Anne Frank Latest Holocaust Victim To Be Baptized By Mormon Church in Violation of Agreements

A group of Mormons have once again attempted to baptize-by-proxy Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who hid in an Amsterdam attic before being caught by Nazis and ended up dying in a concentration camp.

The rite was conducted Saturday in a Mormon temple in the Dominican Republic, according to Helen Radkey, an excommunicated church member turned whistleblower.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practices proxy Baptism — converting Jews, Christians and Muslims to the faith years after they died by ritually dunking a stand-in for the deceased.

Radkey has revealed that Mormons posthumously baptized thousands of people, including Joan of Arc, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Barack Obama’s mother.

Fury over the discovery in 1995 that the church had turned more than 300,000 Jews killed by Nazis for their faith into Mormons led the LDS church to promise to quit baptizing Holocaust victims.

In a statement Tuesday, the church said it was considering taking disciplinary action.

“It is distressing when an individual willfully violates the Church’s policy and something that should be understood to be an offering based on love and respect becomes a source of contention,” the church said.

Frank, who died at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen death camp after writing her famous diary, has been baptized by the Mormon church at least nine times before, according to Radkey.

Last week, the Mormon church apologized for posthumously baptizing the parents of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. His mother was killed in a death camp in 1942.

This is just the latest incident in a long string of baptisms of Jews who died in the Holocaust by members of the Mormon church. Church leaders have repeatedly claimed that this was done by rogue elements in the Church, but there was a prior incident where they entered into an agreement:

Church officials, in response, stated that the Church does not teach that vicarious baptisms coerce deceased persons to become Mormons, nor does the Church add those names to its list of Church members.[52][53] Church officials have also stated that, in accordance with the 1995 agreement, it has removed more than 300,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims from its databases, as well as subsequently removing names later identified by Jewish groups. Church officials have also stated that a new version of the database, New FamilySearch, has been developed and is currently being implemented that would help prevent the submission of Holocaust victim names for temple ordinances.[54]

Despite the agreement, they're still at it. What makes the practice all the more galling is that these Mormon groups are specifically targeting Holocaust victims - Jews who were specifically murdered or condemned to concentration camps precisely because they were Jewish.

Dutch Legislators Infringe On Free Exercise of Religion By Banning Ritual Slaughter Practices

Dutch legislators have passed a measure that would ban the ritual slaughter of animals for food consumption. The measure would require that animals be first stunned before they are slaughtered. Under Jewish and Islamic doctrine, animals must be fully alert before they are slaughtered. Proponents claim that the ritual methods are cruel and should be banned.

So, while this affects 50,000 Jews in the Netherlands, the real focus is on the 1.2 million Muslims who follow Islamic dhabiha.

But the Islamic dhabiha and Jewish shechita methods of ritual slaughter require them to be fully conscious.

The legislation was proposed by an animal rights party with two MPs, which argued that failing to stun the animals subjected them to unnecessary pain.

But debate over the matter swiftly became a focus of animosity towards the Netherlands' 1.2 million-strong Muslim community. The country's Jewish population is comparatively small at 50,000.

Following months of debate a last minute concession was offered - the Muslim and Jewish communities will have a year to provide evidence that animals slaughtered by traditional methods do not experience greater pain than those that are stunned before they are killed.

However, observers say finding such proof will be virtually impossible.

The bill must still be approved by the upper house of parliament before it can become law.

Before Tuesday's vote, the head of the Party for the Animals, Marianne Thieme, denied the bill was an attack on religious minorities.

She argued the law was necessary because scientists agreed that animals suffered pain or fear if they were not stunned before slaughter, and because current regulations allowed exceptions for ritual slaughter.

Jewish and Muslim slaughtering practices are quite similar, and both require the use of a trained ritual slaughterer (shochet in Jewish practice) to slaughter the animal with compassion and with a single stroke of a razor-sharp knife according to strict procedures. For example, the shochet cannot press, pause, tear, pierce, or cover the animal being slaughtered. Stunning or other modern methods would render the ritual practices invalid because it would cause additional damage to the animal.

