Jerusalem Open House Under Siege

2Nov2006 Filed under: Homophobia, Israel, LGBTQ Author: Ariel

(full disclosure: I work for CBST, which is pretty much JOH’s contact in the States; our senior rabbi was the North America co-coordinator for WorldPride 2006, and obviously works very closely with JOH.)

This shit is ridiculous:

Jerusalem Open House,* one of the Middle East’s few LGBT resources and certainly one of the only LGBT community centers is under siege by Haredi Jews for having the audacity to have a pride march.

To quote Israel National News (I don’t know much about, but I get the impression that this is a right-wing source, ergo they are probably getting their own things right):

Israel’s Chief Rabbi, the Rishon LeTzion Rabbi Shlomo Amar, publicized a declaration condemning the homosexual march and advocating wide public protest. He called upon “every Jew for whom the existence of the Nation and Land of Israel is important,” as well as rabbis all over the world, to “arouse a tremendous protest until this bad parade is totally called off.”

Rabbi Amar “calls with love and affection to all our brethren, the House of Israel, to strengthen themselves in holiness, modesty and purity, and especially during these difficult days when Israel is persecuted from without and within and we are in need of great Heavenly mercies…”

Or, to quote ynet.com:

The Haredi counter-march is set to take place on Hillel Street, where the march is set to begin. One plan that came up in Haredi forums is to infiltrate the march with some fifty men who “don’t look Harediâ€¦who will ‘blast’ the parade from the inside,” said a source close to Rabbi Weiss.

“He said every cop seen along the way should be beaten. After all, the police will try and stop usâ€¦so we should be prepared and bring sticks to hit them,” he stated, adding “a direct order hasn’t been issued, but everyone knows.”

The Haredis will most likely be joined in their protests by religious group Agudat Israel. Despite pushing ninety, movement leader Menachem Porush is still active in advancing a counter-march to the rally.

“We haven’t yet decided what to do, but we can’t, without a doubt, allow such an abomination to go by as part of the daily agenda in Jerusalem,” Porush told Ynet. His goal, he said, was to “take away their right to march.”

And there you have it.

JOH remains undeterred, however, making plans for the worst and hoping for the best. What’s the worst? Well, aside from the threats being made above (follow the links below for more press on the assorted issues), this isn’t all baseless. In 2005, at the Jerusalem Pride March, an ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed three marchers before being subdued. No one really knows how much of this is just talk.

If you are interested in contributing to a fundraising drive — the costs of security for this march are going to bankrupt JOH — please contact Rachel Kahn at CBST: rkahn@cbst.org.

Dour news, right? But now you know.

10 Responses to “Jerusalem Open House Under Siege”

Arieh Lebowitz
November 2nd, 2006 at 3:41 pm

FYI article in Ha’aretz by Yoav Sivan, LGBT Coordinator of Young Meretz [Israel]. He is a member the Presidium of the International Union of Socialist Youth.
Best read here –
SOURCE http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/780594.html

Pride and prejudice
By Yoav Sivan / Ha’aretz / October 30, 2006

After the cease-fire agreement was reached in August, it took only a few days for the Jerusalem Open House to reschedule a gay pride parade in town, after the WorldPride march was put off indefinitely because of the war. It took an even shorter amount of time for the usual opponents of the Israeli lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community to launch their missiles. Indeed, ultra-Orthodox Shas was quick to comment, saying the party regards “with severity those who do not allow the country to recover after the war.”

This brought about the usual responses; this time, sharp protests from MKs and activists in Meretz, the gay-friendly party. But these conflicting opinions are old news in Israel . What is new is the common ground shared by the Jerusalem Open House and Shas. Apparently both parties seem to think the war should set aside ongoing issues, including confrontations about gay legitimacy.

Of course, this ad hoc agreement should come as no surprise. War is grave enough an affair to make all other matters redundant. Nevertheless, this is not the first time WorldPride was pushed aside by a large-scale event. During the pullout from Gaza, the Open House chose not to hold WorldPride on its original date while residents were being evacuated from their homes. Now the cannons are silent again: Has the time arrived to embark anew on the gay rights campaign? Or perhaps, as the Shas spokesman implicitly suggested, the fight should only resume when the aftermath of the war comes to an end.

