Tel Aviv Commemorates Gay Youth Center Shooting Anniversary

Marchers in Tel Aviv marked the first anniversary of the shooting rampage at a gay youth center that left two dead and injured thirteen.

A masked gunman burst into Tel Aviv's Barnoar gay and lesbian youth club on Aug. 1, 2009, and opened fire on the teens that were meeting there at the time. The attack left 26-year-old Nir Katz and 16-year old Liz Trobishi dead, and another thirteen youths injured--some so badly that a year later they remain physically incapacitated.

Thousands partook in the march, reported Haaritz.com on Aug. 1 of this year. The route led through the city and terminated at a rally, which was attended by some of the survivors of the shooting attack, a government official, and families members of the two murdered youths.

Israel's education minister, Gideon Sa'ar, addressed the crowd at the rally, announcing that the nation's school curriculum would address the issue of bias crimes. "We are working to ensure that violence due to homophobia will be recognized as violence based on hatred of the other, of the different," Sa'ar told the rally's attendees. "Educational material has been and is being prepared for studying sexual identity and gender in schools and high schools."

Sa'ar was heckled by some of those who attended the rally because no government officials had attended the annual Pride march in Jerusalem a few days before, reported Y Net News.

"Why didn't you come to Jerusalem?" hecklers shouted at Sa'ar. "We should have rights in Jerusalem too. Youths have a right to be gay in Jerusalem too."

The July 29 Pride march in Jerusalem--described in an Associated Press article as "the longest gay pride parade" to take place in Israel--was, said one organizer, "first of all a march of mourning" that marked the first anniversary of the lethal attack in Tel Aviv. Said the organizer, Yonatan Gher, "and at the end we will try to put the mourning behind us and look forward to the coming year, and declare tonight the beginning of gay rights year."

The gunman has never been identified, and no arrests have been made in the case, but Israeli authorities continue to work on the case. Reports of an unspecified clue as to the killer's identity have appeared in the GLBT online press; LezGetReal.com claimed in a June 22 posting that some sort of evidence had been obtained from the crime scene, but said that authorities have imposed a "gag order" on the case. The article speculated that the evidence may have been biological in nature, and may have pointed toward an individual belonging to the Kohan tribe.

Meantime, the survivors have moved forward in their lives. Twelve of the attack's victims expressed their pain, grief, and trauma through art, reported Y Net News in a June 11 article. The artwork was collected into an exhibit of forty paintings and drawings.

"The drawings have no gloomy images," said artist Ziv Tidhar, who served as a mentor for the youths as they undertook the project. "The teenagers grabbed onto life in a surprising way; I have never seen such levels of honesty, even in artists' exhibitions." Added Tidhar, "There is a very wide spectrum of expressions--from the murder itself, and all the way to the experiences that happened later, including a first romantic encounter after the murder.

"The youths were very open and frank, and even expressed happiness and joy of life," Tidhar continued. "I entered this project with many apprehensions, because it is a process that requires walking on eggshells, but I came out encouraged."

"In fact it was the first time most of us got together after the incident," said one young woman, a 17-year-old survivor of the attack identified only as A, who created her artwork using her non-dominant hand due to nerve damage that has left several fingers of her dominant hand paralyzed. "We started drawing and sharing; we were asked to draw the things we remember most about that night and focus on them," added the young woman. "I drew the Microwave that was shattered by a bullet, after it went through Nir's body."

The young woman continued, "The physical pain is almost gone, but the feeling of loss never leaves me. Once in a while I go through fits of rage and I wait until they pass. Sometimes I look behind me, fearing the murderer might be there, waiting for me."

Response from the Right

In addition to the trauma of the event itself, the young survivors were faced with a response from the country's religious right, some of whom suggested that the attack was only a good beginning. In the wake of the shooting, a writer for the Web site Tzofer, Yisrael Artzi, called for the center's management to face a firing squad, reported the San Francisco Sentinel in an Aug. 21 article.