Once the animal has been slaughtered, the shochet examines the animal for additional diseases or lesions that would render the animal unkosher.

Far from being humane, these modern procedures (stunning by any number of means) are designed to maximize the number of animals slaughtered for the least cost. Jewish and Muslim slaughtering procedures are far more labor intensive and costly, in part because of the rate that meat from the slaughtered animals is deemed not to meet their respective religious standards.

Claims that Jewish and Muslim practitioners will have a year to show that their methods do not cause more harm to the animals will be all but impossible to prove; how exactly can anyone show that an animal suffers more or less pain or fear immediately preceding their slaughter. It's a bogus controversy and one that directly infringes on the religious freedoms of these communities.

About Fidel Castro's Supposed Epiphany

Jeffrey Goldberg managed to swing the interview of a lifetime by sitting down with the former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (his brother Raul runs the show now since Fidel's brush with death after a serious ailment). The clarity of hindsight and of his own impending mortality appear to be informing his decision making in ways that should have been apparent to anyone in his position even just a few years ago (like after the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of other communist countries).

Some of the things he says are eminently sensible at first blush, including that the Cuban model has failed. It only took him 20+ years to realize that. After all, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and the former Warsaw Pact has largely moved in a direction of capitalism and improved standards of living. Without its benefactor, Cuba's standard of living stagnated, and that had nothing to do with the US embargo.

Then, there's the issue of Castro's comments about Iran's anti Semitism and warning to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From Goldberg's interview:

He began this discussion by describing his own, first encounters with anti-Semitism, as a small boy. “I remember when I was a boy - a long time ago - when I was five or six years old and I lived in the countryside,” he said, “and I remember Good Friday. What was the atmosphere a child breathed? `Be quiet, God is dead.’ God died every year between Thursday and Saturday of Holy Week, and it made a profound impression on everyone. What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed God.’ They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?”

He went on, “Well, I didn’t know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a ‘Jew,’ and so for me the Jews were those birds. These birds had big noses. I don’t even know why they were called that. That’s what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was.”

He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism. “This went on for maybe two thousand years,” he said. “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything.” The Iranian government should understand that the Jews “were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. In my judgment here’s what happened to them: Reverse selection. What’s reverse selection? Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation.” He continued: “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.” I asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. “I am saying this so you can communicate it,” he answered.

Prior to the Cuban Revolution, the country was home to a small Jewish population (12-15,000), and many who couldn't directly get into the US first stopped in Cuba so it served as something of a way-station. There is a small Jewish community that is still there to this day, and it dates back to the expulsion of Jews from Spain during the Inquisition. However, more than 90% of Jews in Cuba at the time of the revolution fled Castro and his cronies.

So if this is a genuine change of heart on his part, it is late in coming, and it doesn't absolve him of his prior actions, which includes support and training for Palestinian terrorists (who continue using many of those anti-Semitic slurs in their ongoing propaganda against Israel).

Much more likely is that he's trying to reset himself as an elder statesman, but like Yasir Arafat, you can't trust the guy. He's also trying to have it both ways. He knows that Iran is walking a thin line with its bellicosity, but thinks that it is the US and Israel who need to step back - particularly with Israel eliminating its own nuclear arsenal:

Castro opened our initial meeting by telling me that he read the recent Atlantic article carefully, and that it confirmed his view that Israel and America were moving precipitously and gratuitously toward confrontation with Iran. This interpretation was not surprising, of course: Castro is the grandfather of global anti-Americanism, and he has been a severe critic of Israel. His message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, he said, was simple: Israel will only have security if it gives up its nuclear arsenal, and the rest of the world’s nuclear powers will only have security if they, too, give up their weapons.

We'd just have to ignore that Iran has any role in creating the conflict, up to and including its clandestine efforts to build an enrichment capability that exceeds what it would need for a civilian nuclear program and that it incessantly evokes genocidal flourishes in reference to Israel's existence (as in wiped off the map and using Hamas and Hizbullah as its proxies). We'd also have to note that Israel's nuclear arsenal (such as its neighbors believe exists) is seen as a counterbalance to Israel's small military size and deterrence to large scale attack. Eliminating that nuclear arsenal as a deterrent would potentially open Israel up to further aggression down the road.

