Three people arrested for threats against the participants in the middle of the call for a counter-protest
June 1 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Israel Police has been placed on maximum alert this Thursday for the march on the occasion of Gay Pride to be held this afternoon in the city of Jerusalem, amid a series of threats by far-right groups that have already led to the arrest of at least three people.
According to information collected by the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’, around 2,000 police officers will be deployed along the route of the march, which marks the start of a series of nationwide events on the occasion of LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
The far-right group Lehava, led by Bentzi Gopstein, an ally of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, will also hold a counter-protest at Bloomfield Gardens after receiving authorization from the authorities, despite the fact that the place is close to the march route. of Pride.
Likewise, messages published on a Telegram channel linked to the organization and called ‘The Jews do not shut up’ contain threats and incitement to violence against members of the LGBTQ+ community. One of the members of the group has called for “a deadly Thursday in Jerusalem”, while another has expressed his wish that “all participants in the march die under machine gun fire”.
Opponents of the march have referred to it as ‘The March of Abomination’, while police sources cited by the Israeli public television network, Kan, have expressed concern about the increase in hate messages against the LGBTQ + community .
On the other hand, Israeli media have indicated that some residents of Jerusalem have received messages on their mobile phones apparently sent from a number linked to the Mayor’s Office asking them to protest against the Pride march. “Jerusalem is not Sodom,” the messages state, from which the Mayor’s Office has distanced itself. “We will officially ask the Ministry of Communications and the service provider to investigate and eradicate this phenomenon (of misinformation),” he has settled.
The Jerusalem Open House organization recently claimed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Ben Gvir was not involved in security plans due to his past, which includes participation in various counter-demonstrations organized by religious groups against the Gay Pride March. Ben Gvir has acknowledged “not being an enthusiast for the existence of the march”, but has stressed that he “does not want the participants to be harmed one bit”.
Israeli authorities routinely deploy heavy security at the Jerusalem Gay Pride march, especially after an ultra-Orthodox man identified as Yishai Schlissel stabbed a teenage girl to death at the rallies in 2015, weeks after he was released from prison after serving a ten-year jail term for stabbing several people in the 2005 march.
