Israel/Palestine

All this has happened in the run-up to Thursday’s pride parade in Jerusalem. The event has attracted the customary protest and plans for counter-demonstrations from the far-right Jewish purity group Lehava, and Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox communities, whose neighborhoods have been dotted with posters calling the parade an “abomination.” Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, Meir Turgeman, told Army Radio on Wednesday that “Jerusalem is a holy city and [the pride participants] are blasphemers.” The chief rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba, Dov Lior, also called the event an “abomination,” while a faction of religious Zionist rabbis has published a letter accusing the parade and its attendees of “desecrating” Jerusalem.

This is the same kind of hate speech that could be heard leading up to to last year’s Jerusalem Pride, at which Yishai Shlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man, stabbed teenager Shira Banki to death and wounded five other people. (Police have issued a restraining order barring members of Shlissel’s family from Jerusalem during this year’s parade, for fear that they may pose a threat to participants. They also arrested Shlissel himself, in prison, for conspiracy to carry out another attack.)

In the face of this incitement, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat declared in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth that he would not be attending Thursday’s march because he doesn’t want to “harm the ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist public.” Barkat could have kept silent on his reasons for not attending the march. Instead, he chose to validate the same homophobic sentiments that the march exists to stand up to.