There was very little time between the stabbing incident at Jerusalem’s gay pride parade July 30, in which Shira Banki, 16, was killed, and the arson-related murder the next day of 1½-year-old Ali Dawabsha in the village of Douma near Nablus. Just a few hours separated the events, creating a sense of continuity between them in Israel’s public discourse.
Both incidents were hate crimes that left innocent people dead and wounded. When the perpetrator of the gay pride stabbing was caught, people were shocked to learn he was an ultra-Orthodox Jew named Yishai Schlissel. He had been released from prison just three weeks earlier after serving a 10-year sentence for stabbing three people at the Jerusalem gay pride parade in 2005.