Israel News Reports 2006

1
Israel's Gay Forest

by Malcolm Thornberry, Jerusalem
An Israeli LGBT rights group is planting a forest dedicated to tolerance.The planting of trees has been a tradition in Israel since its founding in 1948 - part of the quest to turn the desert into useable land.

Tu Bishvat, or Jewish Arbor day, may be a minor festival but has taken on major flare with celebrations in schools and parties throughout the country.

Next week to celebrate Tu Bishvat the Gay in Galilee Society will plant Pride Forest next to Kibbutz Tuval, just off the road that leads from Carmiel to Ma'alot. It is likely the first gay forest anywhere in the world.

"The forest will be planted in the name of tolerance, equality, human rights and the rights of the community to express its bond with the land," the group says. As the tiny saplings grow into adult trees Gay in Galilee hopes that so too LGBT civil rights will grow.

Cybercast News Service.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/

April 4, 2006

2
Preparations for Int'l Homosexual Event in Jerusalem Under Way in August

by Julie Stahl, CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
An international homosexual event that was postponed last year is now scheduled to be held this summer in Jerusalem. Preparations are well under way, one of the event organizers said on Tuesday.

InterPride, the International Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered (LGBT) Pride Coordinators, decided in 2003 to hold WorldPride 2005 in Jerusalem -- a city sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. But the event was postponed last year because of Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements, which was scheduled to take place at about the same time. The event is now set to take place in August, and it has been shortened from 10 days to a week. It includes various cultural events as well as a public rally and march through the streets of Jerusalem.

The postponement gave local organizers a "second chance" to condense their program and make it more economically feasible for people to attend, said Haggai El-Ad, executive director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance (JOH), the city's LGBT center and the local sponsors of the event. "The decision to reschedule won public respect," said El-Ad, because the group took into consideration the "extremely unique circumstances" involved in the disengagement.

El-Ad said people attending the event do not need to register, but JOH is expecting "many thousands" of people to attend. This will be the second event of its kind. The first WorldPride gathering took place in Rome in 2000, when the Vatican was celebrating the second millennium since Jesus' birth.

Critics of the event have charged that it is being held in Jerusalem purposely to offend the religious sensibilities of the city's residents as well as Jews, Christians and Muslims throughout the world. Strict adherents to those three religions reject homosexual behavior.__But organizers said on their website that the event is intended to "bring a new focus to an ancient city through a massive demonstration of LGBT dignity, pride, and boundary-crossing celebration.

"In these times of intolerance and suspicion, from the home of three of the world's great religions, we will proclaim the love that knows no borders," the website said. Religious leaders protested plans to hold the event last year, before it was postponed. Things have been quiet so far this year, Haggai said.

But on Monday, the head of the ultra-religious Shas party, Eli Yishai, was quoted as saying that "the homosexuals are poisoning the Jewish people's capital." Leftwing Meretz parliamentarian Zahava Galon reportedly criticized Yishai for expressing "ignorance, racism and prejudice." Last year, in a rare show of solidarity, Israel's two chief rabbis, leaders in the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches as well as Muslim leaders from Jerusalem and northern Israel, banded together to denounce the international event in Jerusalem and called on the government to intervene. It "will offend the very foundations of our religious values and the character of the Holy City," the leaders said in a joint statement.

This time around, at least one Evangelical group -- the Jerusalem Prayer Team led by Mike Evans -- has already launched an online petition. Evans urged supporters to gather signatures from friends in an effort to mobilize one million Christians to petition Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski to do everything in his power to stop the WorldPride event. Lupolianski, the city's first Orthodox Jewish mayor, has been an outspoken critic of public homosexual events in the past.

Last year, the Jerusalem District Court ordered Lupolianski to personally pay 30,000 shekels (about $6,670) and the municipality to pay the same amount to the JOH for trying to halt the annual homosexual "pride" parade in Jerusalem.

USA mailing Address:
American Friends of JOH,
PO Box 1851, New York, NY 10185-1851
Email: friends@joh.gay.org.il

New York Times

April 16, 2006

3
Jerusalem, Now (Non-gay travelogue)

by Steven Erlanger
Jerusalem is a city built on struggle and rivalry — among gods and tribes and those who misuse them.

Peace is much spoken of here. But at times, as I race along the narrow moral precipice, running between a military checkpoint and a suicide bombing, I think of the old Russian proverb: "We shall struggle for peace so hard that not a tree will be left standing."
There's enough to see in the Holy City to confirm any prejudice. But when I explore the city where I have lived for nearly two years now, I try to see Jerusalem as a place where both armies and souls contend, as they contended even before monotheism came, dusty and sunburned, out of the desert to vanquish first the Jebusites, and then the Romans.

And I try to see it through various lenses, to be moved both by the Western Wall, with its weight of tragedy and redemption, and by the modern cement one, part of Israel's separation barrier, with its dual messages of protection and occupation.

Even in the most visited places, like the Temple Mount, the holy site known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there is an abiding sense of struggle, as tribes and religions fight over the narrative of Jerusalem and the custody of its milky tea-colored stones, touched with fire at dawn and sunset.

