A social experiment where a gay couple holds hands in public has been recreated in Jerusalem, with shocking results. Similar to videos created in Ukraine and Russia, and shows the men enduring vile abuse. As they walk down the street, dozens of people look, and others make homophobic comments. This video comes just two weeks after six people were stabbed at a Pride parade in the city, which left one 16-year-old dead.
The clip auto-plays so you'll have to watch it at the link.
Posters praising last week’s deadly attack at the Jerusalem gay pride parade appeared in the city’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods Thursday morning. Distributed by an extremist group calling itself “The Faithful Judaism,” the notices applauded the stabbing as an act of holy “self sacrifice.” “May all of the people of God be zealous as you,” one poster read, as its authors expressed hope that similar acts would be carried out in the future. Under the headline “And the Plague Shall be Stopped,” another poster praised the deadly attack as an “act of Phineas,” a reference to an Old Testament priest who personally executed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman while they were together in the man’s tent, by running a spear through them both. His action is thought to have brought an end to a plague sent by God to punish the Israelites for sexual encounters with the Midianites. In another poster titled “Blessed are you Rabbi Yishai,” Schlissel was hailed as an emissary from God; the text on the poster quoted the Old Testament verse “Whoever spills the blood of the wicked is as if he brought a sacrifice.”
Yesterday a judge ordered the killer to undergo an evaluation to determine if he is mentally competent to stand trail.
"President Obama delivers remarks on Wednesday about the Iran nuclear deal at American University, where President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech in 1963 on nuclear diplomacy."
UPDATE: I've replaced the live-stream with a recap.
ISRAEL: Judge Orders Psychiatric Evaluation For Jerusalem Pride Killer
A Jerusalem judge today ordered pride parade killer Yishai Schlissel to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine if he is fit to stand trial. During his arraignment last week, Schlissel declared that he doesn't recognize the authority of the Israeli legal system. Via the Jerusalem Post:
Judge Einat Zinger decided as a result of the hearing to send Schlissel for psychiatric observation. The law states that the suspect must have representation, but the judge added that "in these circumstances, the public defender should be appointed. However, in this situation, I will make due with the public defender's representative being present in the courtroom during the hearing." Zinger said that "the defendant will be checked by a district psychiatrist who will determine if he was responsible for his actions at the time he carried out the attack and if he is fit to stand trial."The judge added that Schlissel should be checked within 48 hours and the results should be available for the court within seven days.."
Yesterday Schlissel's mother apologized to the family of murdered teen Shari Banki.
“We think it’s really a great tragedy, we regret it very much and pray for the recovery of the wounded,” Rivka Schlissel told family members of Shira Banki, 16, who died of her wounds three days after the attack, during a meeting in the studio of the Walla! news website, it reported. Schlissel’s family and members of his ultra-Orthodox community, remain under investigation by the Jerusalem District Police, who are working to discover whether others knew of his intention to attack marchers in the parade, according to Walla. Investigators also are checking calls made to and from his cell phone in the days leading up to the attack.
Thousands attended the Monday night funeral of 16-year-old Shira Banki, who died on Sunday after being stabbed at last week’s Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem. Banki, a high school student from Jerusalem, was buried at Kibbutz Nahshon cemetery, near Beit Shemesh. In an emotional eulogy, Banki’s parents, Milka and Uri, spoke of their daughter’s compassion, intelligence, and vitality. “We had four wonderful children, all of whom are intelligent, beautiful, kind, and especially, good friends to one another,” said Uri. “Now we are left with three children – with the pain, longing and shock that every parent would rather die than feel.” Invoking their daughter’s legacy of tolerance, her parents emphasized that they do not blame the ultra-Orthodox community for a crime carried out by one individual. “We want to say that we have no quarrel with the [ultra-Orthodox] people,” Uri said. “Our quarrel is with intolerance – with hatred – and achieving goals at the painful expense of others.” Banki’s parents said they will rebuild their shattered lives, while not capitulating to the unbridled hatred that took their daughter’s.
It doesn't appear that Israel's top political leaders attended the funeral. On Sunday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the attack on social media and at his weekly cabinet meeting. Last night President Reuven Rivlin honored Shira's memory during a speech to students in Haifa.
Shira Banki was a student at the Hebrew University High School. She was 16 and attended the Jerusalem Pride Parade as an ally of the LGBTQ community, and to show support for friends of hers. She was killed by a stab wound inflicted by a Hareidi-religious Jew that had attacked the same parade ten years before, and just completed his prison term. Banki was a pianist and this video of her playing is making the rounds online as people search for more information about her life, after it was ended so tragically.
