Although the suspect was initially expected to be released on house arrest, public outrage prompted police to announce they would seek to keep him in custody for an extended period.
A shocking scene unfolded this afternoon when a 27-year-old Jerusalem resident was arrested after spray-painting “There is a Holocaust in Gaza” on the Western Wall.
The suspect, a Jewish man from Jerusalem whose name has not been released, was apprehended by security guards near the Mughrabi Gate after vandalizing the southern section of the Western Wall and the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem.
The graffiti was sprayed on the area near the egalitarian “Ezrat Yisrael” prayer space, located outside the main area used for traditional worship. The suspect confessed to the vandalism at both locations during questioning.
Graffiti stating “There is a Holocaust in Gaza” defaces the wall of Jerusalem’s Western Wall and Great Synagogue (Israel Police)
Although the suspect was initially expected to be released on house arrest, public outrage prompted police to announce they would seek to keep him in custody for an extended period.
He appeared before a judge Monday, where police formally requested a detention extension.
According to Ynet, the man was recently arrested for defacing a poster of an IDF soldier in Tel Aviv.
However, family members tell the Hebrew news outlet that he suffers from mental health problems and has been hospitalized multiple times.
Nevertheless, the graffiti sparked swift condemnation from Israeli leaders and lawmakers from across the political spectrum.
🚨 WATCH: In the dead of night:
Footage of spraying the inscription on the stones of the Western Wall https://t.co/Aj6QYJuFjq pic.twitter.com/ls17ZkmsmD— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) August 11, 2025
“A holy place is not a place to express protests of any kind, and especially when this is done at the holiest place for the entire Jewish people,” Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, said in a media statement.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote on X that the suspect had violated the sanctity of the site.
“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 chairman wrote.
“Anyone who can defile them with deranged antisemitic blood libels has forgotten what it means to be a Jew,” added Smotrich.
Opposition Leader Benny Gantz referred to the graffiti as “a crime against the entire Jewish people.”
The graffiti on both sites has since been cleaned up by Jerusalem municipality crews.
Yet such desecration of Judaism’s most sacred site is not unprecedented — in 2019, a group spray-painted “Slaughter the Jews” on the Kotel HaKatan (“Little Wall”), another section of the Western Wall complex situated approximately 650 feet south of the Western Wall Plaza.
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