I first came to Jerusalem in 1983, when Israeli troops were outside Beirut, and I visited frequently with variously optimistic American officials in the Clinton era. Then I spent a month here during the last real war between the Israelis and Palestinians, in the spring of 2002, when suicide bombings were at their peak and Israeli troops reinvaded the West Bank, where they remain. As I rushed from the siege of Bethlehem to a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv, I thought, "these people are nuts," and I wondered if I would ever return.

But in 2004 Yasir Arafat was on his last legs, and Ariel Sharon intended a unilateral pullout from Gaza, and I returned as bureau chief for this newspaper.

Today, after a long truce with most Palestinian militants, Jerusalem is calmer. Events this year have been dramatic — Ariel Sharon's stroke, the formation of a Palestinian government by Hamas, the election of an Israeli government committed to a new West Bank pullout.

But the level of violence is down: tourists are returning, restaurants are opening and taxi drivers and tour guides are happier in both sides of the city — the mostly Jewish West and the mostly Arab East.

Jerusalem is at peace, but not with itself. There is anxiety on the streets; every ring on the cellphone thrums with alarm. When I travel between West and East, especially on a Saturday, the city feels fragile, its anxieties cloistered by the wall that surrounds most of the city and cuts through part of it.

For many travelers, that fragility is a compelling reason to visit Jerusalem now to experience an extraordinary city at an extraordinary time, and to see it as a modern city of contention, not just as a Biblical Disneyland.

An Overview
With its dry climate and high hills, Jerusalem offers some sweeping vistas that reveal millenniums of change.
One of my favorites is the Goldman Promenade in the city's south. Open for 18 months, it runs close to the Hill of Evil Counsel, once the seat of British governors, now of the United Nations.

The view on a recent morning was revelatory. To the left was the Kidron Valley, where the Jebusite city that King David seized for his capital perches on a small hill. Above it rises the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, with its golden Dome of the Rock, perfectly aligned with the domes of Al Aksa mosque.

To the west is the Old City in its quadrants, constructed by the Romans after they razed the Jewish one, the extended city walls, and the reach of modern Jerusalem, Israel's largest city and one of its poorest. In the center is the sprawl of East Jerusalem and the Palestinian town of Abu Dis, where some once thought a Palestinian state might have its capital, and where I once visited the eerie shell of an unfinished parliament building, full of spiders.

Off to the right, toward Jordan, there is a stark view of Israel's separation barrier, with sections of road, electronic fencing and concrete wall, nine yards high, hugging the hills as it divides Jerusalem from the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. You can follow its route quite a long way — not perhaps what the sponsors of the promenade had in mind. But it's a good metaphor for where we are: good walls may make good neighbors, but not if they take too much of the neighbor's land.

In the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, which lies to the southwest within an expanded, annexed, post-1967 Jerusalem, there is a concrete wall on Ahlama Street, painted by Russian immigrants to show the landscape now hidden. The wall was erected to protect a kindergarten from gunfire from Beit Jala, which rises above Gilo on the other side of the valley.

Avi Ben Hur, the American-turned-Israeli-turned-guide who accompanied me here, pointed out another panorama, from nearby Haanafa Street. On a hill above a scraggly olive grove, belonging to Palestinians but cut off from Beit Jala by the barrier, is the Israeli neighborhood of Har Homa, resembling a gigantic stone fortress. Built by Israel after the 1993 Oslo accords on land partly expropriated from Palestinians, this neighborhood once prompted riots and international protests.

Har Homa, too, was outside Jerusalem before 1967. Now, with its winding streets and shops, it looks like a suburb. It's what Israelis like to call one of the "facts on the ground."

In the City of David
I come to the City of David not only to feel the beginnings of this place, but to remind myself about how even archaeology is used as a weapon in the struggle over the land.

This is ur-Jerusalem, the tiny, Jebusite city where David decided to place his new capital in about 1000 B.C. to unite the 12 tribes of Israel; it's completely outside the current walls of the so-called Old City. The stepped stone structure of the original walls protected the city above the Kidron Valley (much deeper then) and guarded the Gihon Spring, the water source that made a city possible.

Here, where the Israelites conquered the Jebusites, in annexed East Jerusalem, there is a battle going on over history. The Jewish foundation that runs this site supports Jews moving into East Jerusalem, which enrages the Palestinians who live here. It also helps sponsor a compelling, archaeological dig for more than a year now that may show that King David wasn't just another tribal chieftain on a dusty hilltop.

The dig is part of the broader political battle over Jerusalem, an effort to make more explicit the roots of Judaism here and buttress the justice of creating a Jewish state here after World War II. It's also part of an archeological fight — whether the Bible is any accurate guide to history, or a tale embroidered for political ends. Eilat Mazar, an archaeologist, believes she may have found King David's palace, and explained to me why. "When the Philistines came to fight, the Bible said that David went down from his house to the fortress," she said. "Maybe it meant something, maybe not. But I wondered, down from where? Presumably from where he lived, his palace. So I said, maybe there's something here."

Other archaeologists believe she may have found the Fortress of Zion that David conquered, or something else. But all agree she made a major find: a large public building dating from around the 10th century B.C., the time of David and Solomon. I watch Ms. Mazar and her team work at real archaeology as I walk over a metal-grid platform and stare down at the wide walls, over seven feet thick, that they've uncovered.

