Jewish religious scholar Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a spokesman for 'Jews against Zionism' sat earlier in May with Mehr News International Service in an interview about the Zionism and its multiple dimensions, the corrupt nature of the Israeli regime which Rabbi Weiss believed violated the fundamental rules of the Judaism.
Rabbi Weiss emphasized that the world had systematically failed to address the issue of Palestine in an environment devoid of mutual vituperation and accusations of supporting violence to anti-Zionist Jews who cared what had been happening in Palestinian lands. The mainstream media, Rabbi Weiss believed, had succeeded in having the world believe that Palestinians were hostile to Jews and that this has been a land without people and saved for the Jews.
We have seen anti-Zionist sentiments in western countries. What is your analysis of this?
Our Rabbis always said Zionism is really the work of the Satan. It does not make sense when the United Nations founded a Jewish state when they just created to make democracy in the world. The majority of people living in Palestine are Muslims. How they make such a state, everything defies logic, they were given the control of the Jewish community that did not want them, their 68 years of imprisoning of the Palestinians, so we believe this is the work of the Satan, and therefore, USSR disappeared overnight, we believe rebellion against God will not be successful. We, as the Jewish people believe that state will end and it has to end, we pray to God to end it without any bloodshed and any suffering. We can draw upon a little logic that for many years, the mainstream media was in the hand of the Zionists. They were able to show the world it [Palestine] is a land without people and that Muslims hated the world. They were able to tell the western world that were ignorant of the Muslim community, ignorant of the Middle East, and whatever the Zionists said was accepted. But now we have the Internet, the alternative media, different agencies and ways that are wrecking through this law, it breaks through the barriers, people now distribute and share what you say, and that has opened the eyes of the people, that the propaganda that Muslims hate Jews and so should suffer because they are stubborn people is false. I think that helps a lot in creating sympathy we have.
The Zionists themselves are troubled about this, and just recently in California, the Zionists have put out the publication of Hasbara (meaning ‘plain explanation’). They have faced big problems in universities, because the young people start to be more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. So, statistically, they said check this out. Instead of debating who is right, right away they start asking: do you support Hamas, do you support Hezbollah, thus the minds of the people start shifting from supporting Palestinians. In University of California in Irvine three weeks ago, a Zionist rabbi raised the question in the Q&A (and it was the first question) and asked me ‘do you support Hamas?’ I questioned him back ‘you are concerned with Jewish bloodshed, aren’t you?’ ‘Where were you before?’ ‘Are you concerned with the scope of bloodshed?’ ‘How many Jews destroyed their souls because they are not religious, because of what Zionism assumed, because they tried to transform Jews? Were you concerned about Jewish people? We don’t condone violence, we are not talking about that. They are trying to trick people so that they stifle the voice of opposition and discredit anybody who opposes them. This is the common approach that they try to disqualify us. The fanatics ridicule, dismiss and estrange Jews. We have large communities and when it comes to basic law, they have to come to us. They have no choice. When certain religious issues happen they have to come to Jewish communities to resolve them. But they discredit anybody who stands in opposition. We are children of the holocaust, we lived it. But we’re not going to use the holocaust to oppress the people. That’s the Zionist ploy to use the holocaust again in such a way as their modus operandi. They use the guilt of the holocaust to trick the world to help and support them to have a state. The majority of my family were killed in Auschwitz, and we, the entire anti-Zionist community, understood that the punishment of the Nazis would be by the hands of God, but to take the Jews’ blood that was spilled to rebel against God and make a state, that’s a second holocaust.
What do you think the duty of Muslims and other anti-Zionist groups against the anti-human atrocities of the Israeli regime should be?
I can humbly say that we are stating mere facts and are not prophets and would not definitively tell people what to do. If you want to prescribe medication for a certain type of sickness, you have to diagnose it first. And so, we have to first diagnose what the issue is before trying to solve it. The issue in my opinion is that the world wants to portray this as a Jewish-Muslim conflict, a religious conflict, which serves as a major basis for the Zionist regime and leads to Arabs’ contempt of the Jews. Unfortunately, the world is delinquent in being outspoken and clarifying that the conflict is misdiagnosed. In other words, the Arab world should have stood up and written the historic truth of how Jews flourished in Egypt and even Iran and all the Arab lands until today and the personal anecdotes of how we lived together in peace, then the world will start to identify that something has gone wrong, that what the Zionists are saying about the root of the conflict is not the truth. The world needs to step back and ask, what is the problem? But it keeps on buying that this is a religious conflict and something should be done to remedy. You are in a quagmire, what to do about Palestine? Two religious groups who are fighting, could not live together, so you should think of a second solution. Nobody likes to give a man a strong medication like chemotherapy, but you find no choice and do whatever that you can. Look at the Jerusalem, we see large Jew communities going to New York where the largest anti-Zionist communities are living; so, why can’t we live together? I would like to meet Iran’s Leader in order to tell him that the world should see and we should talk. I went to Gaza and we met Ismail Haniyeh. He embraced us, but they would not write nothing about this back in the US. We held a press conference with some Muslim groups and we said nothing against Jews. Therefore, it is not a religious conflict. That is the issue which needs to be clarified to the world that the Muslim groups should keep on saying that we don’t have a religious conflict.
