Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumThe LGBTQ Left Has an Anti-Semitism Problem
...You might not expect a group of people defined, in part, by their minority status and history of oppression to direct irrational ire toward Jews. But there is no other way to describe the sad story of this year’s Creating Change conference, an annual gathering sponsored by the National LGBTQ Task Force. Creating Change brings together dozens of LGBTQ groups, from fringe to mainstream, at one bustling summit to compare notes and debate strategy. This year, the conference was scheduled to include a presentation by A Wider Bridge, a group that connects LGBTQ Jews in America with the Israeli LGBTQ community, featuring speakers from the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, an LGBTQ community center. Then, shortly before the conference began, the Task Force abruptly canceled the reception. It had bowed to pressure from groups like the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, which demanded that the conference’s organizers “reject Zionism” and “the forces of oppression and occupation” by kicking out A Wider Bridge.
After much outcry, especially among LGBTQ Jews, the Task Force reinstated the event. In response, a group of about 200 protesters marched through the conference on Friday and crashed the reception, holding signs that read “Cancel Pinkwashing” and “Zionism Sucks.” The speakers from Jerusalem Open House, who had just taken the stage, were quickly hustled out. Their presentation was canceled. The protesters won.
....The concept of pinkwashing is extraordinarily insulting. It presumes that the Israeli government has no interest in promoting LGBTQ rights except to help mask its oppression of other groups. This presumption is totally unique to Israel. Nobody thought that France was attempting to distract from its terrible mistreatment of Roma immigrants when it legalized same-sex marriage. Nobody thought that South Africa was diverting attention from the painful, enduring remnants of apartheid when it gained marriage equality. Yet many LGBTQ activists freely impute to Israel a malign motive in expanding rights to sexual minorities.
....Not all hostility toward Israel doubles as hostility toward Jews. But when that hostility emerges from a generalized abhorrence of Israel; when it hinges on a theory that assumes Israeli Jews must be motivated by evil; when it finds expression in the angry ambush of two Jewish groups—then the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism grows especially blurry. I do not think that the Creating Change protesters were vicious anti-Semites. But I do suspect that a majority of them were driven by ideas about Jews and Israel that are rooted in anti-Semitism. The conspiratorial tone of the demonstration, as well as the protesters’ willingness to blame Israel’s misdeeds on Israeli and American Jews, likely sprouted from anti-Semitic paranoia. Even the shape the protest took—an enraged mob assailing Jewish speakers—had ugly echoes of past anti-Semitic aggression.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/01/25/creating_change_protest_of_a_wider_bridge_was_anti_semitic.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top
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King_David
(14,851 posts)And only a vocal minority anti Israel.
Israel affords rights to the LGBT that are absent anywhere else in the Middle East and most LGBT realize this.
Israeli
(4,139 posts)It’s a clear sign of the times when protesting at someone’s wedding is considered a legitimate form of political activism. It’s an even clearer sign when such a suggestion barely raises an eyebrow and when someone responsible for educating young people actually gets on board with the idea.
But this is exactly what happened in Israel over the past week when a well known far right-wing activist found out that Breaking the Silence executive director Yuli Novak and her girlfriend, Anat Manielevitch, are planning on getting married.
The right-wing activist, Shai Glick, who has admitted to getting Breaking the Silence events shut down and convincing Israel’s defense and education ministers to cut all ties with the group, announced on Facebook that he hopes Novak is jailed but if she isn’t, that he will “protest at the wedding of an enemy of the Jews.”
Protesting weddings in Israel is a tactic of the extreme right-wing organization Lehava, which demonstrated outside a wedding between a Palestinian Muslim and an Israeli Jew (who had, in fact, converted to Islam) two summers ago. Glick admits to having ties with Lehava.
Joining the far-right activist in his mini-campaign against Novak and Manielevitch’s nuptials was Amichai Shikli, the director of a very influential and prominent Israeli pre-military academy, and one of the founders of an IDF reservist group that campaigns against the Breaking the Silence. Shikli responded to Glick’s announcement with demeaning comments about Novak’s sexuality and said that he too would go to the wedding.
(Manielevitch is herself closely involved in the world of pre-military academies, which is considering whether to continue allowing Breaking the Silence members to speak with its students. The current decision is to allow each individual academy to set its own guidelines.)
To reiterate, Shikli is in charge of an academy through which hundreds of young Israelis pass, many of whom go on to serve in the IDF’s elite combat units. This cannot be dismissed as an attack coming from the fringe: he is an integral part of the Israeli establishment.
Shikli contacted Manielevitch in private to apologize, but chose not to do so in public, an apology she did not accept. He also wrote a post claiming that he has nothing against the LGBT community, but deleted it shortly afterwards. I have so far been unable to reach Shikli for comment. This post will be updated if and when I receive a response.
***
From personal experience, attacks on one’s political views can all too easily devolve into homophobic and gender-based slurs. In this context, that shift is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it demonstrates once again that being queer and/or a woman is still seen as a point of weakness that can be exploited to delegitimize someone’s opinions by othering or patronizing them. Such tactics are indecent and degrading.
