Over the weekend 70,000 strong gathered on the streets of Tel Aviv for the victims of a violent attack at an LGBT youth center last week which left two dead and several injured.

President Shimon Peres was among speakers at the meeting on Yitzhak Rabin Square outside the city hall.

“The shots which struck this proud community affected us all as human beings, as Jews and as Israelis. The man who targeted the two victims targeted all of us,” Peres said.

Two people died when a masked, black-clad gunman opened fire on the group of young gays and lesbians at the entrance to the community centre in the heart of Israel’s commercial capital late on Saturday August 1.

“Everyone has the right to be different and proud. No one has the right to interfere in other people’s lives so long as everyone respects law and order,” Peres said.

“I came to share your tears after the death of two young innocents. Be strong and courageous,” he said.

While the perpetrator remains at large, authorities are holding Shmuel Preimark, an Israel soldier who made threats toward those attending the rally.

The threats were made shortly before Saturday evening’s rally in Tel Aviv in memory of the victims of a shooting attack on a gay and lesbian youth club in the city one week earlier.

Several hours before the start of the rally, the suspect allegedly posted a message on a gay Web forum, threatening to hurt the rally’s participants.

The soldier is suspected of writing, “Expect more victims among the gays, this time something bigger” and “a second attack on the community soon. Be ready. Don’t say we didn’t know.”

Video from the rally below:

Vigils to honor the victims of a shooting spree at an LGBT center in Tel Aviv over the weekend are planned throughout the U.S. this week.

San Francisco
Monday, August 3
5:30pm Gather at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (290 Dolores St @ 16th St)
6:00pm March to SF LGBT Center (1800 Market Street @ Octavia St)
6:30pm Speakers & Candlelight Vigil
(more)

Washington D.C.
Monday, August 3 at 8:15pm (more)

Los Angeles
Thursday, August 6 (more) and Friday, Aug 7 (more)

Vigils have already been held throughout Israel and in London. Video below is from a spontaneous rally the night of the shooting.

Three  teenagers are dead and 11 injured in an attack on a gay youth club in Tel Aviv last night.

A masked man opened fire on a crowd in front of a gay community centre in Tel Aviv late Saturday, killing three people and wounding at least 10 others, Israeli emergency services said.

A young man and a young woman were killed on the spot while the third victim died in hospital and one of the wounded was in serious condition, they said.

The gunman, who was dressed in black, unloaded an automatic weapon on the young group of gays and lesbians at the entrance of the centre, located in the heart of Tel Aviv, and then ran away, witnesses said.

All LGBT clubs in Tel Aviv have now been closed and there is concern that the shootings were religiously motivated.

I wouldn’t normally post something like this as it falls outside the range of topics we normally cover but thought it was worth sharing. Filmmaker Max Blumenthal—whose work I’ve linked to before—shot the video below in Jerusalem on the eve of President Obama’s trip to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The video which documents the views of young Israelis and Jewish Americans on President Obama, was yanked from the Huffington Post site with the following statement “I don’t see that it has any real news value … For me it only proves that one can find drunk people willing to say just about anything. Especially drunk, moronic people.” Inebriated or not, the video is very disturbing and NSFW. Watch:

Blumenthal addressed the censoring of the video on Mondoweiss:

The criticism of my video raised an interesting journalistic issue: Is reporting any less credible when interview subjects are drinking alcohol? Of course not. Journalists interview people at bars all the time, especially in broadcast packages. Beer does not, to my knowledge, contain a special drug that immediately infects drinkers with white supremacist sentiments, violent rhetoric, and anti-democratic tendencies. I get drunk as much as any social drinker and I have never called for “white power” or declared, “fuck the niggers!” as one of my interviewees did. No amount of alcohol could make me express opinions that were not authentically mine. If anything, alcohol is a crude form of truth serum that lubricates the release of closely held opinions and encourages confessional talk.

The notion that the racist diatribes in my video emerged spontaneously from a beery void is a delusion, but for some, it is a necessary one. It allows them to erect a psychological barrier against acknowledging the painful consequences of prolonged Zionist indoctrination. And it enables them to dismiss the disturbing spectacle of young Jews behaving like fascist soccer hooligans in the heart of the capitol of Israel and the spiritual home of the Jewish people.

The people in my video were not white trash, nor were they the “extreme right-wing fringe” as some bloggers have called them. They were the college-educated sons and daughters of middle and upper class American Jews from cosmopolitan metropolises and genteel suburbs. Some had come to Israel on vacation, some had made aliyah, and some told me they were planning to move to Israel in the near future. Many were dual citizens of America and Israel. They may have behaved in a moronic way, but they will not grow up to toil in the custodial arts. Many of these kids will move into white-collar jobs and use their influence to advance Israeli initiatives. Programs like Birthright Israel  — a few of those in my video were on Birthright tours — exist for the exclusive purpose of indoctrinating American Jews into unyielding, unthinking supporters of Israel. Thus the kids in my video represent at least one aspect of the Zionist project’s future base of political sustenance.

Whatever side you come down on, it’s hard to believe there will ever be peace in this region of the world, so long as religion dominates the lives of those who call it home.

I will close with the same Obama quote Blumenthal used at the end of his post as it sums things up better than anything I could ever write myself…

“Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it.”