Farther down the hill, you can also see evidence of the extensive dam and tunnel system dug by King Hezekiah in 700 B.C. to ensure that water from the Gihon Spring could be brought inside the walls of the city when the Assyrians besieged it, and to hide the spring itself from enemy eyes. The huge cistern appears to be Caananite, and it is oddly moving to hear the water rushing as it did two millenniums ago. I note the irony of the Palestinian workers, who see themselves as descendants of the Caananites, laboring for the Israeli Antiquities Authority in a tourist area controlled by a foundation that wants to implant more Jews in their neighborhood, Silwan.

Silwan is a corruption of the name of the original Siloam pool, where the 580-yard tunnel leads. Built by Herod and only recently discovered, the pool is where the blind man was told to come by Jesus to wash his eyes and see (John 9). Looking at these stones that for 2,000 years had never seen sunlight, and at a delicate, three-leaf drain cover for rainwater, I imagine the beauty of the city before the Romans razed it after the great revolt in A.D. 70.

I left the site, near the Siloam pool, and walked onto the dusty Palestinian street, with kids playing soccer in the hot March sun. As I walked toward a kiosk for some water, I spotted a roughly built cage of metal fencing, chest high, that looked like the exit of a garbage-strewn sewer. In fact it's an outlet from the Gihon Spring, originally built to bring water to the fields of the Kidron Valley.

Battle for the Holy Sepulcher
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is both a holy and a crazy place, with its mishmash of architectural styles and furious intra-Christian battles over turf, procession times and even maintenance. To alter the position of the ratty wooden ladder under the window above the entrance would cause a furor because it would change the 1852 "status quo" agreement, made by the churches at a time when the area was under Ottoman rule. Every Orthodox Easter, the Armenians and the Greeks battle over the Holy Fire ceremony on the spot where Jesus's tomb is believed to have been, and Israeli police sometimes intervene to separate the tussling clerics.

Victoria Clark's book about the church, "Holy Fire: The Battle for Christ's Tomb" (Macmillan 2005), details the spats — the war of the doormat, the battling over chairs. If an Egyptian Copt can place a chair in the Ethiopian courtyard, all could be lost in the struggle for the rooftop.

But this is also the place where the pagan Romans tried and failed to wipe out the rebel Jews and the new Christian sect. The Romans, like Americans, says Avner Goren, an archeologist and guide, had their vision of how best to organize human communities — in cities of a certain design, with sanitation and walls and straight streets. "They brought their one truth to this place of many truths and faiths," he says, pointing to the site of the new Roman city they built, now the "Old City." The Roman effort to eradicate the early Christians lasted about 250 years. Eventually, Constantine decided to take the religion of what had become the majority of his subjects, and his mother, Helena, and he built a new church where Jesus had been crucified, where Hadrian had put a temple to Aphrodite. " All that's left of the Romans here," says Mr. Goren, "is the pattern of the roads."

The Temple Mount
The struggles over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif — where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, where the Jewish temples stood and where Muhammad ascended to heaven — are fundamental, with fanatics of both faiths wanting to expunge the other. Yet this is one of my favorite places in Jerusalem — grassy, shaded by trees and deceptively calm.

While I sit on a stone wall and look at the intricate tiles of the Dome of the Rock, some Jews are plotting to destroy it and Al Aksa mosque and build a third temple. Some evangelical Christians hope they'll do it, thinking that only then will Jesus return. Some Muslims are convinced that the Jews are burrowing underground to create a new synagogue. Jews are upset that the Muslims dug into the hill at the site of Solomon's Stables in 1996 to create a new underground mosque, the Marwani. It's here, on the ground revered by both Judaism and Islam, where Jerusalem is most divided — and most volatile.

And it's here that Mr. Sharon made a controversial visit in September 2000, which many Muslims say set off the second (Al Aksa) intifada. Since then, non-Muslims may not enter the mosques on the Haram al-Sharif without permission.

Only an eighth of the Western Wall is visible on the plaza where worshippers gather. To see more, and in a more private way, I like to go through the Wall Tunnel, again by appointment, which cuts underground, along a 2,000-year-old street alongside the wall, and exits on the Via Dolorosa.

When Israel opened the tunnel in 1996 without informing the Islamic authorities, there were riots and nearly 100 deaths. As the tunnel comes closest to the site of the Holy of Holies, many people pray at the massive Herodian stones in the near dark. But I like to go to another spot to see the wall, less well-known and less crowded, near the Iron Gate. It's known as the Hakotel Hakatan, with a sign only in Hebrew. Here, men and women are not segregated, and many ultra-Orthodox come to pray. I watch them, as the wall rises high above me, and Arab homes surround us on three sides.
The Separation Barrier

Jerusalem's other wall, which Israelis call the security fence and the Palestinians the apartheid wall, should also be seen at close hand. In fact, of the 450 miles of the unfinished barrier, only 5 percent is concrete wall, but much of that is in and around Jerusalem.

