Top Israeli rabbi says Arab rule better for Jews than Zionism
Sam Hamad reports in The New Arab on 6 October 2026:
One of Israel’s most influential ultra-Orthodox rabbis said Jews could have lived well under Arab rule and blamed Zionism for creating hostility towards Jews, according to footage broadcast by Israeli television this week.
Rabbi Dov Lando, the 96-year-old head of the prestigious Slabodka Yeshiva and a leading authority within Israel’s Lithuanian Haredi community, made the comments during a private discussion at his home in Bnei Brak. The footage, broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday, was recorded around a year and a half ago. Some of Lando’s remarks had previously been reported by Israeli media.
“I don’t know what would have happened if at the beginning there had been no state and they had established UN rule here – it would have been an excellent situation,” Lando said. “It is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state,” he added. “It would have been quite good if the Arabs ruled here. It would have been the best situation.”
Lando also said the Zionist movement worsened relations between Jews and Arabs, saying that while Arabs had “never been good”, Zionism had caused them to hate Jews. “They made the Arabs hate us,” he said. He accused Zionism, which emerged as a modern Jewish nationalist movement in Europe in the late 19th century, of bringing “physical disasters, not only spiritual ones” upon the Jewish people.
Lando is an important religious authority for Degel HaTorah, the Lithuanian Haredi faction within the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) political alliance.