From the very beginning, the Open House faced a tough call. In the last couple of months, police said it would be difficult to secure the parade, due to threats by Jewish extremists. WorldPride even brought about the impossible coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders through a unified call for intolerance at the supposed abomination of the Holy City. When the war broke out, the police shifted its attention to the North, and it became evident that not only would it be unfeasible for the police to secure the event, but such a demand would lose the public’s support. The goal from the onset was to isolate the conservative anti-gay Jewish Orthodox community and to encourage the general public to side with the LGBT community. The Open House, in the end, compromised on switching to a low-profile protest instead of the march.

Recently, after an appeal to the Supreme Court, the parade was rescheduled to November 10. This event will hardly be the planned flagship march. It aims modestly to entrench the rather new Jerusalem Pride tradition and help ultra-Orthodox Mayor Lupolianski accommodate it. Unlike the parades in Tel Aviv, the parades in Jerusalem are hardly a carnival, but are rather an old-fashioned political demonstration.

But even in its modest form, the planned event – the fifth Pride parade in Jerusalem thus far – has come under growing attack. Interestingly, the opposition has spread from the religious circles to the secular mainstream. Most notably, Vice Premier Shimon Peres signed a petition opposing the parade, proving that being a champion of peace does not necessarily correlate to being an advocate of human rights. Nobel Peace laureate Peres is not alone. National Infrastructures Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has joined the petition too. Education Minister Professor Yuli Tamir undermined the LGBT claim for legitimacy when she said the parade should not take place in the city center.

This whole affair can shed some light on the current situation and the political goals of the LGBT community in Israel. Ten years ago, gay activists were fighting for recognition among the liberal-secular sectors of society. Now the struggle is focused on our place in the mainstream.

In a demonstration last week, thousands of ultra-Othodox Jews blamed gay people for arousing God’s wrath, causing Israel’s downfall in the recent war. Gay people have never before been credited with having such an influence. Yet, at the same time, the fact that a religious extremist stabbed three people during the parade in Jerusalem last year did not factor in with the rabbis’ sense of public responsibility.

Advocates of gay rights will gradually shift to demanding LGBT’s inclusion in the local lexicon of political correctness. This call is addressed at the mainstream politicians, rather than the rabbis: If Mr. Peres is indeed serious about being elected as the next president, he should prove he can lead everyone, including myself. Similarly, it is about time we expect Prime Minister Olmert, whose daughter is openly gay, to also be publicly supportive of LGBT rights.

Yoav Sivan, LGBT Coordinator of Young Meretz, is a member the Presidium of the International Union of Socialist Youth.
daniel
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:20 am

it is indeed a shame that the Open House has been so thoroughly committed to the notion that the israeli military gets a veto over all forms of political activity. which is essentially how they framed it over the summer – their statement postponing the jerusalem pride march was very blunt, saying that they didn’t wish to burden the police with protecting queers from the homophobic right-wingers whose parliamentary allies had just started a war that apparently needed the city cops’ undivided attention.

i was in jerusalem for the rally which replaced the march, as part of the anti-war, anti-occupation contingent which made up the majority of those present. unfortunately, the JOH leadership made good on its rhetoric of sacrificing all to the military’s version of the ‘national interest’. when the anti-war contingent was attacked by the police, the JOH leadership sent their marshals to prevent other attendees from coming closer to support us, and then made a statement to the press which identified us as straights and terrorists.

now, there were some straight folks in the anti-war contingent – about as many, proportionally, as there were in the (noticably smaller) other segment of the event. but the last time i heard the leaders of any LGBT group try to call folks it disagreed with politically ‘straight’ was, well, never. and given that the most common anti-leftist slur i’ve heard from far-right jews, from new york to tel aviv, is some variation on ‘faggot/dyke arab-lovers’, it’s even more impressive.

i should say that we never expected to be the majority contingent, and thus planned badly in certain ways. in particular, our messaging didn’t highlight the religious right’s attacks on the jerusalem queer community as much as they should’ve. but the fact that we were, and that JOH collaborated with the police against us in the interest of supporting the war on lebanon says a lot. as does, for that matter, its decision to host world pride with the slogan ‘love without borders’ in a city half under military occupation, ringed by checkpoints, half of whose queer population could not even think of attending a single pride event for lack of the right colored ID card.
Ariel
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:34 pm

I think all your points are valid, Daniel; honestly, I thought hard about this before even posting it. I feel like the JOH is like a lot of mainstream GBLT organizations here in the states inasmuch as it hasn’t got a lot of committment to a larger radical agenda; it wants things to be better for the gays (and I don’t know enough about JOH to talk about its committment to the rest of the acronym). Even the fact that JOH works on both sides of the wall makes it a lot more radical than its parallel organizations here. My impression is that JOH is trying to be as pro-Palestinian as it can while still getting funded by the Israeli government.