I try to see the barrier from both the Palestinian and the Israeli points of view. But whatever its utility, it's an ugly scar on the mental and physical landscape of the city, and beyond. Israel insists one minute that it's temporary, and the next that it's a prospective border. Palestinians excoriate it for annexing land they consider theirs, but many Jerusalemites, Palestinians who have lived here for generations, hate it for cutting some of their neighborhoods from the central city, forcing them to use checkpoints. I often take visitors north, along the road built on top of the pre-1967 border between Israeli West Jerusalem and Jordanian East Jerusalem, past the old Mandelbaum Gate and the American Colony Hotel, toward Ramallah. Soon the wall divides the street, and the shops get ramshackle, and then there's the massive checkpoint of Qalandiya. Sometimes I don't even go through the checkpoint. I just get out and look at the people trudging through the dust or the mud, putting up with the questions and the searches that, however humiliating, sometimes prevent a terrorist from attaining his aim.

It's the most telling glimpse I can offer of this modern city of struggle. Travel, after all, is about encounter.

Visitor Information

As of April 3, the cost of flying from Kennedy Airport to Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv started at under $1,000 round trip on Continental or El Al, booked a month in advance. You can travel to Jerusalem, 31 miles away, by taxi, which costs about 200 to 220 shekels (about $44 to $49, at 4.5 shekels to the dollar). A sherut, a shared taxi-minibus costs about $10. Prices are often quoted in dollars or euros instead of shekels.

WHERE TO STAY
The two obvious choices are the King David Hotel in West Jerusalem (9722-620-8888; www.danhotels.com) and the American Colony Hotel on Nablus Road in East Jerusalem (9722-627-9777; www.americancolony.com). Both are elegant, with food that is just above mediocre. The King David, where doubles range from $298 to $444, has one of the most pleasant balconies in the city; the American Colony, with doubles starting at $255, has the city's most charming courtyard.
Cheaper alternatives include the YMCA Three Arches (9722-569-2692; www.ymca3arch.co.il), across from the King David; the Ambassador, Nablus Road, Sheikh Jarrah (9722-541-2222, www.jerusalemambassador.com, and the Austrian Hospice, 37 Via Dolorosa, 9722-626-5800, www.austrianhospice.com.

WHAT TO SEE
The City of David (9722-626-2341, www.cityofdavid.org.il) costs 23 shekels to explore alone, 50 shekels for a group tour or 260 for a private tour. At the Jerusalem Architectural Park (Davidson Center, 627-7550; www.archpark.org.il) near the Dung Gate, admission is 30 shekels. Church of the Holy Sepulcher, on Helena Street in the Christian quarter, is open 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tours must be reserved at the Western Wall Tunnel (9722-627-1333; www.thekotel.org). Some women's groups tour after midnight. The cost is 18 shekels.
The Qalandiya checkpoint is open 24/7.

Steven Erlanger is chief of the Jerusalem bureau of The Times Eilat: 500 take part in Gay Pride Parade

YNetNews.com
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3252814,00.html

May 19, 2006

4
5th Gay Pride Parade in Eilat

In addition to transgenders, gays and lesbians, event also attracted dozens of straight men and women who paraded along city’s main avenue all the way to Papaya Beach; gay community irate over cancellation of Tel Aviv parade this year _Meir Ochayon

Some 500 people participated Friday in the 5th Gay Pride Parade in Eilat. In addition to the transgenders, gays and lesbians on hand, the event also attracted dozens of local straight men and women who paraded along the city’s main avenue all the way to Papaya Beach, where the festivities took place.

Despite the relatively low number of participants this year, organizers said they are convinced thousands more will flock to Israel’s southernmost city for Friday night’s party on Dekel Beach.

This year’s parade was secured by an unprecedented number of police officers, who closed the city’s main street for traffic. Unlike previous years, when the local municipality hung Gay Parade banners along the streets, this time participants made due with flags supplied by gay community members.

'My friends and I are very upset'

The parade in Eilat attracted many gay community members from central Israel who were disappointed by the cancellation of the annual Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade.

“ It’s a shame they called the Tel Aviv parade off,” Givatayim resident Idan Arbiv, 25, said. “This is one of the most colorful events there is, and I have no doubt in my mind that next year they will realize what a huge mistake they made.”

Tel Aviv resident Adam Mishali, 20, who also made the trip to Eilat, was disappointed with the cancellation of the parade in his home town. “ My friends and I are very upset ; we understand that they plan to move the festivities to Jerusalem, but we do not plan on going,” he said.

Liat from Haifa said holding “there is no other place, certainly not Jerusalem, with the openness that is exhibited at the Tel Aviv parade; it would just be a waste to hold the parade in Jerusalem.”

The Eilat Gay Parade festivities will conclude Saturday night with a party at the Touch nightclub in the city.

Answers.com
http://www.answers.com/topic/israeli-gay-youth

May 2006

5
Israel Gay Youth organizatiion (IGY)

Israeli Gay Youth or IGY was founded in 2002 in Israel as a non-profitable NGO, branching off from the “Aguda”, the largest GLBT organization in Israel. Currently the founder of IGY, Yaniv Weitzman, is the chairman of the organization. Recently IGY had a hostile brake off from its mother organization, the “Aguda”, due to management conflicts between the two bodies.

