Jerusalem court acquits man who smashed 'blasphemous' statues at Israel Museum

The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on Sunday acquitted Stephen Edward Porth, a 40-year-old American tourist from California, accused of smashing valuable historical statues at the Israel Museum.

His defense attorney, Nick Kaufman, claimed that he suffers from "Jerusalem Syndrome" and admitted on his behalf that he committed the acts attributed to him. A psychiatric opinion received in his case last Thursday found him competent to stand trial, but at the same time determined that at the time of the incident he was not responsible for his actions.

The president of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, Judge Shmuel Herbst, who acquitted him, sent him to involuntary hospitalization for four years, a period equal to the maximum prison sentence for the offense attributed to him.

The incident took place on the afternoon of Thursday, October 5. According to the indictment, Forth, who went to the classical archaeology section of the National Museum, where statues from the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods are displayed, threw a Roman marble statue dated 201-211 AD to the Griffon, a mythological animal with the body, tail and hind legs of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle. which places the foot on the wheel of fate of the goddess Nemesis, as well as a marble statue from the late Hellenistic period from the first century BC, of Athena, the goddess of war.

Security cameras recorded Forth's actions. The damage he caused was estimated at $1 million. The police claimed that he acted cunningly and premeditatedly and waited until closing time so that there would be no crowd. According to the investigators, Forth intended to break more art sculptures, but his actions created a noise and so he stopped.

Forth said he did not regret smashing the statues

He said he did not regret his actions and had wanted to do so on previous visits to Israel and other museums. During interrogation, he confessed to the acts and claimed that these statues contradicted his faith and religion. He told investigators that these were "statues of idolatry, contrary to the laws of the Torah."

According to the indictment, he then tried to flee the museum, but security guards detained him and called police officers who arrested him. He has been behind bars ever since because he failed to raise the amount required for bail.

The Israel Museum said after the incident that "the museum's management sees this incident as a worrisome and exceptional case. The museum's management condemns violence of any kind and hopes that such incidents will not be repeated." 

The same is true of the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Eli Escozido, who said that it is the head of a marble statue of the goddess Athena from the Roman period discovered in the 1960s in northern Beit Shean, and the statue of Griffon II, a symbol of a pagan deity from the Roman period, which was previously exposed in the northwestern Negev. "This is a shocking case of the destruction of cultural values," Escozido said, "We see with concern the fact that cultural values are being destroyed by religiously motivated extremists. We will speak with the management of the Israel Museum to ensure that such incidents do not recur."