Palestinians have a long history of picking the worst of allies. First there was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's attempted alliance with Hitler. Then there was the Palestinian Liberation Organization's long friendship with the Soviets. Then Yasser Arafat made the mistake of siding with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait, which instigated the Kuwaiti government to expel the 300,000 Palestinians living there. And, if the North Korean Central News Agency is to be believed, just this month the Palestinian ambassador to that country pledged that "The Palestinian people and leadership will remain faithful to the bonds of comradely friendship and cooperation with the workers' party and people" of the Stalinist state. (The quotation is the "news" agency's paraphrase of him.)

Although the Palestinian leadership's history of misjudgment and moral turpitude is well known, what is more distressing is that many of their same flaws are being mirrored by the most vocal pro-Palestinian group on campus, the so-called Students Allied for Freedom and Equality.

Putting aside their ill-advised divestment conference, perhaps the strongest evidence is that on Wednesday Rabbi David Weiss of Neturei Karta spoke on campus at their behest.

No doubt the student organizers' intention was to offer an example of a religious Jew who opposes Zionism, but it is unlikely that they or most students on this campus know the full story behind the group he represents.

Founded in the 1930s, Neturei Karta, which means "Guardians of the City" (that is, Jerusalem) in Aramaic, is a fringe group of fervently Orthodox Jews who oppose Zionism on theological grounds. Largely concentrated in Jerusalem, their membership is miniscule, numbering merely in the hundreds (out of a world Jewish population of 14 million). They believe that a Jewish state can be founded only after the coming of the messiah. Viewing Israel's existence as a heresy, they actively seek its destruction, and have long supported the PLO.

In fact, their friendship with the PLO dates back to 1974, when the group's leader, Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, met with Arafat shortly after his notorious speech to the United Nations in which he waved a pistol and said, "The difference between the revolutionary and the terrorist lies in the reason for which each fights. Whoever stands by a just cause and fights for liberation from invaders and colonialists cannot be called terrorist." (Apparently Arafat believes that blowing up schoolchildren isn't terrorism if it is for a noble end. One wonders if the members of SAFE agree, for the organization quite conspicuously has refused to condemn suicide bombings.) Currently, Rabbi Hirsch is Minister of Jewish Affairs (a purely honorary position) in the Palestinian National Authority, which perhaps says more about the PNA than Neturei Karta.

Another of the group's strange bedfellows is Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a man who has talked of "synagogues of Satan" and has called Judaism a "gutter religion." In February 2000, Rabbi Weiss appeared at a press conference to support Farrakhan. Fawning over the bigot, he said, "All those who say they are Jews who speak ill of Mr. Farrakhan are not Jews."

But not only is Neturei Karta's hatred of Israel hugely out of step with the rest of the Jewish community, including the fervently Orthodox, the group is so extreme that it actually blames the Jews for Holocaust, which it views as God's punishment for Zionism. In a March 2000 press conference Rabbi Weiss himself said that the Holocaust was divine punishment for Jews' abandonment of the Torah.

Those who attended Rabbi Weiss' talk on Wednesday had an opportunity to witness the group's lunacy for themselves. He said that Zionists are worse than Nazis, and that the United Nations is a work of Satan, and skillfully avoided answering a question asking him if he opposed Palestinian suicide bombings.

Needless to say, members of Neturei Karta are pariahs within the Jewish community. Treating them as representative of Jewish opinion or religion is like holding up David Koresh's Branch Davidians as typical Christians.

It is ironic that although Muslim students frequently complain that Americans misunderstand and misportray their religion, it was an utter ignorance of Judaism that was demonstrated by SAFE's hosting of Rabbi Weiss. Moreover, they were apparently unaware of Neturei Karta's fundamental beliefs, for they embarrassingly failed to realize that the religious group actually does support having a Jewish state in all of the land of Israel, including presumably all of Jerusalem and the West Bank - just not yet (since the messiah has not come).

Do pro-Palestinian students really wish to associate themselves with people who blame the Holocaust on the Jews and seek the destruction of Israel?