50 percent of gay Israeli teens are abused, Tel Aviv told

Following what is being called the worst attack ever on Israeli’s gay community, the government’s Social Affairs Ministry in Tel Aviv agreed to meet with gay leaders, only to be confronted with a startling claim: Roughly half of Israel’s gay youth have been sexually or physically abused because of their orientation.

The report comes even as Israeli police hunted Sunday for a masked man who opened fire at a gay youth club in the capital, killing two people in an attack that has struck fear into the heart of the liberal city’s homosexual community.

Israeli publication Ynet adds:

In the aftermath, representatives of the gay community have met with Social Affairs Ministry officials and presented them with daunting information: According to their data, 80% of gay teens have been subject to verbal abuse due to their sexual orientation and about half of them have suffered some sort of physical and/or sexual abuse.

About one third of all teen suicides in the world are committed because of sexual orientation. Also, the age at which teens are “coming out” has drastically dropped over the past few years, from and average of 16 in the early 2000s, to 13 today.

One third of all gay teens define themselves a bisexual, while the rest have a cleared sense of their sexual orientation. According to the data, the more supportive the immediate surroundings are – i.e. family and friends – the healthier the teenager’s mental being remains through adolescence.

A black-clad gunman late Saturday shot and killed a teenage girl and a man in his 20s and injured 11 others in apparently hate-based violence.

“All indications point that this was a criminal incident and not a terror attack, which was most likely deliberately directed against the gay and lesbian community,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

Thousands of people gathered in the centre of the Mediterranean seaside city overnight to protest at the attack, some waving rainbow banners and lighting candles for the victims.

“Our (gay) community won’t let itself be frightened, it will stand up to those who threaten it with heads held high and with pride, we will respond to war with war,” left-wing opposition Meretz party MP Nitzan Horowitz said.

The victims were identified as Liz Tarabushi, 17 and Yaniv Katz, 26.

Police have imposed a complete blackout on details of the inquiry, but investigators were seen sifting through evidence at the scene while bloodied victims were taken by stretcher into ambulances.

Tel Aviv police chief Shahar Ayalon ordered the closure of a nearby gay bar and urged such establishments to remain vigilant.

This video was published to YouTube by the Associated Press on August 2, 2009.

With AFP

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/02/israeli-govt-told-50-percent-of-gay-teens-are-abused/.