JERUSALEM-GAY PRIDE/ATTACK-REAX Police arrest assailant after 6 stabbed at Jerusalem Gay Pride parade

Record ID: 145707

  • Title: JERUSALEM-GAY PRIDE/ATTACK-REAX Police arrest assailant after 6 stabbed at Jerusalem Gay Pride parade
  • Date: 30th July 2015
  • Summary: JERUSALEM (JULY 30, 2015) (REUTERS) PEOPLE GATHERING WHERE STABBING OCCURRED
  • Embargoed: 14th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Jerusalem
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVACCHAWOOPBKYZ96I91R4NVLN52
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: CORRECTION: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EDIT IS PART NO ACCESS ISRAEL
    An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man stabbed and wounded six participants, two of them seriously, in the annual Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem on Thursday (July 30), with police saying the suspect was jailed for a similar attack 10 years ago.
    Police said they arrested the suspected perpetrator, an ultra-Orthodox man.
    Spokeswoman Luba Samri said he was the same assailant jailed for the stabbing of three marchers at a similar Jerusalem event in 2005. Israeli media said the suspect had been released from prison several weeks ago.
    About 5,000 people celebrating the event were marching along an avenue when a man jumped into the crowd, apparently from a supermarket, and plunged a knife into some of the participants, witnesses said.
    Police and medics said the attacker wounded six people.
    Two were taken to hospital in serious condition, including a young woman, said a doctor at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital, where the victims were being treated.
    It was the worst attack in years on the event in Jerusalem, a divided city where the religious population is more prominent than in other parts of Israel and highlighted the tension nationwide among disparate social groups.
    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack.
    "In Israel everyone, including the gay community, has the right to live in peace, and we will defend that right. I welcome the Israeli religious leadership's condemnation of this terrible crime, and I call on all those in positions of leadership to denounce this contemptible act. In the name of all of Israelis, I wish the wounded a full and speedy recovery," Netanyahu said.
    Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, whose job as president is largely ceremonial, warned that social intolerance could spell disaster for Israel.
    "We came together today for a festive event, but the joy was shattered when a terrible hate crime occurred here in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. People celebrating their freedom and expressing their identity were viciously stabbed. We must not be deluded, a lack of tolerance will lead us to disaster," Rivlin said during an event marking 30 years of the Israeli Opera.
    The parade has long been a focus of tension between Israel's predominantly secular majority and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority, who object to public displays of homosexuality.
    Many devout Jews, Muslims and Christians criticise homosexuality as an abomination of their beliefs. Gay marriages performed inside Israel are not recognised by the authorities.
    Arinna, a tourist who was visiting Israel from Moscow, joined the parade in Jerusalem and was shocked by the incident.
    "So I feel awful about that but in any case I feel very proud that such parade is happening right now in Jerusalem, this is a good thing I think," she said.
    Ami, a Jerusalem resident, recalled how he had heard the ambulance sirens that alerted him to the incident.
    "A lot of people were very happy and then in the middle we start hearing sirens, ambulance sirens and we understood that some people were stabbed by person in the beginning of the parade and feelings are very difficult, very hard feelings," he said.
    The march is held in the largely Jewish side of the divided city. Palestinians predominate in occupied East Jerusalem.
    Oded Fried, the head of a leading gay rights group, said the attack would not deter the movement.
    A similar Gay Pride event on June 12 in the more gay friendly business hub of Tel Aviv passed off without incident.
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