerusalem for many years was Moshe Hirsch who served in Yasser Arafat's cabinet as Minister for Jewish Affairs. He endorsed the Palestinian Authority as the rightful rulers of the Land of Israel, which included the modern-day State of Israel.
Moshe Hirsch was born in Brooklyn, received his rabbinical training at a yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J. He emigrated to Israel, but never became an Israeli citizen. Hirsch felt that it was his duty to protest, to shout to the world that the Zionist regime was a blasphemous institute, a rebellion against God and therefore a true Jew had to support any entity dedicated to ending its hegemony in the holy land.
Almost every group within the Ultra-orthodox (Haredi) camp succumbed to some degree of cooperation with the ritually impure State of Israel and received some form of the State's embrace. Hirsch and a small group estimated at no more than a hundred or so families held out. Their women even traveled abroad or stayed in their homes to give birth, ensuring that the newborn would not be registered as an Israeli citizen.
He began with public prayers in Jerusalem for the victory of the Arab armies in the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars.
Since Hirsch’s death, the radicals have been led by the descendants of Hirsch in Jerusalem and by Yisroel Dovid Weiss and Moshe Ber Beck of Monsey, New York.
In December 2006, five members of Neturei Karta, including Yisroel Dovid Weiss and Ahron Cohen from Greater Manchester, attended a conference entitled The Holocaust: A Global Vision held by the Iranian government in Tehran and had their trip paid for by the Iranian foreign ministry. They were warmly greeted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and had two meetings with him.
Weiss said the organization did not appear at the conference to deny the Holocaust, but to draw a distinction between Zionists and Jews. Weiss remarked, "The Zionists use the Holocaust issue to their benefit. Weiss stated that Ahmadinejad is not an enemy of the Jews, but is a "God-fearing man [who] respects the Jewish people and he protects them in Iran".
Ahron Cohen sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live. Cohen’s house in Salford England was pelted with 1,000 eggs because of his extremist views.
The larger branch of Neturei Karta, led by Rabbi Zelig Reuven Katzenellenbogen, issued a strongly worded condemnation of the radical branch, after its attendance in Iran at the Conference on the Holocaust.
On 21 December 2006, the Edah HaChareidis rabbinical council of Jerusalem also released a statement calling on the public to distance itself from those who went to Iran. A senior Eda Hareidit member said: “It’s true that we oppose the path of the Zionists,” he continued. “But from there, to go and to meet terrorists who murder children? Who told them that was permitted? That is not our way and it is not the way of Torah.”
Rabbi Daniel Biton, a Beit Shemesh-based Neturei Karta scholar, published a book in which he severely criticized the radical faction for their deep involvement in “the Internet and the international media,” secular media they use to advance their message, and more importantly, for their “partnership and connection to Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian politics which involves serious transgressions.”
A group of Rabbis claiming to represent part of anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidic group called on Jews to "to keep away from them and condemn their actions".
Almost a year after the Gaza Crisis a group of Neturei Karta members crossed into Gaza in December 2009 as part of the Gaza Freedom March to celebrate Jewish Shabbos to show of support for Palestinians in the Hamas ruled enclave.
A delegation, headed by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss was in Lebanon to participate in March 30, 2012 Global march to Jerusalem. Al-Nour reported that Weiss called for the "demise of the so-called state of Israel" and said that Jewish identity had been "stolen by the global Zionists."
3. Groups that place importance on Diaspora Judaism
3.1 American Council for Judaism
American Council for Judaism is an organization of American Reform Rabbis specifically created to fight against both Zionism and a Jewish state in June 1942. They were assimilationist in their orientation as they interpreted Judaism as a universal religious faith, rather than an ethnic or nationalist identity. They see themselves sharing special ties of history and destiny with other Jews but the bonds are primarily spiritual, and grounded in the distinctive teachings of the Jewish Religion.
Support for the American Council for Judaism came primarily from Jews of German descent who were historically attached to Classical Reform Judaism, but also from many Jewish socialists who opposed Zionism, and many more of whom who were uncomfortable with the Jewish religion.
The ACJ sharply declined in activity following the Six Day War in 1967. Moderates within the Council forced Elmer Berger, who had served as executive director and then Executive Vice President, to resign the following year for declaring that Israel had been the primary aggressor in the war. While the Council had 14,000 members in 1948 and up to 20,000 in the 1950s, there are today an estimated 2,000 subscribers to the Council's quarterly newsletter.
3.2 New Jewish Agenda
In December 1978, Gerald Serotta and Albert Axelrad, both Hillel rabbis active in Breira, decided to form New Jewish Agenda. "We are Jews committed to progressive human values and the building of a shared vision of Jewish life." "Our history and tradition inspire us. Jewish experience and teachings can address the social, economic, and political issues of our times.
3.3 The Jews for Urban Justice
An organization of radical individuals established in the Washington, D.C. area. They strive to return to more basic principles of Judaism.
3.4 The Progressive Jewish Alliance (in Los Angeles).
The Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) was founded in 1999 by Jewish Angelenos who broke away from the Los Angeles chapter of the American Jewish Congress. They sought to assert an authentic progressive Jewish presence in the campaigns for social justice in Southern California. In February 2005, PJA expanded by opening a San Francisco Bay Area chapter. The PJA works for social justice, judicial reform and improved working conditions. They also try to facilitate dialogue between non-violent young offenders and their victims and between Jews and Muslims.
4. Anti –religious Jewish secularists
4.1 Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
In 1990, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz was a founding director for a New York City-based group called Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. It calls itself a progressive Jewish organization focused mostly on anti-racist work and issues of economic justice.
Its members are Jews who are veterans of the civil rights movement, women's movement, and movements for gay, lesbian and transgender rights. The organization opposes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and collective punishment and attacks on civilians. They hold to the Bundist tradition of doykayt ("hereness")-the idea that Jews, in coalition with others, should focus their struggle for universal equality and justice in the place where they live.
4.2 The Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (JWCEO)
Founded in April 1988 by Clare Kinberg, Irena Kelpfisz and Gracy Paley in New York City. Women of the JWCEO held weekly vigils outside major American Jewish organizations to show that there was not unanimous support in the American Jewish community for the Israeli government's policies in the West Bank and Gaza. JWCEO was associated with the Israel Women's Alliance Against the Occupation, and with Women In Black.
One of its main leaders is Irena Klepfisz who is a Jewish Lesbian author, academic and activist. She was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941. Her father, Michał Klepfisz, a member of the Jewish Labour Bund, was killed on the second day of the uprising. Today Klepfisz is known as a Yiddishist
4.3 Di Vilde Chayes
Along with Nancy Bereano, Evelyn T. Beck, Bernice Mennis, Adrienne Rich, and Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Irena Klepfisz was a member of Di Vilde Chayes (English: The Wild Beasts), A Jewish feminist group that examined and responded to political issues in the Middle East, as well as to antisemitism.
Further Reading:
Occupy AIPAC” plans to disrupt the AIPAC Conference on March 2-6, 2012 in Washington DC.
Rae Abileah has found her calling as a professional Jewish activist for CODEPINK against Israel
Iran increases its genocidal threats to kill all Jews in Israel
Ahmadinejad calls to open "Holocaust black box"
The “Global March to Jerusalem” on March 30, 2012 could be a serious challenge to Israel’s security