I am never sure how to sit with these two things. On the one hand, JOH seems to be a huge resource in the region and from all accounts one of the only Arabic-language sources for gay-friendly stuff out there; I can’t say that that voice is unimportant or should be silenced, especially at the hands of the ultra-right anti-gay crazies. On the other hand, they are still playing into this kind of militarization, per what you point out, and I was really uncomfortable with the othering of the protestors that went on in August (and I didn’t even know half of what you said.) I am never sure how police even play into conflicts like this, where they are supposedly protecting one side from the other; on the one hand, I think that’s bunk, but on the other hand, without them, what happens when one side is hell bent on killing the other? I haven’t figured out the answer to that question yet.

Centrism — or moderatism? that thing that lets people say “we’ll go this far, but only so far” — always sits uncomfortably with me. On the one hand, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. On the other, it means very little gets done because there is just not enough disruption to force the issue. I guess it is individualism vs. collectivism, on some level — yr own needs or wants for comfort and easy living over the needs and cause of the group. I am not sure how to do that math.
saltyfemme
November 5th, 2006 at 9:42 pm

â€œ[The JOH] hasnâ€™t got a lot of commitment to a larger radical agenda; it wants things to be better for the gays…â€?

This is something of a contradiction in terms, I think. If any organization, not just the JOH, claims to put politics aside for the purpose of â€œkeeping everyone happy,â€? they have a pretty narrow definition of who â€œeveryoneâ€? is. By claiming to be apolitical, they only please those whose day-to-day lives are not affected by politics.

Itâ€™s important and commendable that the JOH has such an extensive Palestinian outreach program and so much print and online media in Arabic. I think itâ€™s also interesting that the JOH refuses to make official political statements as an organization, even along with having such a successful and far-reaching Palestinian project. Many Palestinians canâ€™t afford to live their lives apolitically.

I think the JOH is a complicated organization. It has done and continues to do a lot of great things and, like any mainstream organization, has to make ideological and literal sacrifices to bow to political entities/members/donors/etc. (Side note: Iâ€™m not so sure that they get money from the Israeli government). However, I think itâ€™s deceiving to think of these sacrifices as being for some sort of common gay good. We need to acknowledge that when an organization refuses to take a political stance, generally those who suffer most are those without systemic power, those who donâ€™t have the luxury of being apolitical.
cole
November 5th, 2006 at 10:57 pm

You know, I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I think this needs to be said: The folks who run JOH are receiving death threats on a daily basis right now. Luxury? I think not…Do I agree with all that they do, no, and do I recognize that this is complicated, yes, but I think we really need to take a step back here.

What’s going on right now is really really deep and the threats on the lives of the people who are putting this together, and the people who will participate, is heavy. There are threats of potentially up to hundreds of thousands of people who will counter-march, probably surround and mostly likely violently attack the actual march which is only a few thousand people.

Yes, this is in the context of ongoing violent occupation of Palestine in which people live under attack everyday–I get that. I get that organizing this doesn’t make sense in many ways, and wish it hadn’t happened in the first place. The theme of love without borders, all of it–not cute. not cute in the least bit.

