Other members of his party have repeated his words at every opportunity. He has referred to gay people as "sick" and "perverse" and dubbed the Pride parade "the filth parade". Shas leader Eli Yishay carries quite an unimpressive can of worms with him in this respect. Many of the speakers would like some of their own past statements to be forgotten, and want to pre-empt accusations in case a member of their own community is implicated in the crime. However, there are other reasons for the wall-to-wall condemnations. The fact that the daughter of the previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, Dana, is openly gay, has drawn some further attention to the community.
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The arrival of the first openly gay MK, Nitzan Horovitz (Meretz), in parliament after the last general election the gay parade in Tel Aviv, which attracts national and international attention and the struggle to keep a gay parade in Jerusalem have added many friends, and many foes, to the activist movement. Those prompt responses say a lot about the influence the gay community in Israel has gained in recent years. The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu the president, Shimon Peres the leader of the Labour party, Ehud Barak and the leader of the opposition, Tzipi Livni, all voiced their condemnations and condolences, and spoke of the importance of equality, freedom and tolerance.
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Litzman said he strongly condemned the killing and that the murderer should be caught and prosecuted "like any other murderer". "The Tel Aviv branch of Shas is shocked and pained and it condemns the murderous crime against the gay community," said Shahar Bakshi, a spokesperson for Shas. Even the community's most bitter enemies, the orthodox Shas party, ultra-orthodox MK Yaakov Litzman of Yahadut Hatora (United Torah Judaism) party and others were quick to condemn the murder in no uncertain terms. But as one of the commentators on the subject noted, a hate crime is defined by its victims, not its perpetrators. Nobody knows yet the identity of the masked character, dressed in black, who ventured into the bubble and shot the young people at the gay youth club on Saturday night.
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Its proud gay community, which has turned Tel Aviv into a tourist attraction for many Europeans, is also part of what makes some Israelis hate the "bubble", as the city is often referred to. No matter how segregated, old fashioned, grumpy and troubled the rest of Israel gets, Tel Aviv keeps shining as a liberated autonomous jewel, the iconic big city into which anybody can integrate, or at least be tolerated. While everybody involved in gay events always anticipates violence in the religious and conservative Jerusalem – and particularly in the Jerusalem gay pride parade which has become a centre of controversy in recent years – the gay community sees Tel Aviv as its safe haven. "This is our Stonewall," said activists in Israel's gay community this weekend, referring to the defining moment for the gay community in the US, back in 1969. T he shooting at the gay youth club Bar-Noar in Tel Aviv, which resulted in the tragic death of 26-year-old Nir Katz and 16-year-old Liz Tarboushi, and the injury of 13 others, is sending political shockwaves across Israel.