{"id":13692,"date":"2015-07-17T00:05:22","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T07:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=13692"},"modified":"2015-07-15T14:14:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T21:14:00","slug":"is-it-paradise-or-pinkwashing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/07\/17\/is-it-paradise-or-pinkwashing\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it paradise or pinkwashing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Organizers estimate 180,000 people marched in the Tel Aviv Pride parade, June 12. (photo by Robin Perelle)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Alberto Lukacs-B\u00f6hm dabs a handful of birds onto the sunny sea-to-sky poster he\u2019s painting for Tel Aviv Pride.<\/p>\n

To live openly as a gay man in today\u2019s Tel Aviv is to be free, he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like to drink a fresh, clean water. That\u2019s freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 65-year-old is one of seven seniors gathered around a table at the Tel Aviv gay centre on June 11. The members of Golden Rainbow (Keshet Zahav<\/em>) are chatting and painting as they finalize their plans to march together in the city\u2019s 17th annual Pride parade the next day.<\/p>\n

For Lukacs-B\u00f6hm, the path to freedom was somewhat complicated. Though he knew he was gay from a very young age, he married a woman in Hungary to avoid upsetting his mother, a circus illusionist who cried when he told her he\u2019d kissed a boy at age 13.<\/p>\n

He returned to Israel in 1988, the same year the country decriminalized homosexual sex. It was time, he says, \u201cto take back my life in my hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom very young, everybody knows I\u2019m a gay,\u201d he explains, \u201c[but] it was always complicated to be gay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it still complicated to be gay?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cNooo,\u201d he says, his face lighting up in an ear-to-ear smile.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo whatsoever!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo speak about homosexuality or lesbian or transgender \u2013 it\u2019s absolutely normal in Israel,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

It\u2019s day two of a five-day press trip to Israel, sponsored and entirely funded by the Israeli tourism ministry to show off Tel Aviv Pride to 43 journalists from around the world.<\/p>\n

Day one began with an exuberant tour of gay Tel Aviv, led by Shai Doitsh, chair from 2012 to 2015 of the Aguda, Israel\u2019s national LGBT task force. For the last decade, Doitsh has also been working with the tourism ministry and the municipality of Tel Aviv to market the city as a gay destination, a project he initiated in 2005, according to his LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n

Doitsh paints a rosy picture of Tel Aviv as one of the most accepting cities in the world, a year-round gay haven, where as much as 25 to 35 percent of the population may be gay, he claims.<\/p>\n

Tel Aviv is a gay hub, both in Israel and throughout the region, he says, pausing repeatedly on Rothschild Boulevard and its surrounding streets to point out gay-friendly venues and the abundance of rainbow flags flying throughout the city for Pride.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Alberto Lukacs-B\u00f6hm, right, stands behind Golden Rainbow members Nitzan Aviv and David Goldstein, centre. (photo by Robin Perelle)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He lists the many rights and benefits enjoyed by gay Tel Avivim, such as protection from workplace discrimination (introduced throughout Israel in 1992); the right to serve equally in the military (considered deeply important in a culture that requires military duty and prioritizes serving one\u2019s country); the right to adopt your same-sex partner\u2019s children (though surrogacy and marriage remain off-limits under the purview of ultra-Orthodox rabbis who frown on gay families); and Tel Aviv\u2019s gay centre and Pride parade, both supported and funded by the municipality.<\/p>\n

The gay community has a strong presence in Tel Aviv and in the city\u2019s secular politics, Doitsh says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur movement and our fight for equality is definitely the most successful in Israel\u201d among the country\u2019s minority groups, he says.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Doitsh may have a vested interest in trumpeting Tel Aviv\u2019s gay appeal, but every gay, lesbian and transgender Israeli I\u2019ve interviewed in the last few weeks has echoed his assessment. The city genuinely welcomes and supports its LGBT community, they say, or at least those members who more closely match mainstream norms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a bubble that bears little resemblance to the rest of Israel, they all agree.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in Tel Aviv is a bit like being in New York and pretending you see the entire United States,\u201d says Moshe Zvi who, with his partner Eyal Alon, has joined the crowd gathering in Meir Park for the city\u2019s Pride parade June 12.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a state within a state,\u201d Alon says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it a bubble of sanity,\u201d Zvi says.<\/p>\n

