http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/world/middleeast/05hirsch.html

 Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, a leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that opposes the existence of the Israeli state and a longtime adviser to the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, died Sunday at his home in Jersusalem. He was 86.

The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat with Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, one of his advisers, in the West Bank town of Jericho in 1994.

His death was confirmed by Eida Haredit, an organization for ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups.

Rabbi Hirsch was the son-in-law of Rabbi Aharon Katzenelbogen, founder of the anti-Zionist sect Neturei Karta. Created in 1938 in what was then Palestine, Neturei Karta (“guardians of the city” in ancient Aramaic) has several thousand members in Israel, the United States and Canada. They believe that according to the Torah, Jews were exiled from Israel because they sinned and that God has forbidden the formation of a Jewish state until the Messiah arrives.

Even ultra-Orthodox Jews who share its theological views have distanced themselves from Neturei Karta because of its actions. In 2006, Neturei Karta leaders traveled to Tehran (it could not be determined whether Rabbi Hirsch was among them), where they posed for pictures with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a conference where the Holocaust was denied.

Rabbi Hirsch became a confidant of Arafat in the 1980s, while Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, was in exile in Tunis. When Arafat returned to Jericho in 1994, Rabbi Hirsch greeted him and soon after was chosen as his adviser on Jewish affairs. While Arafat lay in a coma for 13 days at a French hospital in 2004, Rabbi Hirsch led a delegation from Neturei Karta that prayed for him there. Arafat died on Nov. 11 that year.

“Neturei Karta opposes the so-called ‘State of Israel’ not because it operates secularly, but because the entire concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law,” the organization’s Web site says.

“The true Jews are against dispossessing the Arabs of their land and homes,” it added. “According to the Torah, the land should be returned to them.”

Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis, said that what made Rabbi Hirsch so controversial “was not just that he believed — as did some other rabbis of his day — that Jews should await the Messiah before establishing a Jewish state, but that he befriended someone like Arafat.”

Neturei Karta, he said, “represented a small fringe, but were very good at gaining publicity.”

Moshe Hirsch was born in Brooklyn in 1923. He received his rabbinical training at a yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J. He emigrated to Israel, but never became an Israeli citizen. He is survived by three children and a brother.

Hatem Abdel Qader, an adviser on Jerusalem affairs to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying on Sunday: “We consider Rabbi Hirsch a part of the Palestinian people. He is one of the Palestinian Jews whom we give all respect, and this is to confirm that our problem is not with the Jews as a religion, it’s with Zionism.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 5, 2010, on page B17 of the New York edition.