An American tourist arrested in Israel after smashing two ancient Roman statues on Thursday was suffering from a little-known mental disorder dubbed “Jerusalem syndrome,” his lawyer claimed, in which foreign pilgrims visiting the city start believing they are people from the Bible.
The alleged vandalism took place at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which described the incident as a “troubling and unusual event.” A pair of second-century Roman statues were damaged, with photos from the museum showing that a marble head of the goddess Athena had been thrown off its pedestal onto the floor, and a sculpture of a pagan deity had been broken into pieces.
Local authorities identified the suspect as a 40-year-old Jewish American tourist and said that answers he’d given to initial questioning indicated he was motivated to smash the statues because he believed they were “idolatrous and contrary to the Torah.”
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In a bizarre twist, the unidentified suspect’s lawyer, Nick Kaufman, claimed that his client wasn’t motivated by religious fanaticism but was rather suffering from the Jerusalem syndrome. According to the Times of Israel, “several dozen tourists” are reported to experience religiously themed delusions every year when visiting Jerusalem, but the issue is normally resolved when they leave Israel.
The disorder has been linked to more serious incidents in the past, including in the case of an Australian tourist who set fire to Al-Aqsa mosque in 1969 as part of a “divine mission.” A psychiatric paper published in 2000 discussed Jerusalem syndrome, but it whether anyone experiences it without having some form of underlying mental health condition remains a point of contention.
“This is a shocking case of the destruction of cultural values,” Eli Escusido, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said of the statue-smashing incident this week. “We see with concern the fact that cultural values are being destroyed by religiously motivated extremists.”
The incident at the museum comes after a series of attacks carried out by Jews against historical artifacts in Jerusalem. In January, teenagers vandalized a Christian cemetery in East Jerusalem, desecrating the site by smashing crosses and throwing pieces of marble on the graves. The following month, an American tourist was arrested after a statue of Jesus was torn down inside a church in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Even this week, which is the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot, religious tensions have flared. Israeli police said they arrested several people Wednesday suspected of spitting in the direction of churches and Christian pilgrims. A video of one spitting incident in the Old City provoked outrage after it was shared online.
