The Satmar Story Continues

from The Jerusalem Post:

‘Yemenite Jews won’t be absorbed by Satmar’

Some 113 Yemenite Jews, over a third of the Sunni Arab country’s isolated Jewish community, will be making their way to the United States in the coming weeks on special visas from the US State Department. They are to be settled in Monsey, which is located in Rockland County, north of New York City.

The move has garnered accusations from the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization that the Yemenites were being settled in an “anti-Zionist” community of Satmar hassidim, a haredi group that believes political Zionism is delaying the Messianic redemption of the world…

According to a former Jewish Agency employee in North America, the agency’s concerns stem from past experience. “In the past, Jews from Yemen who opted to go to Monsey were absorbed into the Satmar community. There may be a few exceptions, but the vast majority are Satmar today. The intentions of this project and the final result are two very different things.”