By Lee Saunders

Last Updated 3/30/2016 at 1:20 PM

Tel Aviv:  Police are looking into the strange appearance of a drunken man in downtown Tel Aviv claiming to be the prophet Elijah. With just three weeks to go to Passover, detectives are puzzled by the man apparently called Eliyahu, who seems to be off his head on Kedem wine.

“He was screaming that his father was Avi Koman and that he was the real deal but we have seen it all here.” pointed out Police Superintendent Nadav B. “One year, some guy was arrested inside a giant chocolate egg claiming to be Roger Rabbit. There is a lot of wine flowing this time of year and we have just finished Purim. It could be part of a long, lingering national hangover.”

What remains a mystery is that he was spotted going door to door near Rothschild Boulevard by Jehovah’s Witnesses (who initially thought he was one of their own) wearing only a white sheet from the Sheraton Hotel and hiking sandals. While the Jehovah’s Witnesses  were busy pestering people spreading the good word outside  the AM/PM Market, ‘Elijah’ was seen stumbling around front gardens, knocking stray cats off trash cans and pressed up against kitchen windows asking for extra eggs in salt water.

One neighbour on Sheinkin Street said: “It’s usually very gentrified around here. Occasionally you’d get a protest about the cost of soya milk, but there aren’t often disturbances. But this guy was screaming, ‘I’ll give you a plague of frogs, let me in, I’m Elijah! I’ve got locusts, crabs, everything.‘ Weird.”

After he started squeezing tomato ketchup packets onto doorposts, horrified locals called the police. Briefly questioned, he was then admitted to the rehabilitation ward at Ichilov hospital pending DNA tests. He is currently sharing a padded room next to a middle age man claiming to be a reincarnated Queen Esther, a pair of twins alleging they survived on Noah’s Ark, and a disciple threatening to spill the beans on the real Mary Magdalene.