Rally condemns attack at gay youth center

As protesters with rainbow flags mourned the victims and condemned the homophobic sentiment assumed to be behind the attack, police hunted for the assailant throughout a city that has long prided itself on a live-and-let-live attitude and a thriving gay community.

“I fear that if the man who did this is not found, the consequences to the gay community might be far-reaching - they might live in fear,’’ said Arnon Hirsch, a 47-year-old lawyer who was one of several hundred people who took part in the protest near the center attacked Saturday night.

Hirsch said he is openly gay and does not intend to act differently now.

“I have no intention of giving in to terror,’’ he said. “I’m not going to hide anywhere.’’

Outside the center, flowers rested on the curb near barricades erected by police and a sign reading, “Stop Homophobia.’’

A masked man entered the center for gay teens in downtown Tel Aviv late Saturday night, pulled out a pistol, and opened fire, according to Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman. The shooter then fled on foot, Rosenfeld said.

The dead were identified as a 26-year-old man who was a counselor at the center and a 17-year-old girl. Eleven people were wounded, four of them critically.

“I took cover with someone under a table, and he kept firing,’’ 16-year-old Or Gil, who was shot twice in the legs, recounted in news footage aired on the YNet news website. “When I got up it was horrifying, I just saw blood.’’

Jonathan Bower, 23, said he had been in the club before the attack and was outside when the shots began.

“One of my friends came out shouting and screaming, ‘He has a gun, he has a gun,’’’ Bower said.

Mike Hamel, a gay rights activist whose organization runs the youth club, said the center was meant to be a safe place where gay teens - many of them still concealing their sexual identity from family and friends - could meet with counselors and other teenagers. He blamed religious incitement against homosexuals for the attack.

“Beyond the pain, the frustration and the anger, we are facing a situation in which the incitement to hate creates an environment that allows this to happen,’’ Hamel said.

The attack drew condemnations from Tel Aviv’s mayor, Cabinet ministers, the country’s chief rabbis and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We’ll bring him to justice and exercise the full extent of the law against him,’’ Netanyahu said of the killer, speaking at the Israeli Cabinet’s weekly meeting.

Israel’s gays and lesbians typically enjoy freedoms similar to their counterparts in European countries. Tel Aviv holds an annual gay parade, rainbow flags are seen flying from apartment windows, and the city funds a community center for gays.

Things are different in conservative Jerusalem, however, where there have been clashes between religious and gay activists. In 2005, an ultra-Orthodox protester stabbed three marchers at a Jerusalem gay parade. Last year, a lawmaker from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party suggested in Parliament that earthquakes were divine punishment for homosexual activity.

The party, whose members have been frequent critics of gays, also issued a statement condemning the attack.