03/01/2010 In a solidarity stance with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and protesting the Israeli cruelty, several members of an anti-Zionist Jewish sect, Neturei Karta, have spent the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza with the Islamic resistance group, Hamas.
 
This comes at a time Egyptian authorities helping Israel to tighten the grip around the besieged Strip and the 1.5 million Palestinians living there by building a steel fence to cut their last hope of connecting with the outer world through the Rafah border and after the council of leading Muslim clerics has supported its construction.
 
After the chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradawi slammed the barrier as an "unjustified crime" and as such was banned by Islam, a meeting for the Islamic Research Council of Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, attended by Egypt's top cleric Sheikh Mohammed Said Tantawi, who is a government appointee, concluded that "those who oppose building this wall are violating the commands of Islamic law."
 
Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a leader of the Neturei Karta, said Saturday that his group was in Gaza to show support for the Palestinian people.
 
Bearded and wearing black hats and coats, the four Neturei Karta men, American and Canadian citizens, were a rare sight in the Gaza Strip.
 
Members of the Neturei Karta group have expressed support for the Iranian regime and for others who oppose the Zionist entity, which they believe was established in violation of Jewish law. They made a similar visit to Gaza last year.
 
"It's crucial that the people of Gaza understand the terrible tragedy here is not in the name of Judaism," said one of the men, Rabbi Weiss of New York City.
 
Neturei Karta, Aramaic for "Guardians of the City," was founded seven decades ago in occupied Jerusalem by Jews who opposed the drive to establish Israel, believing only the Messiah could do that.
 
Gaza is still recovering from Israel's devastating military offensive a year ago, when more than 1,400 Gazans were killed in the three-week war, including 420 children and over 5300 others were injured, not to mention the heavy damage to homes and infrastructure in the besieged Strip.