Vandals defaced Judaism’s holiest prayer site on Monday morning with red spray-painted graffiti declaring, “There is a Holocaust in Gaza” — a comparison widely viewed as a form of Holocaust inversion and antisemitic rhetoric, reports Israel Hayom.
The message was discovered on the southern section of the Western Wall, directly on its ancient stones. Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz issued a sharp rebuke, stating:
“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.”
Police swiftly opened an investigation and arrested a 27-year-old Jerusalem resident. The suspect, detained and questioned, was later released under restrictive conditions pending prosecutorial approval for charges of committing a religious offence. Authorities revealed that earlier in the night, the same suspect had vandalised the wall of Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue with similar graffiti.
This latest incident follows a previous act of vandalism on the northern side of the Western Wall, which prompted extensive halachic discussions on how to remove writing from the sacred stones without causing further damage.
Photo Credit: Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP
More News
