Israel -A group of anti-Zionist rabbis demanded in a meeting Thursday with IDF commanders in the Jordan Valley that the army provide security for kashrut supervisors who enter the West Bank during the upcoming Sabbatical [shmita] year.
Rabbis of the Edah Haredit, a conglomerate of Hassidic courts traditionally headed by the anti-Zionist Satmar rebbe, pride themselves on receiving no financial aid from the state and are ideologically opposed to the existence of a Jewish army. Nevertheless, these rabbis have demanded that the IDF provide protection to Edah Haredit kashrut supervisors.
The kashrut supervisors' job during the shmita year is to enter Palestinian villages to make sure that all agricultural products shipped out of the villages were grown in land belonging to non-Jews. These supervisors prevent Jewish farmers from clandestinely shipping their own produce into an Arab village and claiming that it was grown on Arab-owned land. [jpost]