Ever since the establishment of IGY, the organization had rapidly grown in to one of the largest and most widespread GLBT organizations in Israel, active in 16 cities across the country and reaching communities that are out of the big cities of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. IGY organizes activities for gay youth between the ages of 15-18 and 18-21.

These activities are based on the structure of social group meetings, support group meetings, and topic group meetings, which break off into youth leader promoting social change and acceptance, groups for religious or transgender youth, feminist groups, creative groups such as theater groups and so on. IGY organizes many events such as parties, fundraisers and cultural events all for the benefit of gay youth activities and for gay youth themselves.

Since the establishment and rapid growth of the organization, there has been a major change in the daily life of youth that categorize them selves in the GLBT sexual minorities. A substantial percentage of GLBT or confused youth, from all areas of Israel, are now able to find a supporting atmosphere where IGY activities take place. Gay youth in Israel have the unique privilege of speaking freely about their sexuality, confusion and difficulties that surround homosexuality, without needing facing the judgment of society. Although the future seems bright because of organization like IGY, still much work needs to be done before true social change occurs in Israel in order for organizations like IGY will not be needed.

Gay.com

June 9, 2006

6
Gay drama in Holy City

This year’s World Pride in Jerusalem is facing international controversy as an anti-Israel group have called for a boycott of the event.

The Coalition to Boycott World Pride Jerusalem have support from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism. QUIT’s website states:“The theme of the event is "love without borders," which is particularly ironic given that this city was initially declared by the UN in 1947 to be an international zone. “Israel occupied half of it in 1948, and the other half in 1967 and has annexed the entire city. Walls and soldiers form a very strong border that is often insurmountable to Palestinians, queer and straight”.

Diane Langford, Women’s Officer for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “Jerusalem is such an appalling choice of venue, exactly the kind of endorsement the colonial power seeks, end the occupation, justice for Palestine, peace and justice and civil rights for LGBT Palestinians!"

Peter Tatchell of Outrage! was unimpressed with the Coalition's philosophy, stating: “Boycotting oppressive Israeli institutions is justified, but boycotting a celebration of queer life, culture and human rights is a reactionary stance that plays into the hands of homophobes. “A boycott of World Pride in Jerusalem would not aid the queer or Palestinian struggles. It would cause rejoicing by homophobic fundamentalists from the Christian, Judaist and Muslim faiths – all of whom want World Pride banned.”

It's rare that religious leaders in the Holy City agree on any issue, but World Pride has done the impossible and led to a unification. Jewish, Christian and Islamic superiors have condemned the event, proving equally homophobic and amusingly dramatic. "They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable," Shlomo Amar, Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi said. "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty," declared Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik.

Muslim cleric Abdel-Salem Menasra warned World Pride would end in disaster for the city. "I'm warning everybody, God will destroy Jerusalem together with the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims," he said.
Jerusalem WorldPride runs from August 6-12 2006.

Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco, California

June 26, 2006

7
WorldPride organizers undaunted amid protests, pledge safe event

by Matthew S. Bajko (m.bajko@ebar.com)
Antigay forces in Israel will stop at nothing, it seems, to derail this year's WorldPride, to be held in Jerusalem in August. They continue to circulate a petition calling for the cancellation of the event, and in recent weeks, have threatened to go to court to try to put an end to the celebration.

The petition, supposedly signed by more than 100,000 people, states that "holding the gay pride parade, especially in Jerusalem, severely harms the city's unique Jewish character and constitutes an act of defiance, purposeful disrespect and a challenge to everything holy in the city of Jerusalem in the eyes of the whole world. This will be wept about for generations and we must prevent it now." Jerusalem's mayor and 23 out of 31 city council members have signed the petition.

Failing a court order banning WorldPride, a counterevent to the LGBT festival called the Modesty Parade is planned just days before the international gathering. Pushed by conservative religious leaders, they expect 20,000 people to march through the streets to "denunciate the abomination and defilement, will vomit out its participants from among us and will set fire to their infection," according to Israeli media accounts.

Hagai El-Ad, executive director of Jerusalem Open House, the main organizer of WorldPride, denounced the continued efforts against the event. In a statement released to the media, he declared that the latest moves by religious and political extremists will fail and WorldPride will go forward as planned.

" The Jerusalem courts have decreed that WorldPride deserves the support of the city, and that pride is a protected form of freedom of speech. The Jerusalem public has shown its support for Pride by attending it in the thousands over the past years. In addition, WorldPride is receiving the unconditional support of thousands of individuals and scores of groups around the world who will converge in Jerusalem in August to discuss and debate important issues in our community – from religion to politics to health to youth," he said in the statement. "WorldPride will be a historic and diverse international event bringing together lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied people proclaiming to the world that we too are people of faith and that we will not allow anyone to hijack our religions, our freedom or our rights."

Nevertheless, the vehemence against WorldPride and renewed fighting between Israel and Palestinian groups are ratcheting up security concerns for the 20,000 people expected to take part in the weeklong event beginning on August 6 and ending August 12. The highlight with be the march and rally Thursday, August 10.

