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Unidentified individuals wrote a statement accusing Israel of terrorism and praising Allah on the wall of a Turkish synagogue.

The sentence “Terrorist Israel, there is Allah!” was discovered recently on the exterior walls of the Istipol Synagogue in Istanbul’s Balat neighborhood, which earlier this month opened for a prayer service for the first time in 65 years, the Today’s Zaman daily reported Tuesday.

Ivo Molinas, the editor-in-chief of the Jewish community’s weekly newspaper Salom, told the daily: “Writing anti-Israel speech on the wall [outside] of a synagogue is an act of anti-Semitism. There is widespread anti-Semitism voiced in Turkey and it gets in the way of celebrating the richness of cultural diversity in this country.”

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He was also quoted as lamenting his community’s being linked to Israel in the minds of critics.

“Of course there are some connections between our community and Israel; members of our community have family that live there and might have emotional connections, but we have nothing to do with their political policies,” Molinas said.

Balat is historically a Jewish neighborhood in İstanbul. There are nine synagogues in the area but only two of them are currently active.

In March 2015, a synagogue was reopened in Turkey’s northwestern Edirne province following restoration. In December, Istanbul’s Besiktas Municipality also held a milestone event with the first public celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah in the history of the Republic of Turkey by lighting a large menorah in Ortakoy Square.

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