Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Arbel has permanently banned Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, the US spokesperson for the extreme anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, from entering the Jewish state.
Arbel’s announcement, on Monday, came hours after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he held a meeting with the Charedi rabbi on the sidelines of the Brics group summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“I will not allow anyone who acts against the State of Israel and identifies with its enemies to enter,” said Arbel, of the strictly-Orthodox Shas Party.
Announcing the meeting with Weiss on his Telegram channel, Araghchi noted that the rabbi also visited the embassy of the Islamic Republic during his stay in Brazil, where he “signed the memorial book for the martyrs of the Zionist regime’s brutal invasion of our country”.
Last month, Israel fought a 12-day war against Iran, seeking to destroy the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Twenty-eight people were killed in Iranian missile barrages targeting Israeli population centres during the war.
Neturei Karta is a fringe Charedi Jewish sect that opposes Zionism and believes a Jewish state should not be established before the arrival of the Messiah.
Headquartered in Jerusalem’s strictly-Orthodox Mea She’arim neighborhood, the global movement has repeatedly caused controversy for its alignment with radical anti-Israel and antisemitic groups and regimes.
In 2020, members of the sect attended the funeral of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, following his assassination in Baghdad by the United States.
In January 2023, Neturei Karta activists visited Jenin in the West Bank, where they met a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.
And later that year, the group met then-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi during the UN General Assembly annual general debate in New York.
