Thousands march in Jerusalem gay pride parade

JERUSALEM — Thousands of people waving rainbow flags marched through downtown Jerusalem Thursday in the city’s annual gay pride parade in a defiant show of force a year after an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death at the march.

The heavily guarded event comes against a backdrop of deep divisions in Israel between its secular majority and increasingly powerful nationalist and ultra-Orthodox camps that have spoken out forcefully of late against the LGBT community.

The fault lines have been even more pronounced in Jerusalem, the ancient biblical city rich in religious history and tradition, and the gay pride parade has been an explosive point of contention.

Unlike the raucous parade in the liberal Israeli city of Tel Aviv, which this year drew some 200,000 people, the Jerusalem affair is relatively modest. Even so, it has faced much resistance from ultra-Orthodox extremists who have deemed it an “abomination” and protested against it vigorously.

The conflict reached its apex a year ago when ultra-Orthodox extremist Yishai Schlissel began stabbing participants, killing the 16year-old girl and wounding seven others. That attack came shortly after he had been released from prison after serving a sentence for stabbing several people at the 2005 pride march.

Police said Thursday that even behind bars, Schlissel has been plotting to further harm gay pride participants and that they have thwarted another attack he was planning. Police said Schlissel was taken for questioning from his cell and his brother, Michael, was arrested as an accomplice.