For the third time in less than three weeks, Israeli police have detained a 27-year-old Jerusalem resident accused of spray-painting inflammatory graffiti equating the war in Gaza to the Holocaust.
Police said the suspect was arrested Sunday near the city’s central bus station after attempting to spray-paint the phrase “There is a holocaust in Gaza” in Hebrew on a wall adjacent to the light rail stop. He also held a sign carrying the same message. Authorities stopped him after he managed to scrawl part of the phrase, images released by police show.
The arrest follows a string of incidents in which the suspect allegedly defaced some of Jerusalem’s most prominent sites. On Aug. 11, he spray-painted the same slogan on a section of the Kosel and the outer walls of the Great Synagogue. Two weeks later, he was arrested outside a church with a paint canister; the phrase was later discovered inside the Christian site.
The acts drew widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum.
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court previously released the man for psychological treatment after he admitted to defacing the Kosel. Relatives have since told Sephardi Chief Rabbi David Yosef that he suffers from serious mental health issues and has a history of hospitalization.
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