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 Mandani — 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 its lack of morality. But in truth, they should be thanking Mandani. 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........

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