One of the United Torah Judaism spiritual leaders, Gerrer Admor Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter, met Joel Landau, a millionaire member of the hasidic anti-Zionist group Satmar, Channel 13 reported on Thursday.<\/p>\n
According to the report, the meeting between Alter and Landau focused on the issue of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) draft and possible solutions, with the anti-Zionist participants suggesting issuing complaints against Israel to foreign courts, including the International Court of Justice.<\/p>\n
In footage released by Channel 13, another participant in the meeting, Emet LeYaakov chairman Israel Gafner, can be heard comparing Israel to North Korea, accusing the country of not allowing haredim<\/a> to leave.<\/p>\n “Human dignity and freedom are not relevant when it comes to those who study Torah,” he accused.<\/p>\n Gafner added that there was a group in the United States whom they were working with to collect reports of police brutality and pass them to US organizations, including to senators.<\/p>\n During their meeting, Landau reportedly offered to commit one million dollars to a fund protecting yeshiva students from prosecution while evading the IDF draft<\/a>.<\/p>\n Landau has previously praised the Gerrer Rebbe, writing in a 2025 letter that he was “the only one who stood courageously and heroically to leave the government that threatens to draft the yeshiva students of Israel into their impure army.”<\/p>\n He also has harshly criticized other Israeli haredi rabbis, describing them in the same letter as people who “make compromises to defile the yeshiva students of Israel and send their sons to the Zionist Moloch.”<\/p>\n