Friends and family mourn ‘precious flower’ killed at gay pride march

Relatives and friends of Shira Banki mourned the death of the teen girl Sunday, after she succumbed to wounds sustained in a stabbing at a Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem last week.

At the same time, politicians issued statements condemning Banki’s killer and vowing to stop future attacks.

Banki was one of six people stabbed at the parade by ultra-Orthodox terrorist Yishai Schlissel, who carried out an almost-identical attack 10 years ago.

Banki’s family said that their daughter was killed because of her tolerant views. They also indicated they place some blame on the police for not preventing the killer, Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, from reaching the parade.

“Our wonderful Shira was murdered because of the fact that she was a happy 16-year-old girl, full of life and love, who came to support the rights of her friends and every person to live in their own way,” Banki’s family said in a statement. “For no reason, and because of the wickedness of stupidity and carelessness, our precious flower’s life was cut.”

At the Leyada school where Banki studied her friends gathered to meet with counselors and social workers as they talked about their slain classmate.

Nadav Harobi, who tutored Banki, spoke of the teen’s vigor for volunteer work and social activism.

“I will remember her all my life,” Harobi told the Ynet news site. “She was a smart girl, critical in the best sense of the word. She was sharp, she volunteered a lot in her life. She was active and rose against any discrimination. She was a person who liked to live, cheerful, caring. This is an immense loss for Shira’s good friends, as well as for me.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the Banki family and condemned attitudes of violence and hatred.

“Shira was murdered because she supported with determination the principle that says everyone is entitled to live their life with dignity and security,” he said.

“We won’t allow the loathsome murderer to undermine the basic values upon which Israeli society is founded,” the prime minister pledged. “We condemn with disgust the attempt to impose hatred and violence in our midst, and we will work to bring the killer to justice.”

Earlier, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein announced that parliament will return from recess later this week to debate the recent deadly Jewish hate crime attacks at the Jerusalem Gay Pride event and on a Palestinian family in a West Bank village.

Both attacks were stridently condemned across Israel and internationally, and led to widespread soul-searching in Israeli society.

Rallies in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere — to protest the violence — brought tens of thousands to the streets over the weekend.

 

Opposition party Zionist Union criticized those who voice extreme anti-gay sentiments for inspiring hate crimes.

“Whoever calls same-sex couples animals should not be surprised if someone takes a knife and the law into his own hands,” the party said in a statement.

The comment was apparently a reference to Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich, who in the past has expressed extreme homophobic views and called the Gay Pride parade an “abomination march” drawing harsh criticism.

Party head Naftali Bennett, recalling the biblical prophecy that Jews would be a “light unto the nations,” lamented that Israel had become the opposite.

“This is a black day, a day in which our image has become dark for the nations of the world instead of being a light unto the nations, a day in which a high school student was murdered just because of her opinions and her positions,” he said after Banki’s death was announced.

Schlissel, the assailant in Thursday’s anti-gay attack, had just been released after serving 10 years in jail for carrying out a similar attack at the 2005 Pride parade. Five other people were injured in the attack, one of whom remains in serious condition.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat also expressed his condolences to the Banki family and promised to continue supporting and promoting freedom of expression in the capital.

“The murder at the Gay Pride parade in the streets of Jerusalem is a criminal act, and we won’t let it achieve its objective,” he said in a statement. “We’ll continue to allow complete free expression in the city for everyone, continue to support all the groups and communities in the city and the Open House [an LGBT organization].”

Hours after the stabbing at the gay parade, and in a separate incident, an 18-month-old Palestinian boy was killed in a firebombing attack on his family home early Friday morning that was attributed to right-wing Jewish extremists.

Unknown assailants, suspected to be extremist Jewish settlers, firebombed the home of a Palestinian family in the northern West Bank village of Duma, killing the toddler. The parents and brother of Ali Saad Dawabsha were hospitalized and are still fighting for their lives.

Although parliament is set to begin its summer recess on Monday, members of Knesset are to return on Tuesday for a special session that was initiated by the Zionist Union at the request of opposition parties.

A Knesset spokesperson said that Edelstein agreed to hold the meeting after more than 25 MKs asked for the session.

The Zionist Union initiated the session at the request of opposition parties.

Chairperson of the Zionist Union’s Knesset faction Merav Michaeli said she expected the government to tell lawmakers how it intends to curb the threat of Jewish terror attacks.

“The two terrible Jewish terror hate crimes need to be debated by the Knesset,” Michaeli said, according to a report on the Hebrew-language NRG website. “We will demand of the prime minister and the rest of the right-wing nationalist leadership to present to the Knesset activities to eliminate Jewish terror, and not empty declarations.”

The Dawabsha family’s small brick-and-cement home was gutted by fire, and a Star of David spray-painted on a wall along with the words “Revenge” and “Llong live the Messiah.”

The phrases were indicative of so-called “price tag” violence — a euphemism for nationalist-motivated hate crimes by Jewish extremists.

Israeli officials swiftly condemned both incidents as hate crimes and declared the Duma attack as an act of terror.