Hundreds of people stood and watched the attack.
The Israeli Police arrested a 16-year-old from the central Israeli city of Lod on Monday on suspicion that he took part in a violent attack on two young gay Arab men in the area of Jaffa Port on Saturday, August 1.
The suspect is being investigated and today will be heard, for aggravated assault linked to a hate crime.
As it is also reported by Haaretz, the police also obtained a “grim video evidence of the brawl, which was even disseminated on the internet”.
המשטרה עצרה אתמול לחקירה נער בן 16 מלוד בחשד שתקף שני נערים בקטטה בנמל יפו ממניעים להטבופוביים. הוא יובא היום לדיון בהארכת מעצרו בביהמ"ש לנוער בתל אביב | תיעוד התקיפה@daniel_elazar pic.twitter.com/NsYHQY7uM0
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) August 4, 2020
Apparently only a few people tried to help the unlucky couple, and Itzik Avneri was one of them and also the owner of the boat that we can see in the video. Itzik said: “I have a tour boat in the port, and there was the holiday for the past few days when a lot of Muslims come to the port to have a good time and take a cruise” he is referring to Eid al-Adha celebrations -“Two guys got on the boat to go sailing and when it ended, they got off and sat on the dock next to each other. Other people saw them and spat at them. […] I jumped in to separate them… I pulled the victims out and put them into the private area of the port where the ships dock, because there is a fence there so I could protect them. Two of the gang jumped over the fence and they began to hit and kick them… This violence was just because of the hate. There was no talk between them, all they did was look a little bit different, that’s all.”
Then he added: “What you don’t see in the video is 500 people, not a single one of them lifted a finger.”
He also asked some other people why they attacked the couple and one of them replied: “Because we’re Arabs and they’re gays, and there won’t be gays among the Arabs, it gives Arabs a bad name.”
והנה התיעוד מהאירוע שהתרחש במוצש ״מה שלא רואים בסרטון זה 500 איש שעומדים מסביב ואף אחד לא נוקף אצבע״ מספר לי איציק pic.twitter.com/byQBmp4YcM
— Bar Peleg (@bar_peleg) August 4, 2020
Israeli LGBT+ Associations quickly acted to protect the victims.
“The severe beatings seen in the video are the nightmare of every LGBT+ child in Israel. We congratulate the police on the prompt arrest of the criminals. It should be clear than violence against LGBT+ people continues to rage, and we must fight it with all our might, and in all parts of Israeli society,” said IGY, an NGO for queer youth in Israel in their statement.
This comes as a big shock for the entire LGBT+ community worldwide, having always considered Israel as on of the most LGBT+ friendly destinations in the world.
The real enemy is islamic culture !
Hi Luigi, thanks a lot for your comment. Don’t you think that such an idea is so generalist that risks to be a little racist? REAL Islamic culture is not what we are used to see today.