A banner day for Jerusalem
It’s a march! It’s a protest!
Celebrating diversity in Jerusalem!
Ensuring democracy
Family fun - kippot, babies, and lebians!
From Ha’aretz:
They’re here, they’re queer - be proud of Israel
By Bradley Burston
JERUSALEM - I’m proud of the State of Israel. It may have more faults per capita than any nation in the world, faults which are duly broadcast, rerun, critiqued, and condemned as nowhere else. It may have more critics per capita than anywhere else in the world, in particular among its majority population of restive, instinctively kvetching, eternally disappointed Jews.
I know every criticism by heart. I’ll see your every damning denunciation, and raise you 10. But I am proud of this country, and the gay pride parade in Jerusalem goes a long way toward explaining why.
I am proud of a country which - under the burden of a 24/7 threat of Islamic Jihad terrorism, under a daily Hamas barrage of Qassam missiles on a small town in the Negev, under an explicit Iranian threat of erasure in the future and client militia brushfire wars in the near present - deploys 8,000 police, nearly half of its entire active-duty force, to protect a parade in Jerusalem by a minority group that is routinely denigrated by many members of two of the holy city’s largest and most vocal communities: the ultra-Orthodox and the Palestinians.
I am proud of the gay community, which made strenuous efforts to assure that the parade would be held in areas far from the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and other areas where the march would serve to offend residents.I am proud of the police for standing up to yeshiva students who, screaming “Nazis! Nazis! Nazis!” at the officers, pelted them with rocks, bottles, angle iron and Molotov cocktails, all the while breaking windows, smashing streetlights, and setting fire to tires and garbage dumpsters.
I am proud of ultra-Orthodox rabbis and yeshiva masters, who, though appalled by the parade and what they see as the abomination of homosexuality, publicly and unequivocally forbade their students from taking part in violent demonstrations.
I am proud of a country that scorns the slimy Meir Kahane disciple Itamar Ben-Gvir when he screams at gay celebrants in a Tel Aviv parade “the Nazis should have finished you off.”
I am proud of the policeman on King David Street who, when asked by a passing pre-schooler about the flag with the rainbow colors, replied, “There are boys who love boys, and girls who love girls.”
I am proud of a country in which the army’s influential radio station airs the views of the daughter of the prime minister when she states that the right of gays and lesbians to march in their capital city is as inherent as their right to vote.
Just as I am proud of Israel’s last Eurovision song contest winner, an acclaimed diva who began life as a man, who told a television interviewer why she believed that in the interest of respect for the holy city, the parade should not be held there.
And I am proud, as well, of the fact that Israel Television gave air time to a rabbi to explain his strong opposition to the march, and to the woman anchor who, asked by the rabbi what she would do if her son told her she was gay, said that she would hold him and be grateful for his openness.
There are many who argue that a Jewish country cannot countenance a public celebration of homosexuality. It is time for them to take the advice of leading rabbis, who placed this announcement in the Lithuanian Haredi newspaper, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post:
“Demonstrating should be done by each person in his place [by feeling outrage in the soul, by praying and beseeching (God) against the loathsome blasphemy].”
All of us who live here have our personal list of obscenities, perversions and abominations, as committed by our fellow Jewish residents of Israel. We may find their actions politically abhorrent, culturally unbearable, spiritually bankrupt, personally offensive.
They are a big part of the price of living in this country, riven along fault lines dividing and enraging left and right, secular and religious, Mizrachi and Ashkenazi, sabra and immigrant.
It may be the built-in flaw of a Jewish homeland, this infighting among the Jews it has brought home.
But as the gay pride parade proves, the most profound strength of a Jewish country are those Jews who strive to learn to live with the Jews with whom they so profoundly differ.
We’re here. By definition, we are all of us, each in our own ways, queer. We should, all of us for our own reasons, be proud.
Here’s the buzz on the Tel Aviv International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival or TLVFEST opening on June 8.
Film director, producer, and manager of the Berlin Porn Festival, Jurgen Bruning, is scheduled to arrive in Israel as a guest of the Tel Aviv International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (TLVFEST) which will open June 18.
For the Tel Aviv festival, Bruning edited a special collection of films from the Berlin Festival which explore, he said, the fine lines differentiating porn, art and politics.
The festival program includes works from around the world and deal with a variety of subjects: the world of cyber-sex, same-sex relationships, a tribute to Divine and sado-drag.
“Some of the films contain explicit sex scenes and disturbing violence,” says Yair Hochner ,the Tel Aviv’s Festival’s director of programming.
“The festival particularly aspires to present Israeli audiences with important and world-renowned Queer works that are still unfamiliar to the local scene, to examine boundaries between art and pornography, to investigate social issues and to shed light on those who live their lives on the margins.”
The Economist reported this week that it is becoming more difficult for gay Palestinians to find refuge in Israel and abroad. According to the report, because Israel is filling in the remaining open spaces in its security barrier/fence/wall it recently took a Palestinian drag performer seven hours to complete what should normally be a one hour journey from Ramallah to Tel Aviv.
One time, high heels and a wig saved Imad from prison. The 22-year-old from the West Bank capital, Ramallah, had been caught in Jerusalem without a permit. On the way to the jail, the police asked him and his friend why they had sneaked into town. As his friend shrivelled up with shame, Imad (not his real name) proudly told them he had come to perform at the Shushan, Jerusalem’s only gay bar. He opened his bag and flourished his outfit with a bristle of sequins. The police, realising that they had caught a couple of drag queens instead of a couple of terrorists, let them go with a warning never to return. “And two days later,” recounts Imad with a gleam in his eye, “I was back, even in the same café where they arrested me.”
