Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews to Protest Outside the Offices of Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority

News provided by

Jun 17, 2010, 03:42 ET

51 W 52 Street, NYC

June 17, 2010, 5-7 PM

NEW YORK, June 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In recent months we have seen a dramatic increase in the desecration of graves throughout the Holy Land - the latest stage in the Zionist regime's long-term plan to uproot Torah tradition.

On March 9, 2010 in Zippori, hometown of the redactor of the Mishnah, archaeologists destroyed a burial cave from the Mishnaic period. On May 16 in Ashkelon, the American Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority donated $2.5 million for the destruction of a cemetery from the Talmudic period. On June 6 in Nazareth, three burial caves dating from the Biblical period were destroyed. And most recently, on June 13 in Jaffa, three layers of burial caves were removed from an historic cemetery approximately two thousand years old.

In all of the above instances, alternative ways were proposed to accomplish the desired construction, yet the desecration of the cemeteries went ahead.

At each site, Orthodox Jews, led by their rabbis, gathered for peaceful prayer vigils. As usual, the Zionist police did not allow this free expression; they shot tear gas canisters at the elderly rabbis, used electric tasers and other heavy riot-control equipment against religious Jews who wielded nothing more than prayer books.

"These digs are acts of insensitivity to tradition and history that no government would permit," said Rabbi Dovid Feldman, a spokesman for Neturei Karta International. "In fact, these graves were guarded for centuries by the local Palestinians, under the Ottoman Turkish Empire. It is only the Israeli government, which calls itself Jewish, that has the audacity to destroy these historic holy sites. We are certain that our religion would be respected much more under an Arab government than under the current Israeli regime.

"According to the Torah, Jews are in exile and are forbidden to have a state of their own. Therefore, Orthodox Jews who believe in the Torah never took part in the Zionist movement. This is the reason for the bitter irony that the state calling itself Jewish is run by people who deny all of Judaism's basic principles.

"Their cruel persecution of the rabbis shows that their state has nothing to do with Judaism, nor was it established for the benefit of Jews. It is not a state for Jews as opposed to Arabs; it is a state for Zionists as opposed to anti-Zionists."

www.nkusa.org

SOURCE Neturei Karta International