Bigoted Israeli Rabbi Calls Deadly Turkey-Syria Earthquake “Divine Justice"

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As the world grieves over the loss of life and property after the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, a top national Israeli rabbi stirred controversy by describing the disaster as “divine justice.”

Shmuel Eliyahu, the Chief Rabbi of Safed in northern Israel and a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council, wrote an article for the Olam Katan, a conservative, religious, and right-wing weekly newsletter.

In his Friday column, Eliyahu claimed that God punished the countries affected by the earthquake for allegedly mistreating the Jewish people, even comparing the quake to the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea in the biblical story of the Exodus.

“There is no doubt that those who would have seen the Egyptians drowning in the sea and who did not remember the whole event from beginning to end would have been filled with great pity for them and would have tried to save them from drowning,” Eliyahu said in his op-ed.

“But the Israelites sang songs because they knew the Egyptians and understood that these drowners wanted to kill some of them and to continue to enslave the rest. They sang songs because they understood that there was divine justice here intended to punish the Egyptians, who had drowned the children of the people of Israel in the Nile so that all the wicked in the world would see and be afraid,” he added.

Eliyahu then turned to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey and claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people, and displaced millions.

“God is judging all the nations around us who wanted to invade our land several times and throw us into the sea.” He said. “This is about Syria — which abused its Jewish residents for hundreds of years in the blood libels of Damascus and others; which invaded Israel three times in order to kill and destroy.”

“We do not know what accounts [need to be settled] with Turkey, which has defamed us in every possible arena. But if God reveals to us and tells us that he is going to judge all our enemies, we just have to look and understand what is going on around us,” Eliyahu also wrote. “Everything that happens, happens in order to cleanse the world and make it better.”

Shmuel did not finish there and took aim at Lebanon, saying, "There is no doubt that the country, which was once the 'Switzerland of the Middle East,' has become hell on earth, and such things do not happen by chance."

Finally, the rabbi mentioned the biblical prophecy in Ezekiel, which says that after all Jews return to the land of Israel, “revenge will come to all the nations around us who have harmed us.”

Many Israeli religious leaders criticized Eliyahu for his offensive comments regarding the tragedy, with Rabbi Yehuda Gilad saying he couldn’t believe Eliyahu’s statements even after reading them repeatedly.

Another prominent rabbi, Avraham Stav, said Eliyahu’s article troubled him all morning and argued that gladness over the deaths of Israel’s enemies should be reserved for terrorists and not for thousands of children affected by the earthquake with their parents.

Shmuel Eliyahu has been controversial in Israel for issuing a religious ruling discriminating against Arabs in the Safed region. He was also critical of the Reform Judaism movement, the LGBTQIA+ community, and female IDF soldiers.

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