Artzi was responding to a demand for a retraction of an earlier article that appeared under his byline, in which the content of a letter from an unidentified writer was posted. The letter assumed that the people running the gay youth center were molesting the youths who turned to the center, and called for an investigation and criminal charges against the center's management.

Rather than offer any retraction, Artzi compared gays to animals, and railed on GLBT visibility, writing, "These perverts take everything out into the street, into the public domain." Added Artzi, "A child, religious or secular, doesn't need to know they exist."

The mother of one of the murdered youths, Ayala Katz, whose son Nir had worked as a counselor at the center, addressed a gathering at the Knesset Building in Jerusalem on July 28, the day of the Pride parade, reported YNet News the following day. "On August 1 a year ago, my son was murdered," said Katz. "We don't know who did it to this day. The incident brought up the whole issue of homophobia, of hatred and the shameful treatment of the gay community.

"From the moment the murder was carried out," Katz went on, "we decided to focus on what Nir was in his life, not just in his death--in his love, his giving, his doing for others. We are all human beings, regardless of our sexual or gender orientation. With all the emotion of being here and the sadness and longings for Nir, I have great optimism within me that it will be possible to speak with everyone. Only dialogue will bring all of us as the Israeli society to a different place."

Chen Langer, a survivor of the shooting, also addressed the gathering, saying, "The last time I spoke with you was from a wheelchair. It is important to tell what happened on August 1 [2009] and make sure it doesn't happen again. I want a different future so that we can live as we are, marry whomever we'd like, to love and be loved.

"This evening is an indication that we are ready for all the promises we received, so that there will be fewer and fewer black flags alongside the pride flags that are here today," Langer continued. "Even today there are things that ministers in the cabinet say that send shudders through my body. We must make the future different, so that something good comes out of that horrible evening, so that it isn't for naught."

Though no government officials took part in the parade in Jerusalem, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg also spoke to those assembled at the Knesset Building. "Homophobia is everywhere," Burg said, going on to remind listeners that LGBTs are also "created in the image of God, who also created the gay person, the lesbian, the transgender. Whoever denies this, in essence, denies God."

Burgh's words echoed a statement signed the same day by 100 Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox tend to be more conservative, with the Ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, being the most conservative and, often, the most vocally anti-gay. The Jerusalem Post reported on the Orthodox Jews' statement on July 30, noting that while the statement contained language that indicated a softening in attitude toward LGBTs--declaring that gays are, like heterosexuals, made in God's image and therefore are deserving of the respect due all human beings--the document also rejects family parity for gay and lesbian couples, and, in a parsing of sexuality that echoes the view of the Roman Catholic Church, declares that sexual urges toward members of the same gender are not sinful in themselves, although acting on those urges is wrong.

Another seeming paradox: the statement urges that children being raised by same-sex parents not be looked down upon, even if their parents' relationship is viewed as improper.

Not everyone agreed with the sentiments set out in the statement. Protesters at the march wielded donkey-shaped placards to show that they thought gays were little more than animals, and prominent anti-gay rabbi Baruch Marzel told YNet News that to be gay is to have what he called a "voluntary disease."

"People aren't born with it," added Marzel. "Just like someone has AIDS and is being asked not to pass it on to others. They are trying to pass it on to others. This ruins the whole Western world."

Such attitudes have trickled down to some of the country's youths: Haaretz.com reported that two gay men were attacked in a Jerusalem restaurant by a pair of young teenaged boys who struck them while shouting anti-gay epithets, including "Death to gays, all of you should be killed!"

Pride goer Gil Engelstein, 24, who had returned to his home town of Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, where he now resides, told the media that the teens "looked like they were secular, 13 or 14 years old." Added Engelstein, "I don't know what their motivation was. It's depressing that guys like that, young people, are doing that kind of thing, depressing to think about what's going through their heads."

But the youths who survived the shooting attack in Tel Aviv have, for better or worse, become cultural ambassadors against bias-driven violence targeting LGBTs. Their work continues in September, when several of them will travel to Berlin to participate in a meeting with German government and police officials and with members of Maneo, an organization that supports victims of anti-gay violence.