Workers remove graffiti at the Wall.
JNS
Police arrested a 27-year-old Jewish suspect on Monday, Aug. 11, accused of spray-painting “There’s a Holocaust in Gaza” on the ancient stones of the Western Wall, Judaism’s second-holiest site. “A Jerusalem resident was arrested for questioning early this morning on suspicion of spraying graffiti at the Western Wall and in the city center,” the Israel Police said in a statement.
The graffiti was removed from the stones in the morning by the Israel Antiquities Authority’s conservation team, according to its X account.
In addition to defacing the Western Wall in the area of the “Ezrat Yisrael” egalitarian prayer space, the suspect stands accused of tagging the outer walls of the city’s Great Synagogue with similar graffiti, the police said.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, said: “A holy place is not a place to express protests of any kind, and sevenfold when this is done at the holiest place for the entire Jewish people. “The police must investigate this act, locate the criminals who desecrated the holy site, and bring them to justice,” he added.
Israeli officials across the political spectrum condemned the act of vandalism, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich accusing the perpetrator of having “forgotten what it means to be Jewish.
“These ancient stones are saturated with the long history of our people; a history of building, destruction, blood, persecution and the Holocaust, and again of building and rebirth,” the Religious Zionism Party leader said.
“Anyone who can defile them with deranged anti-Semitic blood libels has forgotten what it means to be a Jew,” added Smotrich.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit Party) said he was “shocked to see the harm and disrespect shown to the most sacred place for the Jewish people—the Western Wall.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz (Likud) said: “The desecration of the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites for the Jewish people, is a vile act and a crossing of a red line that cannot be tolerated.
“Harm to holy sites is harm to the entire Jewish people,” Katz added.
Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz denounced the graffiti on the Western Wall’s stones as “a crime against the entire Jewish people. “Our holy places must remain beyond any dispute,” Gantz declared.
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion in a statement “strongly” condemned the “serious act,” adding, “There is no place, and there never will be, for harming the national and spiritual symbol of the Jewish people.
“Protest cannot justify the desecration of a holy site and offending feelings of millions of Jews in Israel and around the world,” he said.
In 2019, a group of Arabs spray-painted the words “Slaughter the Jews” on the Kotel HaKatan (“Little Wall”), a part of the Western Wall on the Temple Mount roughly 650 feet south of the Western Wall Plaza.
Previous instances of vandalism led to extensive halachic (Jewish legal) discussions about removing graffiti from the holy site’s stones.
