(From Meretz USA’s August 7 electronic newsletter)
On Saturday night, August 1, at 11 PM, a masked man entered the community center of the Israeli Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Association in Tel Aviv and began shooting indiscriminately.
Minutes later, the shooter walked out of the center and blended into the night, leaving behind him two dead youths – Liz Trubeshi and Nir Katz – along with 11 wounded, 4 of them critically, and an Israeli gay community in shock and in mourning.
With a court-imposed gag order preventing the media from reporting on the details of the police investigation, it is difficult for anyone to say for sure whether this was – as a great many in Israel suspect – a homophobic hate crime.
But what the murder has revealed is that, notwithstanding the largely tolerant atmosphere afforded by a liberal Tel Aviv ‘bubble’, the members of Israel’s GLBT community are still struggling for acceptance and equality within broader Israeli society – in both the Jewish and Arab sectors.
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