Organizers tell us that 180,000 people are expected to gather in Meir Park to march in this year\u2019s parade, making it the largest Pride in the Middle East and Asia.<\/p>\n

As the marchers begin to file out towards Bograshov Street, Alon and Zvi tell me about some of the tensions that simmer beneath Israel\u2019s seemingly gay-friendly surface.<\/p>\n

Though Tel Aviv is a more liberal, secular city, Israel\u2019s relatively small ultra-Orthodox Jewish community wields a disproportionate amount of political power in the national legislature due to the nature of Israel\u2019s coalition politics, which rely on small-party support to pass most initiatives.<\/p>\n

The ultra-Orthodox hold \u201calmost a monopoly on power concerning marriage, cemeteries, conversion,\u201d David Goldstein says.<\/p>\n

Goldstein, 73, moved to Tel Aviv five years ago from San Francisco, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Now a member of the Golden Rainbow group, he says he feels much safer here than in the United States. But Tel Aviv is a bubble, he readily agrees.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a secular city founded by Jewish businessmen who wanted a city of their own, he explains. Jerusalem, in contrast, is a holy city. Tel Aviv is anything but, he says, though it\u2019s holy to the gay community and others who encourage diversity and a cosmopolitan lifestyle \u2013 anathema to the ultra-Orthodox community\u2019s strictly religious worldview.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re a very closed community,\u201d Zvi says.<\/p>\n

Being gay is \u201cillogical in their way of thinking,\u201d Goldstein says. \u201cThey would say, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m so sorry to hear that you\u2019re this way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he doesn\u2019t consider the ultra-Orthodox mean-spirited in their anti-gay views \u2013 it\u2019s \u201cnot the hatred that I find among [the] American right-wing,\u201d he says \u2013 their steadfast repudiation of gay families makes life outside Tel Aviv less hospitable.<\/p>\n

In one of Israel\u2019s few headline-grabbing anti-gay hate crimes, an ultra-Orthodox man notoriously stabbed three people in the Jerusalem Pride parade in 2005, as protesters, mostly religious Jews, lined the route. Jerusalem Pride persists, I\u2019m told, but it\u2019s both more political and more tense than Tel Aviv\u2019s cheerful take on the event.<\/p>\n

It is getting easier to come out in other parts of Israel, Alon says. But it\u2019s still easiest in Tel Aviv, where the ultra-Orthodox community is smaller, wields less power and seems more resigned to surrender the secular city to its wicked ways.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Then there are the more obvious, if less willingly broached, tensions.<\/p>\n

Of course, Tel Aviv is a bubble, says Tal Jarus-Hakak who, with her partner Avital, was a lesbian feminist in Israel long before their nine-year legal battle successfully set a precedent allowing gays and lesbians to adopt their partners\u2019 children.<\/p>\n

Tel Aviv may be a cheerful, colorful, tolerant city with beautiful beaches, clubs, an increasingly well-established gay community with more and more families and businesses, and \u201can amazing, vibrant\u201d gay culture, they say, but 60 kilometres away there is war, violence and poverty in many areas of Israel.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sitting with the Jarus-Hakaks on the deck of their Vancouver home a few days after my return from Israel, a country they left in 2006 because, despite all their attempts to change its policies through protest and democratic means, they found the pace of change too slow and life there too traumatic, especially raising three sons.<\/p>\n

Staying inside the bubble of Tel Aviv is \u201ca survival mode,\u201d Tal says. But it can get uncomfortable, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs that why you moved here?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to live outside the bubble \u2013 with consciousness \u2013 but it\u2019s hard to stay inside the bubble, too, she says. Many people would call us traitors for saying this, she adds, but we\u2019re not speaking against Israel. We\u2019re speaking for Israel, to try to do things differently, she says.<\/p>\n

