Neturei Karta opposes Zionism and calls for a peaceful dismantling of the State of Israel, in the belief that Jews are forbidden to have their own state until the coming of the Messiah. They are mostly concentrated in Jerusalem, but also in and around Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet near Jerusalem, and Bnei Brak. Most others associated with Neturei Karta can be found in London, New York City, and other parts of New York, with smaller communities in various cities around North America.
They believe that the restoration of the Land of Israel to the Jews should only happen with the coming of the Messiah, not by self-determination.
After two men associated with the radical branch of Neturei Karta participated in a 2004 prayer vigil for Yasser Arafat outside the Percy Military Hospital in Paris, France, where he lay on his death bed, the radical branch of Neturei Karta was widely condemned by other Orthodox Jewish organizations, including many other anti-Zionist Haredi organizations both in New York and Jerusalem. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, and what the Hirsch's faction described as an "impressive contingent" of other members, attended Arafat's funeral in Ramallah.
In October 2005, Neturei Karta leader Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss issued a statement criticizing Jewish attacks on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Weiss wrote that Ahmadinejad's statements were not "indicative of anti-Jewish sentiments", but rather, "a yearning for a better, more peaceful world", and "re-stating the beliefs and statements of Ayatollah Khomeini, who always emphasized and practiced the respect and protection of Jews and Judaism."
In December 2006, members of Neturei Karta, including Yisroel Dovid Weiss, attended the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, a controversial conference being held in Tehran, Iran that attracted a number of high-profile Holocaust-deniers.
Weiss's speech, as presented in the audio recording of the conference, contained the following statement about the Holocaust:
Now maybe I can say that at the discussion of the holocaust, I may be the representative, the voice of the people who died in the holocaust because my grandparents died there. They were killed in Auschwitz. My parents were from Hungary. My father escaped and his parents remained. He wasn’t able to get them out of Hungary and they died in Auschwitz as were other relatives and all the communities that they knew. So to say that they didn’t die, to me you can not say that. I am the living remnant of the people who died in the holocaust and I am here, I believe sent by God, to humbly say, simply to speak to the people here and say, 'you should know that the Jewish people died, and do not try to say that it did not happen. They did die.' There are people throughout the Jewish communities, still alive in their seventies and eighties and every one of them will tell you their stories. It is something which you cannot refute, but that being said, it doesn’t mean that the holocaust is a tool to use to oppress other people."
They praised Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and expressed solidarity with the Iranian position of anti-Zionism. Rabbi Yonah Metzger , the chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, immediately called for those who went to Tehran to be put into 'cherem', a form of excommunication. Subsequently a group of Rabbis claiming to represent part of the recently split anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidic group called on Jews to "to keep away from them and condemn their actions". However the newspaper 'Der Blatt' which represents the largest part of the Satmar group refused to denounce the actions of Neturei Karta. In addition Neturei Karta claim that the late Rabbi Avrohom Leitner, one of the major Poskim (Halcachic decisors) of Brooklyn's large Satmar community publicly supported their activities.
On Thursday, December 21, the Edah HaChareidis rabbinical council of Jerusalem also released a statement calling on the public to distance itself from those who went to Iran. The Edah's statement followed, in major lines, the Satmar statement released a few days earlier. In January 2007, a group of protesters stood outside the radical Neturei Karta synagogue in Monsey, New York, demanding that they leave Monsey and move to Iran, the Neturei Karta and their sympathisers from Monsey's Orthodox community responded with a counter protest.
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