Hey, Neturei Karta —thanks, but no thanks!

Every other day on my Facebook wall, some earnest anti-Zionist posts a photo like the one above of Neturei Karta in their ultra-orthodox garb wielding anti-Israel placards. The posters think that having these guys with their beards and peyas on their side inoculates them against charges of anti-Semitism. Hopefully, after the latest incident at Israel's Holocaust museum, they are disabused of such illusions.

Four young members of the anti-Zionist sect have been arrested in Jerusalem in connection with the vandalism attack on the Yad Vashem museum, and searches of their homes turned up such activist accoutrements as spray-paint canisters and PLO flags. Curb your enthusiasm. The charming graffitos they left  on Yad Vashem's walls include "Hitler, thanks for the Holocaust"—presumably, a reference to the fact that Israel owes its existence to the genocide. Continuing into perverse smarm, they couldn't resist adding, "If Hitler didn't exist, the Zionists would have had to invent him." Playing upon the legitimate grievance of Ashkenazi supremacy in Israel,  they add: "Israel is the secular Auschwitz of the Sephardic Jewry." And: "Jews wake up—the Zionist regime is dangerous." Well, it certainly is, but hailing Hitler is a brilliant way to appeal to Jews. Way to go, fellas! (Source: YNet, June 30)

We expect nothing less from these sinister clowns, who notoriously attended Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial confab in 2007. They of course deny they are denialists, but they had no problem embracing David Duke with their honored presence in Tehran.

Anyway, if we can thank Hitler for the state of Israel, we can also thank him for Neturei Karta! It seems that they followed the Zionists to Palestine in order to oppose them—which certainly seems a little contradictory. From a Jan. 15, 2007 profile on the sect in the New York Times:

Founded in the 1930s to counter the Zionist movement in what was then Palestine, Neturei Karta, which translates to "guardians of the city" in the ancient language Aramaic, has a few thousand members — in New York, the United Kingdom and Canada, among other places. They believe that according to the Torah, Jews were exiled from Israel because they sinned and that God has forbidden the formation of a Jewish state until the Messiah arrives.

Meanwhile, 34 Jewish graves were desecrated in Vienna's main cemetery, with stones and slabs toppled and damaged. (AP, June 29) Hoodlums painted swastikas and the words "white power" on garage doors of several Black-owned homes in the Los Angeles district of Baldwin Hills. (LAT, June 24) In more workaday stupidity, a school in Burnaby, BC, and a sports arena in Nashua, NH, were defaced with swastikas and racist slogans. (Shalom Life, Nashua Telegraph, June 29) In the latest in a string of such cases in New York City, swastikas were painted on several buildings in the Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park, Brookyln. (Gothamist, June 18) But now every idiot who spouts the Jews-bring-it-on-themselves line can point to the Yad Vashem attack. Thanks, fellas!

And all you anti-Zionists who are looking for anti-Zionist Jews to give your position legitimacy—Did you ever try talking to secular, progressive anti-Zionist Jews? Hey, just a thought.