Gay Israeli Teen Kidnapped by Family
With all the buzz about how hot Tel Aviv’s become for gay travelers, we still get the occasional reminder that not everyone’s on board with circuit parties, muscle boys and beach cruising.
Take the family of a 19-year-old gay man living in Tel Aviv. Four people from his hometown of Tamra, an Arab enclave in Israel’s north, are accused of “kidnapping their homosexual relative and taking him on a 12-hour nightmare, all because of his sexual tendencies,” according to an article on Ynetnews.com.
The British gay site PinkNews, reported that the man, known as “Angel,” had migrated to Tel Aviv “in the hope of leading a more open and safer life.” But according to his police complaint, relatives “continued to persecute him after his move, repeatedly demanding he return to his hometown and ‘act like a normal person.’”
Chief Superintendent Miri Peled of the Tel Aviv Police told Ynetnews that “This is a serious incident of kidnapping a person over his lifestyle… The family found it difficult to accept the man’s lifestyle and wanted to push him away by threatening and beating him.” JSSNews, a French Jewish site, went further, reporting Angel had been “tortured and molested.”
On Monday, PinkNews reported, four of Angel’s relatives reportedly arrived at his home in Tel Aviv and waited for him armed with pepper spray. “When he arrived home accompanied by two friends, his relatives sprayed and assaulted them before grabbing Angel and escaping. His friends notified police immediately.”
Angel was beaten and threatened before police located and arrested his assailants.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