Breitbart Closes Comments On Story About Girl Murdered At Jerusalem Pride
In the first Breitbart story about the attack on Thursday, multiple commenters openly celebrated the stabbings. For today's update they have closed the comments.
LGBTQ rights groups and youth activists were holding demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa following the terror attack at the gay pride parade in the capital on Thursday, in which six people were wounded. Demonstrations were also being held in response to the Jewish terror attack late Thursday night that killed a Palestinian infant and critically wounded the other three members of his immediate family. Thousands attended the rally in Meir Park in Tel Aviv in solidarity with the LGBT community, which also marks six years since the killing spree at the Barnoar community center. Among those participating were Isaac Herzog and fellow Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, and former president Shimon Peres. "I cannot believe we have reached such an abyss," said Peres. "I took before this stage six years ago, mere days after the murders at Barnoar. I am finding it difficult to believe that we are standing on that same stage, once again before the same phenomenon. We have gathered this evening for a war of independence – Israel's independence from insanity and insane people. This is not a disagreement between right and left. This is a profound clash between those with a conscience and those who lack a conscience." "It is appropriate on this evening to remove the masks," continued the former president. "Anyone who calls the pride parade a 'beast parade' should not be surprised when a knife is raised at a 16-year-old old girl."
Speaking at the rally in Jerusalem, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin denounced the "Jewish terrorists" behind the attack. Opposition leader Isaac Hertzog called for the Israeli government to classify the far-right anti-gay group Lehava as a terrorist organization. (Lehava is a Hebrew acronym for "Stop Assimilation in the Holy Land.") Speaking at the Tel Aviv rally, Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On called the attacker on the parade a member of "Jewish ISIS."
Three days after being critically wounded by an ultra-Orthodox man that went on a stabbing rampage at Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade, Shira Banki, a 16-year-old Israeli teen succumbed to her wounds Sunday afternoon. Five other people were wounded in the attack. Police confirmed that the suspected stabber is Yishai Schlissel, a Haredi man from Modiin Ilit who stabbed three participants in the 2005 Gay Pride march. He was recently released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence. Banki was a high-school student from Jerusalem, studying at the Hebrew University High School. She took part in Thursday's parade to show solidarity with her LGBT friends. She is survived by her parents and three siblings; her family decided to donate her organs.
"Our magical Shira was murdered because she was a happy 16-year-old – full of life and love – who came to express her support for her friends' rights to live as they choose. For no good reason and because of evil, stupidity and negligence, the life of our beautiful flower was cut short. Bad things happen to good people, and a very bad thing happened to our amazing girl. The family expresses hope for a less hatred and more tolerance."
Rallies to protest Thursday's stabbing attack at Jerusalem's Gay Pride parade and the arson attack in which a Palestinian child was killed will be held in major Israeli cities on Saturday night. A rally in Tel Aviv already planned to mark six years since two people were killed in a shooting at Bar Noar, a Tel Aviv gay youth center, will be turned into a protest against violence following Thursday's stabbings. At 7:30 P.M a Peace Now rally will be held at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, and from there the participants will march to Gan Meir, where another rally is scheduled to take place. Opposition leader and Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog is scheduled to speak at the Rabin Square rally, as well as Meretz leader Zehava Galon, Zionist Union MK Amir Peretz, former Shin Bet chief Carmi Gilon and more. The Jerusalem rally will begin at 9:30 P.M. in Zion Square. A protest will also take place at 8:00 P.M. in the northern city of Haifa, and at 8:45 P.M in the southern city of Be'er Sheva.
During yesterday's arraignment the deranged attacker declared that he does not recognize the authority of Israel's legal system as he was acting under orders from God.
RELATED: Yesterday the New York Postpublished an op-ed which denounces the resurgent claims of "pinkwashing" that appeared on social media after Israeli politicians and religious leaders unanimously expressed outrage about the attack. An excerpt:
Their voices arrived this week both loudly and swiftly, often cloaked in the veil of “pink-washing” — the academically vogue assertion that Israel uses its pro-LGBT record to obscure its Gaza blockade and West Bank occupation. Transgender activist Pauline Park declared Thursday on Twitter: “Jerusalem LGBT PrideParade attack by Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Assailant undermines Zionist Pinkwashing Propaganda.” “Will the Zionists continue their pinkwashing campaign?” asked another on Twitter. Indeed, across the #pinkwashing spectrum, posters insisted that Israel is actually unsafe for its LGBT citizens, that it’s far from a liberal haven and that Netanyahu’s good wishes are merely political showmanship. As with most socio-political-cultural conflicts, the truth is at once far simpler — and more complex. Indeed, much as in other Western democracies, Israel’s open society can cultivate extremists who may act out with violent results. Yet despite their horror, these egregious examples do not render those societies fundamentally violent.
