A nasty and despicable trick

Lior Alperovitch

One Shabbat, Rabbi Amram Blau, founder of the [anti-Zionist sect] Neturei Karta and one of the more militant figures in the ultra-Orthodox world, walked out of his synagogue accompanied by a friend wrapped in a tallit [prayer shawl]. Blau suddenly turned to his companion and started to mock him for considering himself a Zionist. The stunned friend did not understand why. "In Russia, you would not dare walk the streets with a tallit on like that," Blau explained. "But here you think the Zionists will not harm you; you rely on their protection. So as far as I am concerned, you are a Zionist!" This story illustrates, to a great extent, the idea behind the cynical display that took place Saturday night in Mea Shearim, where dozens of Neturei Karta members donned striped prison attire while their children wore yellow Star of David badges. A few details should be added to this story. First, the secular public needs to distinguish between Neturei Karta and other ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Neturei Karta are a radical fringe group that is not a new phenomenon. Yet recently, hundreds of thousands of innocent Haredim [ultra-Orthodox Jews] have been attacked for a few esoteric events that some of them have nothing to do with – for example, the issue of listening to women sing in the army. However, many Haredim do not even serve in the army, so how did an entire group become associated with an incident that happened at an IDF base?

I might also add that this nasty and despicable trick – in which the Holocaust and its symbols have become the ultimate tool for shocking the Israeli public – was not invented by the Neturei Karta. They simply enhanced it in their own way. Exploiting the Holocaust, its symbols and survivors for political gain is something that dates back to Israel's earliest days. Left-wing demonstrators have called IDF soldiers "Nazis" as have right-wing settlers who have clashed with them.


This is actually the problem. Every sector of society has a right to protest. Yet the ultra-Orthodox, like other sectors, cannot exploit the freedoms granted by the state. Freedom of expression provides extensive room for various forms of protest, provided people maintain boundaries – not politically, but morally.

Morality also provides the second reason the Neturei Karta or any other group should be prohibited from using Holocaust symbolism at demonstrations.

At the end of the day, anyone who compares what is happening in Israel to what happened under the Third Reich, no matter in what terms, is committing an act that borders on Holocaust denial. Any attempt to compare the public discourse in Israel, and the conduct of law enforcement authorities here, with those in the Third Reich is an outrageous distortion, historically and morally.

Even if some political and ideological groups think Israel is the worst country in the world, there are still no concentration camps here where dissidents are detained or where the prisoners share a particular ethic origin. Here we do not burn synagogues with its worshippers trapped inside, we do not shoot school-children and we do not pave the streets with shattered tombstones.

The ultra-Orthodox demonstrations are legitimate, but the nature of their protest is improper and indecent. There is nothing in our politics, society or media even remotely reminiscent of the atmosphere that European Jews lived in throughout the Third Reich's years of occupation.