WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Zionist ‘rescue workers’ sent to earthquake-hit Turkey have returned a 200-year-old Jewish manuscript, with an outcry erupting over whether it should have been stolen and taken out of the country in the first place.
The occupying regime dispatched a team of search-and-rescue workers made up of volunteers and military personnel to assist Turkey after two calamitous earthquakes struck two weeks ago, a disaster that has killed at least 41,000 in the country and another 4,000 in Syria.
The ZAKA rescue mission spent six days in southern Turkey. Among the places it went was Hatay, which has an ancient Jewish community. The head of Antakya’s Jewish community in Turkey, Saul Cenudioglu, and his wife Fortuna were found dead in the ruins of their home on 10 February by rescue workers.
When the Zionist team returned to the occupied territories on Thursday, it stole two antique scrolls of the Book of Esther that had been stored in Antakya’s synagogue, which was destroyed in the earthquake.
News of the scrolls being taken from Turkey were reported in the press.
The reaction on Turkish social media quickly became hostile, with discontent rumbling over the weekend despite the scrolls being returned on Friday. The removal of the texts tap into longstanding fears that historical data-x-items have previously been looted from the country in times of crisis, for instance during the Ottoman period.
The Turkish Chief Rabbinate Foundation quickly attempted to quell fears by addressing the issue on Twitter and assuring that the scrolls are in its possession.
“The relevant Esther scroll was received from Israel and is kept in our Chief Rabbinate. [The scroll] will return to its home in Antakya after the renovation of our synagogue,” it tweeted on Friday.
Under Turkish law it is forbidden for antiquities or artefacts of important historical value more than a century old to be taken abroad.