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.