Swiss Politician Calls For Ban On Separate Religious Cemeteries

On the heels of the Swiss referendum pushed by right wing groups to ban the construction of new minarets, a Swiss politician is now proposing a ban on the construction of new Jewish and Muslim cemeteries.

A mainstream Swiss political leader is calling for a ban on separate Muslim and Jewish cemeteries.

Christophe Darbellay, president of the Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland, made the statement in a television interview Tuesday, two days after Swiss voters passed an initiative to ban minarets.

The anti-minaret initiative came from the opposition ultra-conservative Swiss People's Party and other right-wing political organizations. Critics say Darbellay is starting a "crusade" to attract voters by proposing similarly xenophobic measures.

Mainstream politicians and religious leaders across Europe have reacted with dismay to the anti-minaret vote.

According to the Swiss online daily Tagesanzeiger, Darbellay also wants to ban the wearing of burkas, head-to-toe veils worn by some fundamentalist Muslim women.

Darbellay reportedly said that existing cemeteries would not be affected by a ban, but that there should be no separate cemeteries in the future.

Jewish burial practices are well established and preventing further Jewish cemeteries to be created would violate the free exercise of the religious practices of Jews. But, as we've seen, European concepts of free speech and religious freedoms are quite different from the American concepts, which most Americans take for granted.

UPDATE:
Jews make up 0.3% of the population of the country - or about 20,000 citizens. The Swiss have regularly restricted ritual slaughter of meat according to Jewish practices (kashrut) since the 1800s. They prevent the practice inside the country, although they allow koshered meat to be imported since the 1970s.

Some Interfaith Dialogue

The Saudi King decided to sponsor an interfaith dialogue, but had to choose Spain for the forum instead of Saudi Arabia since the Saudis greatly discourage non Muslims from setting foot in the country, and ban non Muslims from entering Mecca.

Now comes word that the United Arab Emirates has an issue with Jews.

But after a day's worth of speeches by Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu leaders, in the middle of the fourth two-hour conference session, a government official from the United Arab Emirates urged Muslim leaders to avoid the company of Zionists.

"We have to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism," the official, Izzeddin Mustafa Ibrahim, who is listed on the program as an adviser on cultural affairs to the president of the U.A.E., said. "Zionism is a political system. Judaism is a religion."

He continued: "I can speak to pacifists but not bellicists, who are in favor of war."

Mr. Ibrahim, a Muslim scholar of Christianity who said he has met with three popes in the interests of Christian-Muslim relations, then continued: "I have only one minute left," referring to the amount of speaking time allotted to him, and finished off his statements with a broad appeal to begin a "Judaic and Islamic dialogue."

"I believe it has to start," Mr. Ibrahim said, referring to such a dialogue.

A New York rabbi, Marc Schneier, then took the lectern but did not directly respond to Mr. Ibrahim's statements about Zionism. He spoke of outreach efforts in North America between imams and rabbis.

In an interview outside the conference room, however, another New York rabbi denounced Mr. Ibrahim's remarks "as the same old rhetoric that has led to more hatred and the building of a wall between the Jews and the Muslims for the last 60 years."

Let's remind the UAE that Israel came into existence after the Arabs (Muslims) rejected any accommodation of a two-state solution and have spent the subsequent 60 years seeking nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

Jews are restricted from going near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to pray because the Israeli authorities have deemed it insensitive and could lead to riots from the al Aqsa mosque (which coincidentally appears to have been a meeting place for men plotting to kill President Bush when he paid a visit to Israel). Jews are prohibited from visiting Rachel's Tomb for similar concerns, and are restricted from going to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron for the same reason. Israel bends over backwards to accommodate Muslim concerns, while limiting Jewish parishioners from going to these sacred locations.

It's also curious how the UAE tries to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, when Islam is both a political and a religious movement. The Islamists repeatedly seek to impose Islamic law on all those who are under its dominion - as per Saudi law and the law in many parts of the world where Muslims make up a majority (Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, etc.).

