The Satmar Rebbe sharply criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his speech on Shavuot, calling the PM "the head of the heretics.”
"My uncle, the author of ‘Vayoel Moshe,’ said that whoever enjoys the success of the Zionists is a true heretic and will not merit to see the joy of the coming of the Messiah and, as idolatry is annulled by calling it a disparaging name, so too here we must speak disparagingly of Zionism,” the Rebbe said, according to Kikar Hashabbat.
The Rebbe addressed Netanyahu’s speech during the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem. "Whoever heard the speech of the head of the heretics, who spoke in heresy about the coming of the Messiah, should have torn his garment, and especially when he blessed, with head uncovered, a ‘Shehecheyanu’ blessing in vain," he said.
In his remarks, he berated haredi representatives present at Netanyahu’s speech, including the Chief Rabbi of Israel and Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman. "Did those who sat there protest?"
"Today there are various technological tools that people used to see his speech, but with these you can also see the weekly sermons of the Pope. You have to know that this is the same idolatry."
He later protested the "Zionist Haredim," as he put it. "They showed me that in the Zionist haredi newspapers, the month of Iyar is a month of miracles for the Zionist state. They write, 'That was the case in 1948, and in 1967, and so today.' Everyone remembers what my holy uncle did then when he was alive. I’m not coming to repair the world, but I want our students to find out what he said.”
"It is a shame that in the synagogues that are named after his pure name, they speak with joy and pleasure about what happened, and therefore I ask everyone to come to the great gathering on the 20th of Sivan to learn and absorb what my uncle the Rebbe, of blessed memory, passed onto us Satmar Hasidim.”