There is reason to worry. A stabbing marred last year's Jerusalem Pride Parade and violence flamed by antigay rhetoric has broken out at several Pride events in Eastern Europe this year. But WorldPride organizers insist the event will be a safe one and note they have been working closely with the local police on implementing security measures at the event. In an interview earlier this month while visiting the Bay Area to promote WorldPride, El-Ad insisted attendees should not worry about their safety. " We are taking security very seriously," he said.

San Francisco resident Julie Dorf, one of two U.S. co-chairs for WorldPride, is unfazed about security concerns. She plans to bring her 7-year-old daughter Hazel to the event. " I am not really concerned. I have spoken extensively with the organizers about their security plans," said Dorf, a former executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "Because of what happened last year the police won't let the counterprotesters near us."

Dorf, who is Jewish, has committed to raising $150,000 for the event. She said she became involved in order to take part in a worldwide statement of tolerance. " I felt it was important that we had a significant and thoughtful international response to the coordinated religious intolerance of gay people worldwide. For me personally, it is also an important opportunity to dive into the difficult issues between Israel and Palestine," said Dorf. "I also want to expose my daughter to what's wonderful about the country and what's complicated about the country. I haven't been since I was 18 – 24 years ago."

The Israelis' WorldPride event encapsulates the country's ongoing political and cultural battles. Originally, Jerusalem Open House won the right to host the international gathering in the summer of 2005, but just weeks before the planned activities were to kickoff, organizers canceled it. Due to the country's pullout of the Gaza Strip, the police said they could no longer staff the LGBT event.

Religious conservatives are not the only ones against seeing the event take place in Jerusalem. LGBT progressives upset over how Israel treats the Palestinian people have called for a boycott of WorldPride almost from the moment Interpride accepted the bid from Jerusalem Open House three years ago.

Haneen Maikey, Open House's Palestinian community programming director, said while she does not share the same views as the people advocating the boycott, she does accept their right to such viewpoints. She said she hopes those who disagree with Israeli policies do attend the event to voice their opinions and create a dialogue.

" My message is, come to WorldPride. This is an open stage and we want people to bring their voices to it," said Maikey, who is Palestinian and grew up in Galalie. "Israel and Palestine is a very complicated place. The LGBT community is a part of this reality. I hope participants in WorldPride get to see how the community is dealing with this complexity of living together and how GLBTs, whether Israelis, Muslims, Palestinians, or Christians, are trying to do this together."

As for worries about security at the event, Maikey said, "It is always a concern but we are taking all the considerations to make it a safe event."
For more information about WorldPride visit www.worldpride.net.

IsraelNN.com
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=106397

July 02, 2006

8
Strange Parliamentary Union Opposes Gay Pride

In a somewhat unexpected move, members of the right-wing and Arab parties have joined forces against a common enemy, seeking to prevent the scheduled Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem.

MK (National Union) Rabbi Yitzchak Levy and MK (Ta’al) Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsor are leading the Knesset battle to prevent the parade from taking place. The two have begun obtaining signatures of MKs opposing the march, and are calling attention to a specially commissioned poll, which shows 69% of the capital’s residents oppose the parade while 12% support it.

Some opponents stated that interestingly, among the respondents to the poll, 63% of the non-Torah observant community opposes the parade while 37% support it. Among the National Religious camp, 99% object to the parade.

July 2, 2006

8a
Police weigh banning J'lem gay parade

by Etgar Lefkovits
Jerusalem police are expected to decide this week?whether to allow a controversial international gay?pride parade to take place in the city this summer amidst growing international opposition to the event by an unusual coalition of religious Christians, Jews, and Muslims around the world.

The super-sensitive police decision, which will be?taken by Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter in?consultation with Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco, comes after months of simmering tension over the planned August event, with concerns growing of a violent showdown between extremist opponents of the parade and its participants if it goes ahead as scheduled.

The planned week-long international gay festival,?which was originally scheduled to take place last year but was postponed until August due to last summer's concomitant Gaza pullout, has been widely criticized by a coterie of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders in Jerusalem and around the world as a deliberate provocation and affront to millions of believers around the world. Supporters of the event counter that freedom of speech enables them to hold the event in Jerusalem, as a symbol of tolerance, pluralism, and love for all humanity.

In the latest move against the parade, Israeli and?American Rabbinical leaders, who have been cooperating closely with Muslim religious leaders on the issue, have written to the Pope, asking him to issue a public condemnation against the event, in the hopes of increasing Christian opposition to the move."We ask your Excellency to issue an emotional, strong, and unequivocal call against this horrible phenomenon, in the hope that the amalgamation of protests being voiced by religious leaders... will prevent the willful wrongdoers to damage and corrupt the ways of?humanity," Chief Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar wrote Pope Benedict XVI in a letter this week. "If we have any chance of preventing this blasphemy, it is only if the leaders and practitioners of the other faiths speak loudly, unequivocally and often as to the absolutely outrageous provocation that this anti-God convention constitutes," New York Rabbi Yehuda Levin, of the Orthodox 'Rabbinical Alliance of?America' and the 'Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the US and Canada' wrote in a separate letter to the Pontiff.Levin, who has been at the forefront of the public?campaign in Israel against the event for the past two and half years, said that he has discussed the?possibility of religious leaders announcing that they would lie down in the streets of Jerusalem as part of a non-violent protest to arouse worldwide opposition to the planned event."This is not the homo-land, this is the Holy Land," he said, decrying the planned "spiritual?rape of Jerusalem." The American Rabbi said that he has accumulated the signatures of at least 40 Knesset Members - including both religious and secular parliamentarians - in a petition against the event.