Hadar Namir says she doesn\u2019t want to go back to Israel either. One of Israel\u2019s pioneering lesbian activists, Namir has been on vacation in Vancouver since April.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not wishing to go back,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not comfortable with the human rights situation in Israel. That, for example, Arab-Israeli citizens are remote from being equal \u2013 and this is authorized by the government for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Namir, who spent 15 years working with Israel\u2019s Association for Civil Rights, draws me a map of the country. She places Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast, adds Haifa further north and Jerusalem about 45 minutes east, inland. Then she adds the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Hadar Namir says she\u2019s uncomfortable with the human rights situation in Israel. (photo by Robin Perelle)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The map, unlike anything I saw during our ministry-sponsored tours of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, fills with fences and checkpoints, until it\u2019s a messy, convoluted ink-blot puzzle. She tells me stories of families divided, cut off from each other and their land or forced to take long detours to tend their olive trees, if they can tend them at all. She says there are different legal systems in the occupied territories: one for Jewish people accused of committing a crime and a different system for Arab people. She talks about inadequate government support for Arab cities, and difficulty accessing health care.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome gay men say, \u2018let not interfere our fight for LGBT rights with other fights.\u2019 Not me. I don\u2019t believe it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to simplify things,\u201d she hastens to add. \u201cIt\u2019s much more complicated\u201d than good Israelis and Hamas terrorists. \u201cAnd I do understand the desire for a Jewish state,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

But different people have different narratives, she says: Independence Day for some is considered a disaster for others.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

One commonly repeated narrative in Israel and around the world is that Arab communities kill gay people, further distinguishing Israel as a gay oasis.<\/p>\n

Most of the Israelis I met in Tel Aviv hesitated when I asked them if gay Palestinians would be marching in the Pride parade.<\/p>\n

There must be some gay Palestinians here, Zvi and Alon say, after a brief pause.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s easy being a gay Arab anywhere,\u201d Zvi offers. \u201cAs in everything, I think life in Israel is easier than life in Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alon mentions a gay Palestinian party in Tel Aviv, and some gay-known coffee shops in Ramallah. But they\u2019re discreet, he says.<\/p>\n

Karl Walter, one of our tour guides, says there likely are Arabs participating in the parade, but quietly. They wouldn\u2019t be able to go home, he tells me, \u201cbecause the Arabs would kill them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arabs \u201ccrush\u201d gays in Gaza and in Ramallah, he asserts.<\/p>\n

The reality, says Samira Saraya, is more complicated.<\/p>\n

Saraya lives in Tel Aviv as an openly gay Palestinian woman. She is also an actress, an activist and a nurse who, in 2003, co-founded Aswat, a group for gay Palestinian women. She also attended the first monthly gay Palestinian parties in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s complicated to live in Tel Aviv and be an Arab as well,\u201d she tells me by phone, a week after my return from Israel. \u201cLiving in a kind of militaristic society…. On the other hand, I really love the people around me. But the moment we get into politics, it\u2019s complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask her if Tel Aviv\u2019s gay-friendly embrace extends to gay Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are willing to bargain your identity, if you are willing to be more Israeli, less Palestinian,\u201d she says. \u201cIt depends.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask if she has faced discrimination within the gay community.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d she replies. She recalls one experience doing outreach to high school students with a mostly Jewish LGBT organization and hearing a fellow presenter say he wouldn\u2019t date an Arab.<\/p>\n

In the gay community, she says, \u201cthey don\u2019t see that there is a connection between being oppressed for your sexual identity and your ethnic identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the common refrain that Arabs kill gays, she says it\u2019s too easy to paint Israel as democratic and gay-friendly against a backdrop of Arab homophobia. She says she enters the occupied territories as an openly gay Palestinian and no one has ever hurt her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI go as a lesbian to Ramallah, as well, and to Nazareth, and do not face homophobia or somebody cursing me because I\u2019m a dyke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palestinian society is \u201cchauvinist and homophobic,\u201d she says, but there are Palestinian people in the occupied territories living their lives as openly gay and nobody is killing them. Some of her friends are even out to their families, she adds.<\/p>\n

