This was fun: @NYCGreenfield scolded Rabbi Yisroel Weiss of Neturei Karta, calls him mentally unstable #bdsfail pic.twitter.com/mgtthO9et7
— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) September 8, 2016
Weiss states that though Israelis have used the Holocaust to gain sympathy and advantage, he does not believe the Holocaust toll is exaggerated.[11] Weiss said that “The Zionists use the Holocaust issue to their benefit. We, Jews who perished in the Holocaust, do not use it to advance our interests. We stress that there are hundreds of thousands Jews around the world who identify with our opposition to the Zionist ideology and who feel that Zionism is not Jewish, but a political agenda…What we want is not a withdrawal to the ’67 borders, but to everything included in it, so the country can go back to the Palestinians and we could live with them…”[12]
Weiss has defended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against accusations of anti-Semitism. In March 2006, Weiss released a statement to Iran’s official IRIB radio in which he stated that: “it is dangerous deviation to pretend that the Iranian president is anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic. He is extremely friendly and he understands the difference between the Zionists and the Jews who do not embrace the state of Israel… We don’t look at him as an enemy.”[13]
American Jewish organisations, including Agudath Israel of America and the Orthodox Union, issued statements distancing themselves from Weiss.[14] The executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, has called the group “embarrassing”,[14] and Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, called Neturei Karta’s public display of affection for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “graphic and disgusting.”[14]
Since returning to the U.S. from the conference, Weiss and other individuals who attended have been ostracized by synagogues, denied service at kosher stores, and have been the subject of disparagement in some communities with strong Orthodox Jewish populations such as Brooklyn and Monsey.