ISRAEL: Knesset Member Comes Out In Wake Of Jerusalem Pride Attacks
"We can no longer remain silent because the knife is raised against the neck of the entire LGBT community, my community. It will not stop there. This is the time to fight the great darkness. This terrible criminal act that once again happened in 'the city of God.' is an attack on all of us. It attacks the right of all of us to be different, make our choices, accept differences and include the other. Israeli society is wounded, it has been stabbed in the stomach. It is losing its compassion for other people just because they are different. It is losing its acceptance of others. There is a direct connection between those hanging loudspeakers in front of a hostel for autistic children to keep them away to those people who stab people whose only desire is to live according to their conscience and desire. On behalf of what God did the despicable criminal charge at a crowd of marchers yesterday? In the name of what religion did he draw his knife and begin to stab once. And again. And once again." - Itzik Shmuli, writing today for an Israeli newspaper.
RELATED: A former student leader, Shmuli was elected to the Knesset in 2013 as a member of the Israeli Labor Party, which late last year joined with the left-wing Hatnuah Party to create the Zionist Union in an ultimately failed campaign to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court extended the remand of Yishai Schlissel for an additional 12 days on Friday, after he allegedly stabbed six participants in the city's Gay Pride Parade on Thursday. Schlissel – an ultra-Orthodox Jew who had served 10 years in prison for an identical attack in 2005 – refused to accept the court's jurisdiction and represented himself at the hearing. "I do not accept this court's authority. This court does not follow the rules of the holy Torah," Schlissel said at the hearing. "This court is part of the mechanism of evil. I have no interest in cooperating at all. I do not recognize any of the regime's institutions."
Judge Chana Miriam Lomp ruled in favor of the police's request for extending Schlissel's remand, citing the danger he posed to society, the severity of the crimes attributed to him and his past offenses. After stabbing three people at the Pride Parade a decade ago, Schlissel, then 40, from Modi'in Ilit, was convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the 2005 attack. However, in 2007, following an appeal, the Supreme Court reduced his sentence to 10 years.
Israeli police said late yesterday that they will conduct an internal probe into their failure to protect parade participants.
Since being released from prison, Jerusalem District Intelligence flagged Schlissel as someone who was liable to act against members of the gay community. However, these intelligence assessments did not specifically refer to Schlissel targeting this year's parade. The Israel Prison Service informs the police about prisoners who complete their sentences or are released on furlough using a computerized system. The system is updated every eight hours and provides general information. It was put in place primarily to alert the police to the release of abusive husbands who may seek to attack their wives again. The police's intelligence coordinators are therefore aware when inmates go free. But if the convicts aren't identified as dangerous, no one is assigned to analyze their data and ask the important questions: Did they undergo a process of rehabilitation? Did they express regret over their crimes? Are there signs that point to the likelihood that they will resume criminal activity? Schlissel appears to have announced his intentions in leaflets distributed in his hometown of Modiin Illit shortly before the event, residents said.
Police had been told to be on the alert for Ultra-Orthodox men "masquerading" as secular Israelis, yet Schlissel had been allowed to freely enter the parade in his full Haredi outfit.
Yeshai Schlissel was sentenced for 12 years in prison for the 2005 attack after his conviction on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault. However, in 2007, following an appeal, the Supreme Court mitigated his sentence to 10 years. After his release, Schlissel returned to his hometown, where residents said that he distributed hand-written pamphlets in which he called on "all Jews faithful to God" to risk "beatings and imprisonment" for the sake of preventing the parade. The Judea and Samaria Police District said after the attack that they were not supposed to track Schlissel after his release, even though he resides in their jurisdiction, because his crime was perpetrated in the Jerusalem district. Jerusalem District Police chief Moshe Edry said police didn't have concrete intelligence that Schlissel was in the area of the parade. "We were prepared for every scenario, but our perimeter was breached. This is a severe, hard incident, which required us to investigate to find out what fault cause this breach," he said. Benzi Gopstein, chairman of the right-wing group Lehava, said that while activists from his organization staged a protest against the "abomination parade," they "oppose the stabbing of Jews." He called on the police not to allow the parade to take place in Jerusalem again. Police had granted a permit to 30 right-wing activists to protest against the event near the Great Synagogue, not far from the marchers. Earlier on Thursday, Israel Police arrested right-wing extremist Baruch Marzel though they denied the arrest had anything to do with the city's annual Gay Pride Parade. Marzel is a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and usually takes part in the annual protest against the parade.