Secondly, and this is far more specific to Israel-Palestine, it points to the fact that the country’s much-lauded respect for LGBT rights is off-limits to anyone who doesn’t fit the increasingly narrow description of a loyal citizen. The Aguda, the country’s leading LGBT rights and advocacy organization, a few days ago sent a letter to Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and various senior figures at the council for pre-military academies in protest at Shikli’s behavior. It will be interesting to see what response they get, if any.
Moreover, openly homophobic views are not exactly unheard of in Israel’s political echelon, from a Yisrael Beiteinu MK declaring that gays need therapy to Jewish Home’s Bezalel Smotrich calling himself a “proud homophobe.” (Smotrich recently attended an official event of Birthright Israel, an organization whose proposed mission is to “strengthen Jewish identity…and solidarity with Israel.”)
Leaving aside how offensive, misguided and crass it is to protest at someone’s wedding because you don’t like their political opinions, and how immature it is for two grown men to publicly make disparaging comments about someone’s sexual orientation, the fact that this is taking place within the context of a political witch-hunt is intensely disturbing.
It speaks to the ongoing emergence of a socio-political climate in which voicing dissent is considered treason and in which the concept of enemies of the state is gaining real traction. When someone has been categorized as such there is no area of their life that is off-limits.
Moreover, this situation comes at a time when the clamor against perceived left-wing tendencies — which can be roughly translated as a lack of loyalty to the Jewish people, its state and its army — is at deafening, frightening levels. It’s not just NGOs and left-wing activists who have found themselves in the crosshairs of the Right over their perceived traitorous tendencies — theaters, educational institutions and even the medical profession have all been subject to the same sequence of public excoriation followed by attempted silencing.
And that is how we come to hear of a private wedding which is threatened with a political protest because of the couple’s perceived lack of loyalty to the state and its military. The fact that almost no one is surprised at this sequence of events, and moreover that Glick has not been dismissed as a crank and Shikli seems to have emerged from the incident with his reputation quite unsullied, tells you much about where this society has arrived, and where it is heading.
As my colleague Noam Sheizaf pointed out on this site a few days ago, “in a state governed by law, the police investigates crimes rather than people. At this moment, the logic in Israel is the exact opposite — the Right is investigating people.” So it is that the government — and its “civilian” stooges — are in our offices, in our cars, in our private online conversations and are now, apparently, aiming for our bedrooms. They’ll be in our heads next — and in yours, too.
Source: http://972mag.com/when-homophobia-becomes-a-tool-for-political-persecution/116255/
shira
(30,109 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)I oppose Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. But the anti-Israel protest I witnessed in Chicago was about shutting down debate, and about attacking us as Jews.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.700278
Anyone who knows me—or Googles me—will know that I fight Israel's military occupation of Palestine. In 2012 I participated in a national LGBT leadership trip to Palestine, and connected strongly with activists there. I have always taken a stand for freedom of speech. When a pro-BDS group was denied access to the LGBT Center in New York, I advocated publicly for its inclusion. I believe in the robust, vigorous world of debate and ideas.
For these reasons I was very troubled by the Task Force's initial decision to cancel the Wider Bridge/JOH reception. Along with many others, I engaged the Task Force leadership in conversation and dialogue. To their credit, the Task Force reversed the decision.
The reception hosting JOH activists was initially cancelled under pressure from other LGBTQ activist organizations -- many Jewish -- who felt that A Wider Bridge (the hosting organization), by working with Israeli governmental agencies and promoting gay Israeli tourism, is complicit in "pinkwashing," a deliberate strategy by Israel to use the vibrancy of LGBTQ life in there to distract foreign critics from the on-going Occupation of Palestinian territories.
On Friday January 22nd, after a peaceful Shabbat service, the JOH reception was due to begin, when about 200 protestors appeared, threatening and chanting and acting aggressively and calling for the eradication of Israel. You can see some of this in the video posted by the Windy City Times.
I'm a veteran of a number of very passionate and fierce protest actions. However, the mob-like feeling of the crowd was frightening and profoundly disturbing. A few protesters were inside and refused to leave through another door, insisting that they would only leave through the main door. They were belligerent and extremely hostile.
The hotel security locked the main door at a certain point to try and prevent more protesters from getting into the room, at which point protesters started pushing at a partition wall, to get in through the side, chanting "Shut it down! Shut it down!" I actually stood against the wall trying to prevent it being broken down.
I tried to reason calmly with the protesters, but they only screamed back at me. Shortly after the program began the protesters inside advanced towards the small stage where the Israelis stood.
For the Israelis, this situation triggered their memory of the stabber who attacked people in the Jerusalem Gay Pride march this past year. With the shouting getting louder, the partition wall being pushed, and the protesters aggressively approaching and taking the stage, it felt like things were spiraling out of control, and I escorted the Israelis out of the room through a side door.
The protesters have insisted that only their voices can be heard. I have always taken a stand for freedom of speech. I believe in the robust, vigorous world of debate and ideas. I support the right of the protesters to protest passionately and to engage in a deep and thoughtful way. But the protest was about shutting down, disrupting, and silencing, and this is not the way to create positive change. To my deep sadness, while I am not one to lightly use the anti-Semitism charge, I have to say that I personally felt attacked as a Jew.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.700278
