Satmar Ideology Is Synonymous With Neturei Karta — Mamdani Proved It

 

Top Photo - New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI)

 

 I have said it for years, and I will say it again — this time louder: Satmar ideology is synonymous with Neturei Karta. The difference is one of tone, not theology; one wears shtreimels, the other keffiyehs. One organizes rallies in Williamsburg, the other in Tehran. Both pray for the same outcome: the delegitimization of the Jewish state and the paralysis of Jewish strength.

Now, thanks to Mamdani — the Satmar-born “influencer” who turned anti-Israel venom into viral content — the distinction between the two has evaporated. His public celebration of Hamas propaganda, his sneering dismissal of Jewish suffering, did not erupt in a vacuum. Mandani is not an anomaly; he is a product. A product of an ideology that has spent three-quarters of a century teaching that Jewish sovereignty is a sin, that the State of Israel is illegitimate, and that the blood of Jewish soldiers spilled in defense of Am Yisrael is not the blood of martyrs, but of sinners.

Satmar will pretend to be horrified. They will issue statements condemning the IDF “lack of tznius,” not her lack of morality. But in truth, they should be thanking Mamdani. For in his arrogance, he finally made visible what has long been whispered behind the beit midrash walls: that Satmar’s anti-Zionism is not a “spiritual disagreement.” It is the same poison that animates Neturei Karta — merely refined, repackaged, and sold as “Torah faithfulness.”

To understand how this happened, one must go back to Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the first Satmar Rebbe. Emerging from the Holocaust in 1945, Teitelbaum viewed the Zionist project not as redemption but rebellion. The Jewish people, he argued, had violated the “Three Oaths” mentioned in the Talmud (Ketubot 111a): that Israel must not “ascend the wall” to retake the Land by force, that they must not rebel against the nations, and that the nations must not oppress them too much.

Teitelbaum, in his sefer Vayoel Moshe, took this aggadic passage —never codified in halacha by Rambam, Rif, or Shulchan Aruch — and elevated it into dogma. From that interpretation grew an entire theology of Jewish passivity: that any human effort to restore Jewish sovereignty is forbidden until divine intervention announces the Messiah.

But Rambam himself would have been appalled. In Hilchot Melachim (11:1), he describes the messianic process as a gradual political restoration — a king from the line of David who rebuilds sovereignty, defends the Jewish people, and gathers exiles. Rambam explicitly praises Bar Kokhba, the second-century leader who rose against Rome, as a potential Messiah until he fell in battle. His failure did not make him wicked; his courage made him worthy of hope.

For Rambam, agency is not arrogance — it is faith in action. The Jewish people are commanded to pursue justice, to defend themselves, to inhabit and sustain the Land. Teitelbaum inverted this. He turned faith into fatalism, and paralysis into piety.

It’s impossible to grasp Satmar ideology without understanding the trauma of its birth. Teitelbaum, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, saw his community annihilated while the secular Zionists built their state. In his theology, that tragedy became cosmic proof that Zionism provokes divine wrath. The Shoah, in his mind, was punishment for Herzl’s rebellion.

But what began as postwar despair hardened into permanent ideology. In the early 1950s, as Israel gathered refugees from Arab lands and rebuilt Jewish sovereignty for the first time in two millennia, Satmar built a parallel world — a counter-state of Yiddish-speaking enclaves, defined not by Torah learning but by opposition to Israel itself. They withdrew from the Zionist “impurity,” raised their children on stories of Israel’s wickedness, and built an empire of protest.

The irony is that this protest was sustained by the very state they rejected. Satmar institutions flourished in Israel thanks to Israeli welfare payments, Israeli police protection, Israeli electricity, and Israeli hospitals. Their entire existence was — and remains — parasitic upon the state they denounce.

When the Agudath Israel movement begrudgingly split over cooperation with the state in 1948, Satmar accused Agudah of betrayal. The Agudah, for all its hesitations, chose engagement — recognizing that Jewish sovereignty, however secular, was better than exile. Satmar chose ideological purity over Jewish unity. The consequences of that choice are now visible in every anti-Israel rally where black hats stand beside Hamas flags.

Which brings us to Mamdani. He is not a scholar of Vayoel Moshe. He probably couldn’t quote a line of the Gemara his ideology claims to revere. But he absorbed its essence: contempt for Jewish agency, suspicion of Jewish power, and hostility toward Jewish self-defense. His social media performances were not deviations from Satmar theology — they were digital incarnations of it.

