JERUSALEM — Israeli police have arrested an American tourist at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem after he hurled artistic endeavors to the ground, defacing two second-century Roman statues.
The vandalism overdue Thursday raised questions concerning the protection of Israel’s beneficial collections and stirred fear about a upward thrust in assaults on cultural heritage in Jerusalem.
Police known the suspect as a radical 40-year-old Jewish American tourist and stated preliminary wondering advised he smashed the statues as a result of he thought to be them “to be idolatrous and contrary to the Torah.”
The guy’s attorney, Nick Kaufman, denied that he had acted out of non secular fanaticism.
Instead, Kaufman stated, the tourist used to be affected by a psychological dysfunction that psychiatrists have categorised the Jerusalem syndrome. The situation — a type of disorientation believed to be caused via the non secular magnetism of the town, which is sacred to Christians, Jews and Muslims — is claimed to motive overseas pilgrims to imagine they’re figures from the Bible.
The defendant has been ordered to go through a psychiatric analysis. Officials didn’t unencumber his title because of a gag order.
With non secular passions burning and tensions simmering all through the Jewish vacation season, spitting and different attacks on Christian worshippers via radical ultra-Orthodox Jews were on the upward push, unnerving vacationers, outraging native Christians and sparking standard condemnation. The Jewish vacation of Sukkot, the harvest competition, ends Friday at sunset.
The distinguished Israel Museum, with its shows of archaeology, wonderful arts, and Jewish artwork and lifestyles, described Thursday’s vandalism as a “troubling and unusual event,” and stated it “condemns all forms of violence and hopes such incidents will not recur.”
Museum footage confirmed the marble head of the goddess Athena knocked off its pedestal onto the ground and a statue of a pagan deity shattered into fragments. The broken statues had been being restored, museum workforce stated. The museum declined to supply the worth of the statues or price of destruction.
The Israeli executive expressed alarm over the defacement, which officers additionally attributed to Jewish iconoclasm in obedience to early prohibitions towards idolatry.
“This is a shocking case of the destruction of cultural values,” stated Eli Escusido, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority. “We see with concern the fact that cultural values are being destroyed by religiously motivated extremists.”
The vandalism seemed to be the newest in a spate of assaults via Jews towards historic gadgets in Jerusalem. In February, a Jewish American tourist broken a statue of Jesus at a Christian pilgrimage web site in the Old City, and in January, Jewish youngsters defaced historic Christian tombstones at a distinguished Jerusalem cemetery.
On Friday morning, about 16 hours after the defacement at the museum, the doorways opened to the general public at the frequently scheduled time.
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