On Friday, when the death toll in the two countries was about to surpass 28,000, Shmuel Eliyahu, above, the far-right Chief Rabbi of Safed in Israel, horrified a number Jewish leaders by claiming the disaster was “divine retribution.“
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BARRED from entering the US last year for his racism, Eliyahu is notorious for hate speech directed at the Jewish Reform movement, women serving in IDF combat units and—hardly surprising—LGBT+ folk.
In 2018 he put his name to a letter along with 200 other rabbis that accused LGBT+ groups of employing “aggressive terror accompanied by nonstop media brainwashing” and for turning “perverts into heroes.”
His latest outburst prompted Avraham Stav, a prominent rabbi associated with the Tzohar rabbinical organisation to slam Eliyahu for :
Rejoicing over these horrors while the entire world is in tears amid the terrible sights and stories in Syria and Turkey.”
Rabbi Yehuda Gilad wrote that he had read Eliyahu’s comments “again and again and can’t believe it. “
Thousands of people made in God’s image are buried beneath the ruins of their homes, elderly and infants expiring in terrible agony and we should view this as being to our benefit?
Image via YouTube
World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder, above, said he was “aghast and appalled” by Eliyahu’s remarks, adding:
It is inconceivable to me that any human being of any decency, let alone a man who presents himself as a spiritual leader, would not be devastated by the tragic deaths of by now more than 28,000 men, women and children.
Now is a moment for us to commit ourselves to helping and supporting one another, not for the stoking of hatred and divisiveness.
Eliyahu, a prominent figure in Israel’s national religious movement, compared the earthquake to the mythical drowning of the Egyptian forces in the Red Sea in an article published in Olam Katan, a popular conservative religious right-wing weekly newsletter.
Turning to the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake Eliyahu said:
God is judging all the nations around us who wanted to invade our land several times and throw us into the sea …“Everything that happens, happens in order to cleanse the world and make it better.”
Eliyahu has been known for controversial statements and rulings on Jewish law, including one that forbade the rental or sale of Jewish-owned property in Safed to Arabs.
Thanks to rabbi Eliyahu and his ilk the uphill struggle to combat anti-semitism has just been made all the more difficult.
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