When he mocked Israel during war, when he sneered at soldiers risking their lives to defend the Jewish people, he was expressing Satmar doctrine in 21st-century form. his sin, in Satmar’s eyes, was not his message — it was his  medium. He said publicly what Satmar rabbis teach privately.

And the truth is, Mamdani’s logic is unassailable — if you accept Satmar premises. If Israel is illegitimate, then its enemies are “resisters.” If Jewish sovereignty is sin, then Hamas is divine instrument. If Zionism is rebellion against Heaven, then terror becomes divine punishment. Once you embrace the Three Oaths as binding law, everything else — from anti-IDF protests to alliance with Iran — follows naturally.

Neturei Karta merely pushes that logic to its endpoint. Satmar merely stops one step short, preferring moral hypocrisy to full honesty.

Contrast Satmar’s paralysis with the courage of Bar Kokhba, whom Rabbi Akiva hailed as “King Messiah.” His revolt against Rome failed catastrophically, but Rambam never condemned him. Why? Because in the Jewish moral universe, failure in defense of Am Yisrael is not sin — it is sanctity.

Bar Kokhba’s spirit lives on in the young soldiers of the IDF who carry rifles instead of Gemaras, who build the wall of Jerusalem stone by stone. These are the Jews Rambam envisioned when he wrote that the Messiah will “fight the wars of God.”

Satmar mocks these soldiers as heretics; I call them heroes. When a 19-year-old paratrooper jumps into Gaza to save a kidnapped child, he fulfills pikuach nefesh — the highest commandment in the Torah. When a Satmar protester in Brooklyn waves a Palestinian flag, he fulfills nothing but cowardice.

And let us not forget: the same Rambam Satmar pretends to venerate also ruled (Hilchot Teshuva 3:11) that one who separates from the community, refusing to share in its struggles, “has no share in the World to Come.” By that definition, Satmar ideology — the ideology of separation, detachment, and denial — is spiritual treason.

When the State of Israel fights for survival, there is no such thing as “holy neutrality.” To abstain from the defense of Jews is to side with their enemies. During the Holocaust, that neutrality meant death; today, it means desecration.

In every generation, we face Jews who mistake fear for faith. During the Roman persecutions, they were the minim who sought appeasement. In the Middle Ages, they were the Marranos who rationalized betrayal. Today, they wear the black hats of Satmar, chanting “Down with Zionism” while Iranian missiles rain on Ashkelon.

And yet, there is a tragic consistency to it. A people trained to see exile as virtue cannot tolerate redemption. A theology that exalts victimhood must reject victory. Satmar’s tragedy is that it took the Jewish capacity for faith — our willingness to wait for redemption — and turned it into an excuse for passivity.

The State of Israel is not a rebellion against Heaven; it is Heaven’s response to rebellion. After two thousand years of exile, pogrom, and gas chambers, the Jewish people rose from the ashes — not to defy God, but to live again. That is the greatest Kiddush Hashem in modern history.

To call it sin is to call survival sin. To curse it is to curse the God who kept His promise.

Mamdani’s scandal is therefore not a footnote — it is a revelation. Hes howed us that Satmar’s polite separatism and Neturei Karta’s treacherous alliances spring from the same poisoned root. One smiles and raises money; the other sneers and raises flags. Both betray the same truth: they cannot accept a living, breathing, fighting Jewish people.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin teaches that when Mashiach comes, “all prophets and all the righteous will rejoice — except those who denied the redemption.” Satmar, with all its money, its schools, its newspapers, has built an empire of denial. And Mamdani, with all his bluster, simply said it out loud.

History will remember the difference between those who prayed for Israel’s downfall and those who fought for her survival. The black-coated spectators of exile will vanish into footnotes. The defenders of Israel will stand with Bar Kokhba, with Rambam, with every Jew who refused to wait for permission to live.

Mamdani proved the point: Satmar and Neturei Karta are not opposites. They are mirror images. One hides behind Talmud; the other hides behind Twitter. But both are preaching the same heresy — that Jewish life without Jewish power is somehow holier.

It isn’t. It’s just weaker. And weakness, in Jewish history, has never been holiness.

 

REPUBLISHED:
 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/satmar-ideology-is-synonymous-with-neturei-karta-mandani-proved-it/

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https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2025/11/jonathan-conricus-on-war-after-war.html

Jonathan Conricus on the war after the war — Shurat HaDin - Israel Law