(New York Jewish Week) — It isn’t hard to find members of Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist activist Orthodox group, in New York City.
They show up, habitually, at both anti- and pro-Israel rallies, either as protesters or counter-protesters. And they reliably wear the same outfits — traditional haredi Orthodox dress combined with pro-Palestinian symbols and signs declaring that authentic Judaism rejects Zionism.
On Friday, the group appeared somewhere new: the social media pages of Humans of New York.
“People no longer accept this as being self-defense,” the attached quote says, presumably referring to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
“Killing masses of little children, people don’t accept it anymore. During the holocaust [sic] our grandparents would have been delighted if people in the free world had stood up for them. But today if you stand up for the Palestinian people– who desperately need and deserve the voices of righteous people around the world– you will be labeled as a self-hating Jew. Or if you are not Jewish, you will be labeled as anti-Semitic.”
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Neturei Karta is unique in consistently showing up to protest Israel
HONY is a wildly popular social media project founded in 2010 by photographer and writer Brandon Stanton that typically shares photo portraits of everyday New Yorkers, plus a brief, anonymous first-person vignette. It has nearly 30 million followers between Facebook and Instagram (more than three times the city’s population), and has gained widespread media coverage for the way it spotlights — or, well, humanizes — the struggles and triumphs of a diverse cast of the city’s denizens, many of whom live on the margins.
The Neturei Karta post departed from that model in a couple of ways.
Rather than post a portrait of a single New Yorker, it shared a photo of the group, with at least 10 men or boys visible in the photo, including one who’s facing the camera. He’s wearing a long black coat, the fur hat worn by Hasidic men that’s known as a shtreimel, and a keffiyeh-patterned scarf with tassels in the colors of the Palestinian flag.
And unlike most of the stories on HONY — which are famous for sharing intimate, tragic or heartwarming stories — this one said close to nothing about the subject’s life, except that he’s an anti-Zionist Orthodox Jew. Instead, it focused almost entirely on his stance regarding Israel, Gaza, and the pro-Israel response to pro-Palestinian protest.
“So I speak up today, not only for the oppressed and misrepresented people of Palestine,” he said. “But I also speak up for the Jewish people. The masses of Jewish people worldwide who are embarrassed and appalled by what is being done in their name.”
Neturei Karta, which has been estimated at around 100 members, has been doctrinally anti-Zionist since long before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that launched the war in Gaza. While anti-Zionist Jewish groups have reported significant growth since the beginning of the Gaza war, according to surveys, most American Jews feel an attachment to Israel even as many disapprove of Israeli government policy.
Other, much larger Hasidic movements eschew Zionism, but Neturei Karta is unique in consistently showing up to protest Israel and adopting the language and symbols of pro-Palestinian activism.
The group’s leadership has met multiple times with the leaders of Iran, an Islamic theocracy and Israel’s chief regional adversary, including former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denied the Holocaust. The group faced particular backlash, as well as condemnation from haredi leaders, in 2007 for appearing at an Iranian conference centered on Holocaust denial.
The quote in the post, and HONY’s decision to platform it, drew immediate protest from a number of commenters.
“Is this a joke?? These people represent like 100 jews worldwide,” one wrote. Another posted, “Wow this is embarrassing tokenization. This is a tiny, extreme, and racist sect of Judaism that is rejected by nearly every Jew in America.” A third: “This post is incitement. These are the fringe of the fringe. Like a cult.”
Others praised the post, taking aim at supporters of Israel or thanking the subject of the photo for his words.
“Came here for the comments and as suspected the zionists are having a meltdown. To every Jew standing against this ethnic cleansing, thank you,” one wrote. Another wrote, “There’s a lot of genocide apologists here saying they’re unfollowing you…”
Brandon Stanton, HONY’s founder, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
HONY has spotlighted Jews before. In 2016 it profiled Jewish journalist Steven Weiss on Father’s Day. In 2021 it featured Jericho Vincent, a formerly haredi rabbinical student. In 2023, Jonathan David Rinaldi, who claimed to have fathered 12 children via sperm donation, appeared in its feed.
It has also featured posts on Jewish religious observance. A 2012 post shows a photo of a young man who appears to be Orthodox holding a lulav and etrog, the collection of four plant species used ritually on the fall festival of Sukkot.
In 2014, during a period when the account shared photos from around the world, one featured a group of people from Kav Lachayim, an Israeli organization that serves children with complex disabilities, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. That post, too, saw some commenters disparage Israel, with many others responding that HONY was not a place to litigate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.