Jerusalem’s gay pride parade has gone ahead under tight security after it was alleged that an ultra-Orthodox extremist who stabbed several people at last year’s march, killing a 16-year-old girl, was attempting to organise a fresh attack from his prison cell.



Israeli officials said Yishai Schlissel had been arrested in prison on suspicion of plotting with his brother, Michael, to harm march participants. Michael Schlissel, who was arrested on Wednesday, denies the allegations.

Speaking before the parade started, the Jerusalem police chief, Yoram Halevy, said: “We have disrupted and prevented an attempt to hurt people during the parade. The march will take place as planned. We will ensure that the public is able to realise its rights to free expression and protest in Israel’s democracy.”

Other members of Schlissel’s family have been barred from coming to Jerusalem. Schlissel is serving a life sentence for the murder of Shira Banki at last year’s march. He had been released from prison three weeks before that attack after serving a sentence for stabbing several people at a pride parade in 2005.

During Thursday’s march, which was the largest ever held in Jerusalem with 25,000 people taking part compared with 5,000 last year – flowers were laid at the spot where Banki was stabbed. Marchers were required to undergo security screening at the start of the event, and 2,000 police officers were on duty.

Several other people were arrested on suspicion of planning to disrupt the event, including an activist with a far-right Jewish group who reportedly posted incitement against the march.

Underlining the anxieties surrounding the event, a survivor of last year’s attack, Yarden Noy, said: “I’m scared to death but the message I want this march to relay is to not give in to terror.”

Concerns were heightened by a series of homophobic comments made by rabbis representing Israel’s religious Zionist movement. Although Israel has long prided itself on having the most liberal approach to homosexuality in the Middle East, recent remarks have thrown a spotlight on anti-gay prejudice in parts of Israeli society.

The Israeli army’s newly nominated chief rabbi, Colonel Eyal Karim, has called gay people “sick and disabled”, and another prominent rabbi, Yigal Levinstein, the head of a pre-military academy, recently described LGBT people as “deviants”.

The city’s mayor, Nir Barkat, announced he would not attend the march, in part because it “offends the [ultra-Orthodox Jewish] public and the national-religious public”.