An assailant stabbed six people marching in the annual Jerusalem gay pride parade on Thursday. The assailant, an ultra-Orthodox man, was arrested. According to MDA, six people were wounded in the incident that took place on the corners of Sokolov and Keren Hayesod streets in the capital. Paramedics were treating two people in serious condition, one in moderate condition and three people who were lightly injured. All of the victims were in their thirties, according to MDA. The wounded were being evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem neighborhood. Thousands of people were taking part in the annual pride parade in the capital when the attack occurred. "I saw an ultra-Orthodox youth stabbing everyone in his way," said Shai Aviyor, a witness interviewed on Israel's Channel 2 television. "We heard people screaming, everyone ran for cover, and there were bloodied people on the ground," Aviyor said.
The ultra-Orthodox group Lehava yesterday announced that it would not allow today's parade to "pass quietly." Today's incident mirrors an attack at Jerusalem Pride 2005 in which three attendees were stabbed by an ultra-Orthodox protester. I'll have video reports of today's attack as soon as they become available. Below are apparent photos of the attacker being subdued by police.
UPDATE: The attack was caught in this photo.
UPDATE II: Here is the attacker chasing two girls with his knife as the police come after him.
UPDATE III: The Jerusalem Post has updated their above-linked story to report that the attacker is the same man arrested in the in the 2005 attack: "The suspect in Thursday's stabbing attack, Yishai Shlissel, is the same man who perpetrated a similar stabbing attack at the 2005 Jerusalem gay pride parade. He was recently released from prison after having been convicted of stabbing three people during the parade ten years ago."
UPDATE IV: Here's the attacker about to pull his knife.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack contradicted the country's "basic values". "In the state of Israel the individual's freedom of choice is one of basic values. We must ensure that in Israel, every man and woman lives in security in any way they choose. That's how we acted in the past and how we'll continue to act. I wish the wounded a speedy recovery," he said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin condemned the stabbing as a "terrible hate crime". "People celebrating their freedom and expressing their identity were viciously stabbed," he said. "We must not be deluded, a lack of tolerance will lead us to disaster. We cannot allow such crimes, and we must condemn those who commit and support them." Hundreds of police are deployed along the parade route to prevent violence breaking out. Jerusalem police spokesman Asi Ahroni told Reuters there was a "massive presence" of police at the parade but "unfortunately the man managed to pull out a knife and attack".
Jewish groups have denounced Mike Huckabee after he made the above comment in an interview with Breitbart. MSNBC reports:
“Whatever one’s views of the nuclear agreement with Iran – and we have been critical of it, noting that there are serious unanswered questions that need to be addressed – comments such as those by Mike Huckabee suggesting the president is leading Israel to another Holocaust are completely out of line and unacceptable,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement.“To hear Mr. Huckabee invoke the Holocaust when America is Israel’s greatest ally and when Israel is a strong nation capable of defending itself is disheartening,” Greenblatt added. The National Jewish Democratic Council called on others in the Party to denounce Huckabee’s remarks, saying they “may be the most inexcusable we’ve encountered in recent memory.” “To state that President Obama is leading Israelis ‘to the door of the oven’ is not only disgustingly offensive to the President and the White House, but shows utter, callous disregard for the millions of lives lost in the Shoah and to the pain still felt by their descendants today,” the organization stated.
Huckabee has doubled-down on his comments in several follow-up tweets.
An estimated 10,000 people turned out at New York's landmark Times Square on Wednesday in protest over the Iran nuclear deal signed last week. They urged the US Congress to reject the agreement brokered in Vienna to rein in Tehran's atomic program. Speakers at Wednesday's rally included New York's former governor George Pataki, Jerusalem Post senior contributing editor Caroline Glick, former Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, former congressman Allen West and Steven Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Pataki addressed the crowd, saying that "this isn't a bad deal, it's a God-awful deal, it must be rejected. Congress must do its job and stand up for the American people, stand up for our safety and say 'no' to this Iranian deal." Claiming that "we know what the outcome of this deal will be," Glick said that "our responsibility as free men and women is to stand up and ensure the security and continuity and strength and morality of the United States of America."