Seventh Circuit Rules No Right To Hang Mezuzot In Condos

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that observant Jews have no right to hang mezuzot in a condo complex in Chicago. The majority ruled that the condo's rules did not violate the Fair Housing Act. I think the dissent gets this one right:

In dissent, Judge Diane Wood said enforcement of the rule amounted to a "constructive eviction" of observant Jewish residents, as well as an effective bar on Jews moving into the housing complex. "Hallway Rule 1 operates exactly as a redlining rule does with respect to the ability of the owner to sell to observant Jews. No such person could buy a unit at Shoreline Towers," she wrote. "The Association might as well hang a sign outside saying 'No observant Jews allowed.'"

The board eventually created a religious exception after years of fighting between the Blochs and the board including one instance where a mezuzah was removed while the family was attending a funeral for the husband of the plaintiff. Chicago also enacted a law in 2005 to guarantee the right to such religious displays.

The full case can be found here.

In other words, the Court found that any other boards that do not provide a religious exception or cities/states that do not provide such protections can discriminate against observant Jews who must put a mezuzah on their doorways. Similarly, any other religious group that requires a similar display could be prevented from doing so and the Court rubber stamps such discrimination.

What Matzah Shortage?

The New York Times reports that there was a matzah shortage due to manufacturing problems or that some chains have chosen not to carry matzahs this year including Trader Joe's and Costco.

Funny, but the ShopRites in the NYC metro area were running promotions where they were giving away 5 pound slabs of matzahs if you spent a set amount in ShopRite.

It's not that there was a shortage, but it would appear that the distribution wasn't as smooth this year as it was in the past.

If you really need your matzah fix, I have a few boxes to sell. In fact, we're trying to come up with a few new uses for matzah.

Raiders of the Lost Second Holy Temple

This find has the potential to upset an already trigger happy bunch of Islamists.

Remains of the Jewish second temple may have been found during work to lay pipes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, Israeli television reported Thursday.

Israeli television broadcast footage of a mechanical digger at the site which Israeli archaeologists visited on Thursday.

Gaby Barkai, an archaeologist from Bar Ilan University, urged the Israeli government to stop the pipework after the discovery of what he said is "a massive seven metre-long wall."

Television said the pipework carried out by the office of Muslim religious affairs, or Waqf, is about 1.5 metres deep and about 100 metres long.

The Temple Mount is sacred ground to Jews, for it was built to support the Holy Temples. The second Holy Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD [ed: corrected from 69 AD]. The Romans built a temple on the spot, and the Muslims built a mosque centuries later. Still, Jews have always held this spot in Jerusalem as the most sacred place on Earth.

UPDATE:
Carl in Jerusalem has been all over this story, and notes that Jews are permitted no more than four hours of time on the Temple Mount per day - this despite being the holiest spot on the planet for Jews. Muslims get to control the access to the Temple Mount, and the Islamic Waqf operates the Muslim mosques on the Mount and are responsible for the work being done now. The Waqf does not have the same interest in preserving the Jewish history of the Temple Mount as the Israeli archaeologists do. It is absolutely inexcusable that this work is going on without archaeologists involved to determine whether the utilities work is damaging or disturbing historical finds.

The work is using heavy machinery as these photos indicate.

Smooth Stone is also blogging the potential significance of the find and the Waqf's ongoing destruction and denial of Israeli and Jewish claims to the Temple Mount.

UPDATE 8/31/2007:
The Old City of Jerusalem is a World Heritage Site protected under UNESCO. UNESCO hasn't had a problem calling Israel out for archaeological work done in Jerusalem, but so far has turned a blind eye to this work on the Temple Mount. Israeli Double Standard Time (term coined by Meryl Yourish) is in full effect. Where is UNESCO's calls for a cessation of work until archaeologists can fully examine the area to determine if the work has indeed disturbed archeological relics, including those from the Holy Temple?