Though Saraya says many Palestinians who live in Israel go to Tel Aviv Pride, it\u2019s almost impossible for gay people from the occupied territories to get permission to attend. \u201cLess and less people are permitted to come to Israel,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are checkpoints and restrictions and protocols.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I ask Namir what she thinks of the Israeli tourism ministry flying me and 42 other journalists from around the world to Tel Aviv for Pride.<\/p>\n

Tel Aviv is a genuinely gay-friendly city, she says, and the municipality really does support the parade, the community centre and even a shelter for LGBT youth. \u201cI do believe the credit is there,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m totally respectful that the minute that we decided to go out of the closet in 1993, they were opening the doors to us.\u201d But it\u2019s still \u201cpinkwashing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Tal Jarus-Hakak agrees. The ministry brought you over to show \u201cthe nice part of Israel, how tolerant we are,\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201cpart of their propaganda to show Israel as a gem in this area\u201d \u2013 the only democratic country in this area, she says.<\/p>\n

But Israel is the only democratic country in that area, Avital interjects.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut even if that\u2019s the case, it does not take off of Israel the responsibility for what it\u2019s doing in the occupied territories,\u201d Tal replies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong about the parade in Tel Aviv and nothing wrong about people coming to the parade,\u201d Saraya says. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong is trying to use the parade to cover the other violations that Israel do every day. This is pinkwashing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zvi isn\u2019t so sure. He doesn\u2019t think showing off Pride necessarily detracts from the Palestinian situation. \u201cI think mindfulness is in order,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019m glad people are coming to Tel Aviv. God knows Israel could use some good publicity. Should Tel Aviv not get this kind of feedback? I want tourists to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walter, our guide, vehemently rejects any suggestion of pinkwashing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing to understand is that the gay parade and all that we\u2019ve accomplished is for us,\u201d he says, \u201cnot for tourism. It\u2019s not for show. It\u2019s not a PR stunt. It\u2019s the most visible expression of freedom in the world \u2013 the only free gay community in the Middle East. People tend to forget that. We don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gay rights in Israel have nothing to do with the Palestinian situation, he says. \u201cIf anyone uses the term pinkwashing, you immediately know that he\u2019s a racist and a homophobe. He doesn\u2019t have the decency to say that my foes \u2013 they did something good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tourism ministries in other countries also show off their best traits to visitors, Goldstein points out.<\/p>\n

He, too, finds the pinkwashing criticism unfair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the critics of Israel \u2013 they\u2019re really against Israel to begin with,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople who have an axe to grind and [are] trying to besmirch Israel any way they can. So, any good points, they say they\u2019re doing it to fool the people. I think it\u2019s a bit antisemitic to say that.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Back in the seniors\u2019 room at the Tel Aviv gay centre, Lukacs-B\u00f6hm cheerfully cleans up his paints and prepares for another day in his gay paradise.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, [to] be free is to drink cold, clean water when I want and how I want,\u201d he says, with a smile.<\/p>\n

Robin Perelle<\/strong> is the managing editor in Vancouver of <\/em>Daily Xtra, Canada\u2019s gay and lesbian news source. This story first ran on dailyxtra.com<\/a> on July 2.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Organizers estimate 180,000 people marched in the Tel Aviv Pride parade, June 12. (photo by Robin Perelle) Alberto Lukacs-B\u00f6hm dabs a handful of birds onto the sunny sea-to-sky poster he\u2019s painting for Tel Aviv Pride. To live openly as a gay man in today\u2019s Tel Aviv is to be free, he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[4330,1384,2721,1741],"class_list":["post-13692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-israel","tag-lgbtq","tag-peace","tag-pride"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}