Last update - 02:47 25/09/2007
Neturei Karta welcomes Ahmadinejad
By Anshel Pfeffer
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received a friendly welcome to New York from one Jewish organization: Representatives of Neturei Karta, the tiny anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox sect, came to meet him and congratulate him on coming to the city.
This was the Neturei Karta delegation's third meeting with Ahmadinejad. Their previous meeting took place during his Holocaust denial conference in Tehran last year. Their participation in that event drew harsh reactions, and some delegates were later ostracized in the ultra-Orthodox community.
However, that failed to discourage at least some Neturei Karta members.
A spokesman for the anti-Zionists, David Weiss, said in a statement: "The Iranian president is a deeply religious man, who is committed to world peace based on mutual respect, decency and dialogue. Unfortunately, there are Jewish people today who seem to think that the appropriate Jewish response to enemies real and imagined is aggression, calls for violence, and attempts to drag other countries onto the warpath."