Jewish Settlers Forcibly Removed From Hebron

The situation in Hebron indeed appears to be a riot. Jewish settlers in the historic city of Hebron, and which is home to the Cave/Tomb of Machpellah, burial location of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish faith, has long been a flashpoint. Jews are outnumbered by Muslims in the city by a huge margin (160,000 to 500). FoxNews reports:

The settlers claim the property was owned by Jewish families for decades until Jordanian authorities seized it after the 1948 Israeli war of independence. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967.

"This is a crime against justice and against Jewish history," said Noam Arnon, a spokesman for the Hebron settlers. "I am sure we will return. Hebron has a long history and we will return."

Danny Poleg, a police spokesman, said four soldiers, two police officers and two settlers were lightly injured during the evacuation. No arrests were made.

Police forces broke through the fortified apartment doors using bars and metal clippers, carrying the settlers out one by one.

The operation follows the highly publicized refusal of several Orthodox Israeli infantry soldiers to take part in the evacuation.

On Monday, the army made clear it would not tolerate any form of mutiny and sentenced a dozen of the soldiers, including two commanders, to brief terms in jail.

I had visited Hebron during the summer of 1993 and I was struck by the crushing poverty of the place and the strong Israeli Army presence. Nowhere else in the country was the presence that visible and I was able to walk through the market in the plaza in front of the cave as well as visit the Hadassah House and Jewish Quarter nearby. We did not have access to the Tomb directly as there were Muslim prayers ongoing.

In 1994 Baruch Goldstein opened fire on Muslims praying at the Tomb, killing 29 people before he was killed. The market in front of the Tomb has remained closed since 1994 and Jewish settlers have had restricted access to the Tomb.

This is an untenable situation no matter how you look at it. Jews should and must have the right to pray at the shrine and the Israeli government's forcible removal of settlers who wish to live in Hebron is creating a Jewish free area where Palestinians live. The same thing happened in Gaza, and instead of Palestinians using the opportunity to build up economic and social programs, the Palestinians launched into a rocket and mortar war with Israel that continues to this day. The fear remains that the Palestinians will engage in a multifront campaign against Israel from other territories from which Israel has withdrawn and all of Fatah's claims that they'll comply are meaningless if they lack the power to do anything about it. Fatah is not in control in Gaza - Hamas is. That's why so many diplomats, including PM Olmert, are willing to take another shot at giving Fatah a chance to do something here, despite the fact that the Palestinians do not consider land for peace to be sufficent unless all of Israel is given to them.

Dozens of Israelis have been injured in the clashes between the settlers and soldiers.

What's worse is the insubordination among the ranks of soldiers that were ordered to carry out the removal. This strikes me as the right tone:

Also, NU/NRP Chairman Zevulun Orlev said that all acts of insubordination in the IDF must be condemned, but criticized the decision to send soldiers to evacuate the buildings in Hebron.

"There can be no justification for insubordination, as it causes harm to the IDF and the power of the state of Israel," he said.

"Just the same, the government should be condemned for the foolish decision to recruit the IDF for policing tasks aimed at evacuating Jewish families whose property was stolen during the events of 1929 and who have the right to live in Hebron," added Orlev.

Holocaust Deniers Crawling Out of Shadows

Holocaust deniers are crawling out of the shadows on an increasingly regular basis. One such Holocaust denier, who claims that no Jews were murdered by Hitler, and that Hitler was actually financed by the Jews, wants to form a political party in Japan.

A Japanese political activist who holds radical anti-Semitic views, Richard Koshimizu, has set up a political party named "Independence Party," and is planning to deliver a public speech in the city of Kyoto this week.

Koshimizu operates a website in which he claims that no Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and that only 60,000 Jews died of diseases in the war. According to the site, Adolf Hitler was the grandson of Solomon Meyer Rothschild, and the Nazi dictator's rise to power was funded by Rothschild and other Jewish corporations.

Then, there's the anti-Semitic love song that the Swiss government wanted to hold for Iran's Ahmadinejad's benefit. They want to couch it in terms of dialogue, but the Iranians have repeatedly claimed the Holocaust never occurred, while simultaneously claiming and hoping to finish the job by eliminating Israel from the map.

