Brothers of youth stabbed outside LGBT hostel in Tel Aviv turn themselves in
Suspects arrested four days after incident at Beit Dror that left 16-year-old boy seriously wounded
Two suspects in the stabbing of a 16-year-old boy outside an LGBT youth hostel in Tel Aviv turned themselves in after four days at large, police said on Tuesday.
A court had placed a gag order on details of the case but Hebrew media reported that the victim and two suspects were all brothers from the Arab town of Tamra in northern Israel.
The stabbing outside Tel Aviv’s Beit Dror house, where the youth had moved to escape family pressures to adopt a religious lifestyle, left the victim seriously injured.
Security camera footage showed one of the suspects stabbing the boy several times before getting into a car and fleeing the scene.
According to Beit Dror staff, the teenager identified the assailant as his brother before he collapsed to the ground.
The condition of the victim, who has not been named, stabilized on Sunday and was upgraded to moderate after he underwent surgery at Ichilov Hospital.
Nearly 1,000 people marched in Tel Aviv Sunday night to denounce violence against Israel’s transgender community, in the wake of the suspected hate crime.
Friday’s stabbing was roundly condemned as a hate crime by Arab lawmakers.
“We can’t accept any type of violence in our society, definitely not hate crimes,” Hadash party leader Ayman Odeh wrote on Twitter. “The struggle against violence and crime in our society is an emergency situation and is our top priority.”
In February, the LGBT rights organization Aguda released a report finding a 54 percent jump in the number of reported homophobic incidents in 2018 over the previous year.