At the same time, here we are, and it doesn’t erase that this is also happening, and so I wonder what’s going on when we talk about luxury and mainstream? Seriously?

daniel is on point in a lot of his comments and i thank him for sharing that story bc i hadn’t heard much yet in terms of reportbacks from what happened. and, i’m wondering, still with all the analysis, with knowing all that, still, here we are, with this incredible attack waiting to happen.

i say as much as we use our analysis and our critique to note how JOH has not been as public as we might like (and how many organizations can we say are and have been, including most progressive jewish orgs in the US???) about Palestinian rights and liberation, we also use it to recognize that JOH is fighting against serious right-wing attacks and that we hold this as well–to me, that is, this moment, is definitely not a luxury.
saltyfemme
November 6th, 2006 at 6:44 pm

I think weâ€™re having two different discussions here. One is about the current threats against the JOH and its members/supporters; the other is about the JOHâ€™s complicated relationship with the Palestinian gay community. I do think that itâ€™s possible for privileged people to be under threat. I also think itâ€™s possible that power is used and abused by many parties in a complicated web in Israel/Palestine. The right-wing opposition to the pride marches is awful, it is scary and it causes the Jerusalem GLBT community a lot of fear, pain, and debt. I believe, though, that this is a different issue.

By the way, readers can learn more about WorldPride and Queeruption in a great article in the September/October issue of New Voices magazine here.
saltyfemme
November 6th, 2006 at 6:46 pm

That New Voices article is here: http://newvoices.org/cgi-bin/articlepage.cgi?id=638.
daniel
November 7th, 2006 at 1:49 pm

just to clarify, echoing saltyfemme:

the jerusalem queer community is in serious need of our solidarity, and JOH is one of its key institutions. the photo op last year of the leaders of the eastern mediterranean’s jewish, muslim, and christian religious right – all of them wielding a great deal of political influence – united against the jerusalem pride march is a perfect symbol of the need for queer liberation. and the threat of violent attacks on this year’s march makes it all the more clear that jerusalem is one of the places where a ‘pride march’ is an important political act, not a marketing opportunity.

however, even in the context of threat and solidarity, precisely because it is such a key community institution, JOH needs to be looked at carefully and politically. i’d go a bit farther than saltyfemme’s last comment, perhaps, and say that this scrutiny needs to happen around JOH’s relation to mizrakhi communities and poor folks, sex workers and indentured workers (so-called ‘guest workers’), as well as the question of palestine and palestinian queers.

i know more about the latter, though, and wanted to point out a few of the places where these things are not so separate.

first of all, there’s the fact that the many of the most anti-queer voices in the israeli political scene are also among the most racist and pro-Occupation. just as on the u.s. scene, overt homophobia tends to accompany a pro-war stance. there are significant exceptions (haredi anti-zionist homophobes; isolationist christian identity types), but much of the time, the political link is pretty solid, and very much part of a certain religious right ultra-nationalism common to many places at the moment. for these folks, the two pieces aren’t separable, and any notion that it’s possible to confront their homophobia separately from the rest of their politics is, well, unlikely to get anywhere.

secondly, there’s the question of solidarity. if the jerusalem queer community is looking for support against homophobic violence, where is it going to find it, and how. seems to me that tactically, it’s rather a bad idea to court the police, who did such a great job stopping the 2005 attack, rather than other progressive folks who might lend actual assistance in protecting the march. and strategically, it seems a rather good notion to break the religious right’s homophobic unity by taking a definite position on an issue which divides them – make the imams, bishops and patriarchs explain to their occupied communities why they’re standing with pro-Occupation rabbis against anti-Occupation queers…
cole
November 7th, 2006 at 3:36 pm

daniel i agree with you in many ways…i don’t necessarily agree with the way that privilege and power is being discussed in saltyfemme’s posts…i was pushing back a bit because i think all of these things need to be looked at and weren’t being looked at, and to me that means also talking about the threats that are going on right now, which felt a bit dismissed in some of the commentary…but who knows tone is notoriously difficult on these forums…
Marisa
November 7th, 2006 at 3:49 pm

No organization is perfect, and of course our varied communities are so hyper-aware of all of the nuances of discrimination that we hold our own organizations to a higher standard than most. I agree that Jerusalem Open House could do certain things better, that there are opportunities for them to be more engaged with a broader range of people, more honest about the political realities in their public relations.

That said, I think they’re also functioning under nearly impossible conditions on a daily basis and providing desperately needed support to many people who really would have no where else to turn without them. JOH is doing amazing work, and if they’re not doing as much of it as we’d like, I think that’s kind of understandable.

I’d love to see what they could accomplish in peacetime, but I fear I won’t live to see that. So I sent them a donation, and hopefully one day I’ll be able to volunteer there and find out how much I’m able to accomplish under the constant threat of violence and death. I hope I’m able to be as strong and as motivated as their current volunteers are.

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