JERUSALEM, Nov 12: Unlike many of his countrymen, ultra-Orthodox Israeli rabbi Moshe Hirsch is mourning the loss of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and he's not ashamed to admit it.

"I am praying for him because Arafat was a man who devoted his entire life to his people," says the 75-year-old Hirsch, who advised Arafat on Jewish affairs. "I'm very sad as he was a great leader who always differentiated between the Jewish people and Zionism."

Hirsch is responsible for "external affairs" at Neturei Karta, an ultra-Orthodox movement that once had large backing for its view that the Jewish state was blasphemous but now commands only tiny support in its own community.

For more than a decade, the rabbi, who always wears traditional black garb and hat, was one of the Palestinian leader's most frequent guests at his West Bank compound in Ramallah, where he will be buried on Friday.

In both calm and tense times, Hirsch regularly visited Arafat at the Muqataa, as his headquarters is known, even after Israel placed the leader under virtual house arrest nearly three years ago.

"We first made contact with Arafat about 30 years ago when he was living abroad, following a string of Palestinian attacks that claimed victims in the Orthodox community," the rabbi recalls.

"We asked him to spare a community that had dissociated itself from the Zionist project, and he promised to do so," Hirsch adds. He cites as proof of Arafat's commitment that most of the recent attacks against Jerusalem's Orthodox Jews were committed by Islamic militant groups, not by members of armed offshoots of Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction.

Hirsch readily admits that Neturei Karta is a small organization, and declines to reveal its total membership. But he insists the group represents "tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews" who remain opposed to Zionism, on the grounds that religious texts say a Jewish state will only come with the Messiah.

Such a rationale dates back to ancient traditions which stipulated that the Jewish people did not have the right to rush divine will by acting to create a state ahead of the ordained time by force. -AFP