Zionism is a flawed political movement that is really illegal and is a recent creation and that’s where the problem started. Hammering to solve the issue, to re-evaluate the problem would not solve the problem. The solution seems to be quite simple; when South Africa kept saying ‘it’s impossible, it’s impossible’ and then they stopped the apartheid even though they were afraid the blacks would kill the whites and all the things and they had such a high pressure not from the politicians and not the United Nations (UN). The UN recognized South Africa as an official nation-state and who stood up against them was Nelson Mandela [which was labeled as], the terrorist. But eventually the grassroots, the people did everything including the boycott to put pressure on politicians to stop the regime. The world keeps saying you can’t keep on supporting Zionism, it’s not just right. In Gaza, they keep on saying that we have elections and Hamas won the elections and got the control. Then, everybody started saying they are going to knock bombs but in fact they are not going to admit the legitimacy of the state. Imagine Germany would have won World War II and they would have taken over the French underground or the French resistance. Then the French resistance would have said enough, enough, we can’t take it anymore and German’s would say OK we’ll stop. We’ll stop because we are not getting anywhere but it’s not enough; you will have to make a public speech and say we recognize Germans and Nazis as the proper rulers of the land. So they are demanding Gaza that the people in Gaza will have to say Israel is legitimate. Not only stop bombing, not only stop the resistance, but also they claim that Israel is legitimate. Where is humanity in that? Why is that right? And that’s why they are able to continue occupation of Gaza because the world keeps on saying they deserve what’s coming to them because they are so stubborn because they don’t want to go along with the world democracy or peace. Nobody steps back and says “why should they recognize the occupation of them?” This is all because the Zionists are leading the conversation and are telling everybody how they have to think. This is against the logic and against humane way of thinking. But it’s not being put in that perspective. We do not condone violence, we have a different history, and we do not have arms. Instead of talking about violence, we should speak about the roots of the mentality that if we should knock Hamas, we stifle them, they are going to be quiet, would they? You cannot oppress people, it would never go forever, and they would not vow allegiance to the Jewish state. But how that could be expected! It’s wrong! And it’s the world that just keeps on dancing to that tune.
You asked about Muslims and what they should do. I think they really should concentrate on defining what the issue is that they have to come up with; the issue is not the Jews; the Jews are typical to Zionists; here in Iran the leadership is very careful to call them Zionist, but that the world should be basically saying we’ve had a wrong story here, it’s not about religion and we have lived together in peace and working on that system; again I would say reluctantly, because there is a great rabbi, Rabbi Moshe Dov Beck , now in his eighties, he is a great man, he always says “you may say that I’m wrong in my logic, and you say that’s the case the whole logic when we talk about Zionism maybe wrong; he says we should talk about the solution, because the fact of the problem is that definitely the problem is Zionism not the religion; we do hope humbly that I would feel that if we go this form about being careful to differentiate between Judaism and Zionism and you know then you would be able to approach the problem and the issue but the way it is working today you can’t.
And what’s the reason that the Israeli regime or Zionist regime is supporting some terrorist groups like ISIL in Syria and the region?
It’s all one narrative, one story. We have God who dictates how morals [should be]. The fact that these phonies, these heretics- purely heretics- they eat pig, they don’t keep the Sabbath, openly desecrates the Sabbath, they have the gay rights parade, in the center of a religious community and they say [religious Jews], how you dare to demonstrate against that? You know you have to accept other people, they don’t step back and say how dare you? They advertise into the world that come and visit the whole city, the basis of all religions, come visit, and then they go and make a remark which is against every religion in the center of Judaism; you see it’s full of hypocrisy , falsehood.
In question of ISIL for instance, they don’t have the morals that dictate us what to do. We know we have to follow the Torah, you can’t kill and are not allowed to steal, everything is taught to us. They have made the Rabbinate system, they have their law system which is not Jewish at all, that is a secular system that is considered blasphemy by Jews. You have to go to Torah. If you’re living in Iran you have to follow the law of the country. If a Jew and a non-Jew has a dispute, you go to law system but if two Jews have problem they have to go to Jewish court because it’s called blasphemy. And then make a Jewish state and they made a law system that’s blasphemy in enough itself to make the whole law system and that’s not good enough they made a rabbinate and a chief rabbi, why? They made that for window dressing. They made a new language, we have a language called ‘old Hebrew’ that is a Bible and they made a new language called ‘modern Hebrew,’ why did they make it? Because they need to test the religion. So it’s all facade and false. They don’t care that the Jews die and we have a lot of stories they really don’t care, they are happy, there is a bomb in France because then Netanyahu comes marching in France and says ok everybody come to the Palestine, come up to Israel, because we are safe, even the Jews in France who are not so religious and maybe Zionists said you go home. They have a win-win situation, they agitate, create hate of Jews, anti-Semitism, and then they are happy that Jews have one way to come to us, where Jews got killed it’s ok. All the Jews have to leave almost every Arab land, because we distrust everything, they are happy, because they created this. They would prefer to sacrifice the whole Zionism in order to have the control over the land, they don’t care whether it’s Jew or Arab, they beat, and they assassinate. Any group who would help them, they would welcome.
Interview by: Payman Yazdani, Mohammad Ghaderi
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