FRIDAY, JUNE 8 FROM 12:00. (The march is usually around 1ish. But come and hang out until time to walk!) Meet at Gan HaIr and march down Arlozorov Street to a party at Gordon Beach.
See you there!
According to the Jerusalem Post and contacts in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, neither organization had anything to do with the recent uproar regarding an ad campaign designed to encourage gay travelers to visit the Holy Land.
The Tourism Ministry released a statement Tuesday announcing that Israel isn’t seeking out gay travelers over other potential visitors - not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with that.
“The Tourism Ministry regards all segments of the population as equals, and therefore each group… receives the same treatment,” the press release said.
The release followed the publication Tuesday of a nearly two-page spread in Yediot Aharonot outlining efforts by the ministry to promote gay and lesbian tourism to Israel - a spread promoted on the newspaper’s front page with a large color photo and a magenta headline about the government’s campaign for a “Pink Jerusalem.”
The photos accompanying the spread are all a year and a half old, the ministry’s statement noted, and were taken as part of a previous campaign co-funded and initiated by the Tel Aviv Hotel Association. The ministry has “no connection” to the campaign described in the article, officials said, noting that none of the articles quoted a ministry representative.
Ynet reports that Noa Sattath, chairperson of the Jerusalem Open House said Sunday
The pride parade is an expression of our coming out of the closet. An attempt to prevent it is actually an attempt to shove us back into the closet.
Representatives of the gay-and-lesbian community in Israel met with Jerusalem District Police Commander Ilan Franco, who gave his authorization in principle to hold the parade on June 21. Sattath met with Franco and his soon-to-be replacement, Aharon Franco, in order to discuss the controversial march and the resistance it has faced from the haredi community in the city. Last week, Ilan Franco met with representatives of the haredi community.
“We were told that the police are preparing to provide security for the parade along the route that we requested: from Independence Park to Liberty Bell Park, far away from any haredi neighborhoods,” Sattath said.
Police sources told Ynet that, although the parade has received theoretical approval, the format and location have not yet been decided upon. According to the sources, these issues will be determined based on police intelligence information, meaning a final decision will be made in the days before the parade.
In 2006, police did not authorize the parade because they felt that they would not be able to ensure the safety of participants, given the large number of threats made by right-wing extremists. Instead, participants held the event in a building [a stadium, actually], under tight security.
“We live in a country with the rule of law and, if there is any attempt at violence, it’s the police’s duty to deal with it. The threat of violence should not be a factor in whether to authorize the parade,” Sattath said.
According to Sattath, members of the gay-and-lesbian community in Jerusalem said they are interested in having a different type of parade than those that have been held in Tel Aviv. “We want to have a modest parade… I’m sorry that people oppose it, but it’s a form of our basic right to freedom of expression.”
Enough seriousness for a while. Here’s a cute boy break. Beach volleyball is popular in the Middle East.
I am not geographically challenged. I know that Russia is not in the Middle East. However, this really got to me. According to CNN a violent scuffle broke out in Moscow on Sunday as gay rights activists tried to protest in support of a pride parade in the Russian capital. Nationalists shouting “death to homosexuals” punched and kicked the demonstrators.
Riot police detained gay rights activists as they tried to present a petition asking Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has called gay marches satanic acts, to lift a ban on the parade.
Nationalists and extreme Russian Orthodox believers held icons and denounced homosexuality as “evil” while a group of thick-set young men turned up with surgeon’s masks, which they said would protect them from the “gay disease.”
“We are defending our rights,” said a young gay man named Alexey, with blood pouring out of his nose after he was beaten up by a man screaming “homosexuals are perverts” opposite the mayor’s office. His attacker was detained.“This is terrible but I am not scared. This is a pretty scary place, a pretty scary country if you are gay. But we won’t give up until they allow us our rights,” he said.
Hundreds of riot police lined Tverskaya street in central Moscow and plain-clothes police mingled with a large number of foreign and Russian journalists.
Parade organizer Nikolai Alexeyev told Reuters by telephone from a police station that about 20 people had been detained, a figure confirmed by police.
“We are sitting in the police station right now. We were detained outside the mayor’s office when we tried to present the petition,” said Alexeyev.
Gay toleranceRussia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993 but tolerance is not widespread.
“We believe these perverts should not be allowed to march on the streets of Moscow, the third Rome, a holy city for all Russians,” said Igor Miroshnichenko, who said he was an Orthodox believer who had come to support the riot police.
“It (homosexuality) is satanic,” he told Reuters. One man holding a crucifix threatened to beat-up any gay person he saw.
Richard Fairbrass, a gay singer with the British pop group Right Said Fred, was punched in the face and kicked by anti-gay activists while speaking to Reuters in an interview.
“We understand this is a gay event and so we came down here today,” Fairbrass told Reuters before being hit. Blood dripped from his face after the attack.
Volker Beck, a German green party politician and gay rights campaigner, was hit in the face with eggs before being detained by riot police. “We didn’t do anything,” he told Reuters as he was led away.
Germany’s Green Party Chairwoman Claudia Roth called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to raise the issue of rights with President Vladimir Putin at next month’s G8 summit.
“It has been shown once again today that human rights are systematically abused in Putin’s Russia,” she said in a statement. Beck was later released.
“It is very conspicuous when people are arrested in front of the mayor’s office when they were doing nothing other than trying to present a peaceful petition,” said Scott Long, a rights activist with Human Rights Watch who observed the events.
“There was no real attempt to separate the two sides and that led to people being beaten up,” he said. “I would call on the Russian authorities to protect freedom of assembly, protect freedom of expression and protect demonstrators.”
Hey you in the comfy desk chair in the US. Get off your ASS and GO TO A PRIDE EVENT THIS SUMMER! CELEBRATE YOUR FREEDOM! God! DO SOMETHING!
Recent Comments