The Knesset will take up the issue Tuesday during a special meeting of the Interior Committee devoted to the issue. In a rare sign of interfaith cooperation, Israeli Arab parliamentarians have joined haredi and Christian leaders in issuing calls against the event, as have Islamic religious leaders, including the chief Palestinian Islamic cleric Taisser Tamimi. The prerogative for issuing permits for such public events rests with police, who could ban the move due to concerns over public safety.

Both opponents and supporters of the event have?inundated police with letters and faxes on the issue, officials said. Meanwhile, organizers of the event, who have the?support of scores of non-Orthodox Jewish religious?leaders, reiterated Sunday that they are determined to hold the international event in Jerusalem next month.

"The World pride event will take place in Jerusalem because we believe Jerusalem should be a center of tolerance, pluralism, and humanity. Unfortunately, there are those who prefer Jerusalem to be fanatical, dark, pursuing strife and hatred," said Noa Sattath, chairperson of Jerusalem's Gay and Lesbian Center which is hosting the event. She ruled out any change of venue for the event, as some Knesset members have suggested as part of a compromise solution.

In a largely conservative city, with a strong?religious and traditional makeup, the idea of holding such an international parade in Jerusalem is seen by many city residents -- even outside of religious circles -- as out of touch with both the spiritual character of the city as well as the sensitivities of its observant residents.A public opinion poll released last year found that three-quarters of Jerusalem residents were opposed to holding the international gay event in the city, while only a quarter supported it.The last international gay parade, which took place in Rome in 2000 despite the wrath of the Vatican, attracted about half a million participants, while local organizers expect tens of thousands of revelers for the Jerusalem event this summer.

The six-day event is slated to include street parties, workshops, and a gay film festival.

Arutz Sheva - IsraelNationalNews.com
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=article&id=6357

July 05, 2006

9
What Can Be Learned From the International Gay Pride Parade

by Ze´ev Orenstein
This summer, the International Gay Pride Parade is scheduled to take place in Jerusalem. This Gay-fest was originally scheduled to take place last summer, but was delayed until this summer, as the "Disengagement" (expulsion) from Gush Katif and northern Samaria was taking place at that time.

However, it seems that the International Gay Pride Parade, and all of the festivities that go along with it, may not happen this summer after all. And everyone who opposed Ariel Sharon's "Disengagement Plan" and who are now opposed to Ehud Olmert's "Convergence Plan" should be paying close attention.

"Police weigh banning J'lem gay parade"

Jerusalem police are expected to decide this week whether to allow a controversial international gay pride parade to take place in the city this summer amidst growing international opposition to the event by an unusual coalition of religious Christians, Jews, and Muslims around the world.

The super-sensitive police decision, which will be taken by Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter in consultation with Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco, comes after months of simmering tension over the planned August event, with concerns growing of a violent showdown between extremist opponents of the parade and its participants if it goes ahead as scheduled.

Why is the likelihood of this Gay-fest ever getting off the ground shrouded in doubt?

Simply because the police recognize that there is such overwhelming opposition to this parade, regardless of what the Jerusalem Municipality or Supreme Court have to say about it. The police recognize that this parade has the potential to cause civil unrest, and frankly, they don't want any part of it.

After reading the above article, the failure of the struggle against Ariel Sharon's expulsion plan becomes even more apparent.

Had those who opposed the expulsion plan been successful in creating the impression that, should the expulsion plan go forward, the entire country would erupt, the plan would not have been carried out - regardless of how badly Ariel Sharon or Aharon Barak, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wanted it to happen.

Can one truly believe that a Gay-fest in the heart of Jerusalem is significantly worse than the destruction of over a dozen Jewish communities in the Land of Israel, handing those communities over to those who actively seek our very destruction, along with the expulsion of about 10,000 Jews from their homes, turning them into refugees within their very own homeland?

Contrary to the response of those opposed to the International Gay Pride Parade, when it came to the expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their homes and the destruction of Jewish communities in the Land of Israel, many of the leaders of the "opposition" went out of their way to ensure that no such public fury would erupt. This message was received loud and clear by the government, police and army.

Calls for soldiers to refuse orders were rejected out of hand, a coordinated campaign of non-violent civil disobedience was casually dismissed; all while the leaders of the "opposition" to the expulsion plan stressed time and again the supreme importance of maintaining national unity, above all else.

Is it any wonder that the struggle against Sharon's expulsion plan failed so miserably?

The secret to success in future struggles over the Land of Israel is playing itself out before our very eyes. Hopefully, lovers of the Land of Israel are paying attention.

