An Israeli rabbi has termed two violent earthquakes that killed thousands of people in Türkiye and Syria as a "divine justice".
"God is judging all the nations around us who wanted to invade our land several times and throw us into the sea," Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a prominent figure in Israel's national religious movement, said in an article published in Olam Katan, a popular right-wing weekly newsletter.
"We do not know what accounts [need to be settled] with Türkiye, 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 said in the article cited by The Times of Israel newspaper.
At least 29,506 people were killed and more than 80,278 others injured by two strong earthquakes that jolted southern Türkiye on Monday, according to the latest official figures.
The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes, centered in the Kahramanmaras province, were felt by 13 million people across 10 provinces in Türkiye, and also affected several countries in the region.
In Syria, at least 3,574 people were killed and over 5,290 others injured in the killer earthquakes.
"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," said Eliyahu, who has close ties to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
"Everything that happens, happens in order to cleanse the world and make it better."
The Jewish rabbi compared the earthquakes to the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea in the biblical story of 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 wrote.
"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 said.
There was no comment from the Israeli authorities on the rabbi's remarks.
