Florida man suspected of harboring ancient Jewish lamps
Well, here’s a premise for the next Indiana Jones movie — a flick that might allow for a cameo by Adam Sandler as Zohan.
What if two ancient ceramic lamps, loaned to the White House for a Chanukah celebration, had to be retrieved from the Florida resort of a former U.S. president who has long run afoul of the law?
According to a Haaretz report, the Israel Antiquities Authority loaned two ancient clay lamps to the White House in 2019 before a Chanukah party where a major donor to the Antiquities Authority, Saul Fox, was expected to be a guest.
In the end, the lamps did make it to Washington, but they did not show up at the party — political concerns about whether they’d been taken from the West Bank made it impolitic to show them.
But they never made it back to Israel — and the Antiquities Authority believes they are stashed at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump, according to Haaretz.
The Antiquities Authority has asked senior Israeli figures close to Trump, including former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman and former Israeli ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer, to intervene to help return the items. So far nothing’s happened, Haaretz reported.
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