YNetNews.com
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3271831,00.html

July 6, 2006

10
Gay leader not daunted by Muslim threat

In response to MK Ibrahim Sarsur's threat that homosexuals who dare to approach Temple Mount during World Pride 2006 will do so over Muslims' dead bodies, Charles Merrill says 'I will be approaching the Temple Mount out of love and forgiveness to those who hate us' Last week a Muslim leader, Knesset Member Ibrahim Sarsur (United Arab List-Ta'al), warned gays that "if they dare to approach the Temple Mount during the World Pride 2006 parade in Jerusalem they will do so over our dead bodies." Charles Merrill, 72, a gay rights leader, stated in response: "I will be approaching the Temple Mount out of love and forgiveness to those who hate us. If the three major religions in the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) want us stoned to death as it dictates in their ancient scriptures, then our gentle innocent blood will be on their hands. Gays are the meek in society and love all of humanity." Merrill is one of thousands of gays participating in World Pride 2006, a gay event in Jerusalem . The event, which is held in a different world city every four years, was to have been in Jerusalem last summer but postponed due to Israel 's pullout from the Gaza . 'Celebration of universal love' In a press release, Merrill said he would be marching in Jerusalem on August 10th as a celebration of universal love, and love across borders. Merrill's same sex partner, Kevin Boyle, will remain in the United States to carry on in the event of Merrill's death at the hands of religious extremists, the statement said. Merrill, whose cousin Charles Merrill founded Merrill Lynch, and whose late wife, Evangeline, was the only daughter of Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson, said he wants other gays to join him in World Pride 2006 in Jerusalem.

The Open House organization said in response that there is no intention to march toward the Temple Mount or any other holy site in Jerusalem .

YNetNews.com
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3272408,00.html

July 7, 2006

11
Gay parade leaves Jerusalem ?

Ultra-Orthodox politicians join Islamic Movement, chief rabbi enlists pope. Result: Homosexuals, lesbians from across globe to apparently not march in capital

Neta Sela - Political pressures have apparently worked: Ynet has learned that WorldPride 2006, the global gay pride parade, which was scheduled to be held next month in Jerusalem , is expected to move to Tel Aviv at the last moment.

Police officials confirmed that this was the apparent situation, but that a final decision has not yet been made.

Officially, sources at the police explained that the reason for moving the parade is the Jerusalem Police's fear in light of the event's size and complexity, which will make it difficult to secure it.

"Tel Aviv is more used to such events, and therefore it should take place there also this time," a police official said.

However, Israel 's capital deals with complex local and international events on a weekly basis, so it appears that the reason for the change – if it indeed takes place – is more complicated.

Legal problems

Behind the scenes, politicians, public figures and rabbis worked against the parade. Even the pope got involved in the affair, following a letter sent to him by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. Now it appears that the parade's opposers were also backed by Justice Minister Haim Ramon.

Ynet has learned that on Wednesday, Ramon met with Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai (Shas), who told Ramon that "indeed there is an issue of freedom of expression, but on the other hand there is also the public's benefit."

According to Yishai, the justice minister replied that there is a legal problem with completely cancelling the parade, but he definitely supported the idea to remove it from Jerusalem "for the benefit of the public and because leaders of the three religions are against it."

“This is not just about the parade, but a week of events with a Jerusalem theme to it,” the Open House organization said in a statement. “The right to hold the Gay Pride parade and events was given to us by Israeli law and by the freedom of speech it grants us. As far as we know, neither Shas not the Justice minister are above the law.”

Police officials said a final decision on the matter has not been reached as of yet, but added that should an official request be submitted to hold the parade in Tel Aviv, ‘it would make it easier on the police to authorize it.'

Efrat Weiss contributed to the report

YNetNews.com
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3272955,00.html

July 9, 2006

12
Religion, tolerance and gay parade

by Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, Daily Jews
Fundamentalists across the religions have more in common with each other than they do with liberal members of their own religion. The gay parade's saga is the ultimate example

In an uncharacteristic show of unanimity, the Jewish, Muslim and Christian clerics of Jerusalem have united in calling for a ban to a projected Gay Parade in the Holy City . This confirms an opinion I have long held, that fundamentalists across the religions have more in common with each other than they do with liberal members of their own religion. There are many shared values amongst fundamentalists of different religions, even though they each loudly proclaim that they are the sole purveyors of absolute Truth and all the others are in error.

The issue of Gay Rights and parades actually highlights the strength and the weakness of much of religious opinion. This is precisely the sort of thing that all fundamentalists point to when they excoriate the decadence of the West. ‘If,' they argue, 'Western culture and values permit and encourage such practices, then we must oppose them by withdrawing into or own communities and fight for our own traditional values and ground.'

The more liberal society becomes, the greater the pressure to offer a counterbalance. And, it must be said, the notable resurgence in orthodoxies of all religions attests to the power and attractiveness of such a position. Orthodoxies are on the increase, while liberals are, in general, assimilating out of their religious communities (although numbers don't prove anything-otherwise we'd all have to be Chinese Communists).

Is the earth still flat?

Of course the intellectual position of fundamentalism is riddled with inconsistencies, even if orthodoxies have an amazing capacity to justify their own circularity of thought. ‘We are right and everyone else is wrong, even when we are manifestly wrong and everyone else is right.' After all, there are still people who believe the earth is flat and others that the world has been visited by creatures from space.

What modernity has added to life, and even to religion, is the importance and value of individuality and personal f