John William Kakish, a resident of the Christian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, was released from prison on Thursday, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, after completing an 11-year sentence for a stabbing attack near Damascus Gate in which two yeshiva students were wounded. The timing is chilling: the attack itself was also carried out on the eve of Shavuot, in 2015.
What happened on the way to the Western Wall on Shavuot night?
On the night between May 23 and 24, 2015, at around 2:30 a.m., a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, including yeshiva students, was walking toward the Western Wall in Jerusalem to take part in the traditional all-night Torah study of Shavuot. As they reached the area near Damascus Gate, the attacker suddenly jumped at them, pulled out a knife and stabbed two of them, yeshiva students aged 16 and 17.
Security cameras from the “Mabat 2000” surveillance unit documented the incident. The footage shows that immediately after stabbing the yeshiva students, the attacker fled the scene, while one of the students ran after him. The two teenagers were evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in moderate condition.
The Shin Bet security service, together with the Jerusalem District Police, opened an investigation that led to the arrest of the attacker, Kakish, a Palestinian Christian who was about 20 years old at the time. During questioning by the Shin Bet, he said that immediately after the stabbing he fled the scene. To make it harder to track him down, he threw away the coat he had been wearing and the knife in an alley, changed clothes, borrowed a shirt from a neighbor, shaved and tried to alter his appearance in order to evade arrest. Despite that, he was identified through footage from Jerusalem police security cameras.
Kakish admitted that he carried out the attack out of a desire to “take revenge on Jews.” He claimed he had been influenced by racist slogans he had heard in the Old City and by acts of violence he said he had previously experienced from Jews. He had a criminal record involving attacks on Jews. Posts were also found on his Facebook page calling for the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem.
Kakish was tried at the Jerusalem District Court. The prosecution initially attributed a racist/nationalist motive to him, but that clause was removed from the amended indictment as part of a plea agreement. He was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault with a knife, rather than attempted murder. The court initially sentenced him to nine years in prison, but after an appeal filed by the prosecution to the Supreme Court, two additional years were added to his sentence.
