The actions of Rabbi Moishe Aryeh Friedman, a fanatic ultraorthodox anti-Zionist Jewish religious extremist, have helped to solve an important conundrum in the cognitive ethnology of hate sects. The conundrum is this. One for one, the claims and language of the purveyors of anti-Zionist hate tend to match those of classical anti-Semitism, sometimes substituting the word "Zionists" for "Jews" or "International Zionism" for "International Jewry." Some examples:  The Talmud teaches that gentiles are inferior, and this is the basis for the Jewish Zionist plan for world domination. The Jews Zionists are all powerful and control the world's media. "Learn all about  Jewry  Zionism and its pernicious influence on the United States." The Jews Zionists have deliberately exaggerated the Holocaust in order to profit by it. The Jews Zionists were responsible for the world wars. The Jews Zionists brought the Holocaust on themselves.

Anti-Semite?!

It would seem far-fetched to claim that Jews are anti-Semites, and therefore, despite the overwhelming evidence of racism in writings of Jewish anti-Zionists such as Norman Finkelstein or Israel Shamir, there was a great reluctance to classify such people as anti-Semites, because after all, they are Jews. Presumably, they are only advancing abstract arguments, but would not be moved to act on their ideas.

Neturei Karte, who have similar beliefs to Friedman, regularly demonstrate against Israel and in favor of the Palestinian state. Their various Web sites get a prominent ranking in search engines for the keyword "Zionism," thanks to defective search engine software and irresponsible search engine companies, and they use those sites to spew the worst sort of invective against Zionists. Thus, a tiny sect numbering no more than a few thousand in all perhaps, can magnify its message of hate so that they seem like an important group.   According to them, Zionism is heretical. The Zionists brought on the Holocaust. Israel must be destroyed in order to make peace in the Middle East.

The name "Neturei Karte" means keepers of the city. Originally, they were residents of Jerusalem. Like all ultra-orthodox Jews, they have a repressive attitude and practices toward women and homosexuals, and study of non-religious subjects is generally forbidden. It is thus absurd to see the leaders of the Neturei Karta lionized at "human rights" events because of their stand against Zionism. 

As strange as it seems, we must now admit that some undoubtedly Jewish anti-Zionists are certainly anti-Semites and ally themselves with Nazis. The Austrian anti-Zionists Jews, allies of the Neturei Karta if not themselves Neturei Karta have formed an alliance with a neo-Nazi Holocaust denying group. Presumably, when Der Tag arrives, these people would be active in carrying out the final solution on themselves, or at least on their their Zionist brethren. The leap from thought and words to action was perhaps inevitable. Seemingly, nobody could be more Jewish than these characters. The gentleman pictured at right is Rabbi Moishe Aryeh Friedman, leader of the Vienna fanatics. His dress and manners must correspond exactly to Hitler's idea of "Jew." He and his followers are also quintessentially anti-Zionist. Friedman blames "the Zionists" for the Holocaust and a host of other ills.

Moishe Aryeh Friedman, Nazi Collaborator

The article below describes the doings of the Anti-Zionist Rabbi Moishe Aryeh Friedman in Austria, where he and his followers have allied themselves with a neo-Nazi party.

Ami Isseroff

Austrian rabbi, far right make strange bedfellows
Anti-Zionist Jews seek state recognition

Rightists sorely need positive publicity

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1120083012201&call_pageid=970599119419

GEORGE JAHN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

VIENNA—Even for one of Europe's quirkier capitals, it was a bizarre spectacle — a far-right politician who has questioned the existence of Nazi gas chambers noshing on salmon paté at a bar mitzvah and tapping his foot to wildly pulsating Hasidic music.

"The rabbi is a good friend of mine," John Gudenus said of his host. "Why, we've even had him over to the house!"

They make strange friends from opposite fringes — ultra-rightists and ultra-Orthodox Jews, joined in an alliance for diverging ends.

Brooklyn-born Moishe Arye Friedman says he's chief rabbi for hundreds of anti-Zionist orthodox Jews in Vienna. He wants formal state recognition of his religious community, and thinks the rightists can help. Gudenus and his cohorts say they have no hidden agenda in supporting Friedman's cause — but they may have something to gain from it.

"For people like this, being seen with an Orthodox Jew is an attempt to gain some legitimacy," says Wolfgang Neugebauer, the recently retired head of the publicly funded office that tracks neo-Nazi trends in Austria. "They try to create an `alibi Jew' to escape accusations of anti-Semitism."

The rightists sorely need positive publicity.

Their Freedom Party, which shocked Europe in 1999 by winning enough election votes to merit a place in government, is on the ropes after its less extreme wing bolted to form its own party this year.

Even as official Austria struggles to come to grips with the country's part in the Holocaust when it was annexed to Hitler's Third Reich, the hardliners continue to provoke uproar by sounding like apologists for the Nazis.

Just last month, Gudenus declared anew that whether the gas chambers existed should be "seriously debated." Last week he amended that view to "there were gas chambers, though not in the Third Reich but in Poland." Still wrong. Thousands were killed in the gas chambers at Mauthausen, 240 km west of Vienna.

Gudenus is under intense political pressure to give up his seat in Austria's upper legislative chamber. Meanwhile, Ewald Stadler, former top aide to Joerg Haider who led the Freedom Party to its 1999 triumph, also continues to stir the pot. He has equated Nazi rule of Austria to the post-Second World War occupation by the Allies.

Stadler, who sports a duelling scar on his cheek and revels in the nickname Doberman, was also at the bar mitzvah, beaming as he was dragged into a line of dancing rabbis,

What the rightists and the rabbi share is a campaign against the ``Israelite Religious Community," the body formally recognized by the government as representing all Jews in the city, and therefore the channel through which the government doles out support to Jewish schools, synagogues and other establishments.

The set-up, a relic from Austria's imperial past, was ruled unconstitutional in 1982. But no one challenged the monopoly before Friedman, and the government has yet to rule on his bid to have his group recognized as a Jewish community independent of and fully equal to the 7,000-member Israelite Religious Community.

While the rightists sometimes cross swords with the group over such issues as compensation for Holocaust victims, Friedman's feud with the recognized Jewish community has grown so bitter that the latter has unsuccessfully sought to have him declared mentally incompetent.

So the rabbi has turned to Stadler, who is one of the country's three "People's Attorneys," or ombudsmen. Stadler says he could not hesitate, and besides, he says he and Friedman see eye-to-eye on important things.

"He has no Nazis in the family and I have no Nazis in my family!" says Stadler, with a grin.

The diminutive Friedman also courts controversy by uttering views that are repudiated by most Jews and in some cases embraced by far-rightists.

Friedman denies Israel's right to exist, saying it is up to God to lead Jews out of the Diaspora. He says Zionist Jews share the blame for the Holocaust, which he sees as punishment for straying from God's path.

Jewish anti-Zionism, on both religious or political grounds, is as old as Zionism itself. But it tends to be a minority view. Friedman is shunned by representatives of the Israelite Religious Community, who accuse him of being on the rightists' payroll — something he does not deny .

"He's a one-man show," says the Community's secretary general, Avshalom Hodik. "And Stadler is an extremist.

"We have extremists attracting each other.

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