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.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