Of course, to believe any of these Holocaust deniers and revisionist histories would mean you'd have to ignore the literally millions of documents and locations throughout Europe that show the Nazis indeed murdered millions of Jews, along with gypsies, gays, and anyone else who got in their way. You'd also have to ignore the discovery of mass graves in the Ukraine that hold the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis when they occupied the region.

Arson Doubted in Synagogue Fire

Arson is being doubted as the cause for the fire that destroyed the synagogue and residence of a fringe Orthodox Jewish group known as the Neturei Karta.

Per the New York Times report:

But on Monday afternoon, hours after calling the blaze suspicious, investigators with the Ramapo Police Department reversed themselves and said that although the fire, which began in a washroom on the ground floor, remained under investigation, they had determined that arson was almost certainly not a factor.

Detective Lt. Brad Weidel of the Ramapo police said that dogs had gone through the rubble but failed to detect any traces of an accelerant, leading investigators to believe that a gas or electrical problem might have touched off the blaze.

“We understand that there is some controversy surrounding this group,” Detective Weidel said at a news conference on Monday. “But our best investigators are telling us that they believe this was not an arson. At this time, the fire is not suspicious.”

That statement brought some small measure of relief to Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the Neturei Karta congregation. Earlier in the day, he had suggested that the fire had been started by people linked to the Jewish Defense Organization, a militant group that organized the protest outside the synagogue in January and encourages other Jews to harass its members.

But the preliminary conclusion did not bring calm. Several times throughout the day, as Rabbi Weiss and other members of the group stood beside the rubble denouncing Zionism and calling for peace, they were met with angry chants of “Go back to Iran” and “You hate Jews” from Orthodox Jews and other residents who lined the street.

Over the years, Neturei Karta, which has thousands of members worldwide, has been the subject of scorn and ridicule. Founded in the 1930s to counter the Zionist movement in what was then Palestine, the group — whose name translates to “guardians of the city” in Aramaic — calls for the “speedy, peaceful dismantlement” of the state of Israel because God has forbidden the formation of a Jewish state until the Messiah arrives.

Fire Destroys Neturei Karta Synagoguge in Monsey, New York

There was a synagogue fire in Monsey, NY last night. The shul, part of a residence, was destroyed and investigators are calling it suspicious.

The shul belongs to the Neturei Karta, who doesn't believe in Israel's right to exist and whose members went to Iran to join in the Holocaust deniers' conference set up by Ahmadinejad. In fact, this group had no problem cozying up to Ahmadinejad and planting a fat one on his grubby cheek. Their repugnant actions have resulted in condemnations from Jewish groups across theological and political lines. Members of the group think that this may have played a role in the fire.

No one was injured in Sunday night's fire. A senior Neturei Karta rabbi and his family, who lived on the top floor of the three-story structure in Monsey, N.Y., were not home.

"It may in the future be found to be accidental, but at this time we're treating it as a suspicious fire and we're investigating it as such," said Sgt. Daniel Hyman of the Ramapo Police Department, which serves the suburban Rockland County community of Monsey, about 35 miles north of New York City.

The Neturei Karta has been the target of threats in the past because of their involvement in the anti-Zionism movement. The group does not dispute that the Holocaust occurred, said Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the Neturei Karta.

"There's no question that the issue is to stifle the opposition to Zionism," Weiss said of after the fire. "Anybody who would like to reveal to the world their opposition to this political, national movement of Zionism is attacked."

The fire was reported in a kitchen area shortly after 8 p.m. Sunday, one day before the start to the weeklong Jewish holiday of Passover.

When firefighters arrived, one side of the house was engulfed in flames and power lines had come down, Monsey Fire Chief Douglas Perry said. He said the building was destroyed.

All this comes right on the eve of Passover, so they're going to be without their shul and many priceless artifacts were damaged or destroyed including the Torah scrolls and prayer books.

The group, whose numbers are quite small, tend to get quite a bit of press because of their anti-Israel views and anti-Semites the world over usually seek this group out to attempt to split hairs and claim that they're not anti-Semitic but anti-Israel.