Taking it all in Perspective
Nov. 12th, 2006 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaNow that the "Pride Hoopla" is over, I'm wondering what the Aftermath will be.
Will the Religious Right here let up, or will they just wait for next year to start all over again? Has the GLBT community actually managed to go a step forward towards legal, financial and political equality, or have we opened ourselves up to even more criticism from if not the Religious Right then at least the more conservative parties and groups in Israel?
Is the Israeli Queer Community actually on the Israeli Social agenda?
A more important question, is there even a general social agenda in Israel? Not that I've noticed since PM Olmert has not done anything worth note except War and the killings in Gaza.
Going to the Pride Rally, I felt a great sense of belonging and solidarity with everyone else there, and I felt my family really understood what it was all about, but something I didn't mention in my previous post; While walking from the parking lot to the Stadium, seeing all the police-men and women standing around, talking on the walky-talkies, being civil enough to direct us to the stadium and seeing the security people searching our bags and waving the metal detecting wand over us... there was a sense of disquiet in the air.
There was an incident in which a man wanted to disrupt the rally, but he was taken away very, very quickly by the police as well as the illegal parade started in Gan Ha'Paamon which began a scuffle between the marchers and the religious right who were in the area.
From what I gathered the marchers were stuffed into a Police Van, kept in custody and were interrogated and then let go with an open file in the police, those with prior records were obviously kept for longer, but I understood that the police used excessive force.
Not a good thing.
The rally was a bit of a cop-out, because a parade should have happened and would have had it not been for the violent incident in Gaza, causing the death of so many civilians, because of that the police had to be deployed near the Al-Akza Mosque and in all the check points because of suicide bomber threats.
I understand why there couldn't be a march and I'm very happy there was something, because complete cancellation would have made me feel very angry at the GLBT leadership in Israel, far more than anyone else. I hope next year we'll march as we were supposed to, in Eilat (because of the party), in Tel-Aviv (because of the venue) and in Jerusalem (because it's our capital and that march is for human rights).
And that was the point of the Pride Rally, to remind everyone that this country is based in Democracy and that it (at least in theory) valued its inherent Human Rights.
Israel is quite progressive in it's treatment of the GLBT community; we serve in the Army, there are certain spousal laws (marriage in this country is a primitive institute and I'm speaking as a secular woman, not even a queer one) and are protected by law against unlawful treatment and defamation, you can sue if you were mistreated for being gay, lesbian, bi and/or gender variant.
So Israel isn't totally backward, but Israel must progress and I don't know if we're going in that direction, because in previous years there were marches and last year a man was stabbed simply because he decided to march, he could have been a straight ally, but he was a gay activist and this year we had a closed rally and party in a stadium.
We'd better be there next year.
Will the Religious Right here let up, or will they just wait for next year to start all over again? Has the GLBT community actually managed to go a step forward towards legal, financial and political equality, or have we opened ourselves up to even more criticism from if not the Religious Right then at least the more conservative parties and groups in Israel?
Is the Israeli Queer Community actually on the Israeli Social agenda?
A more important question, is there even a general social agenda in Israel? Not that I've noticed since PM Olmert has not done anything worth note except War and the killings in Gaza.
Going to the Pride Rally, I felt a great sense of belonging and solidarity with everyone else there, and I felt my family really understood what it was all about, but something I didn't mention in my previous post; While walking from the parking lot to the Stadium, seeing all the police-men and women standing around, talking on the walky-talkies, being civil enough to direct us to the stadium and seeing the security people searching our bags and waving the metal detecting wand over us... there was a sense of disquiet in the air.
There was an incident in which a man wanted to disrupt the rally, but he was taken away very, very quickly by the police as well as the illegal parade started in Gan Ha'Paamon which began a scuffle between the marchers and the religious right who were in the area.
From what I gathered the marchers were stuffed into a Police Van, kept in custody and were interrogated and then let go with an open file in the police, those with prior records were obviously kept for longer, but I understood that the police used excessive force.
Not a good thing.
The rally was a bit of a cop-out, because a parade should have happened and would have had it not been for the violent incident in Gaza, causing the death of so many civilians, because of that the police had to be deployed near the Al-Akza Mosque and in all the check points because of suicide bomber threats.
I understand why there couldn't be a march and I'm very happy there was something, because complete cancellation would have made me feel very angry at the GLBT leadership in Israel, far more than anyone else. I hope next year we'll march as we were supposed to, in Eilat (because of the party), in Tel-Aviv (because of the venue) and in Jerusalem (because it's our capital and that march is for human rights).
And that was the point of the Pride Rally, to remind everyone that this country is based in Democracy and that it (at least in theory) valued its inherent Human Rights.
Israel is quite progressive in it's treatment of the GLBT community; we serve in the Army, there are certain spousal laws (marriage in this country is a primitive institute and I'm speaking as a secular woman, not even a queer one) and are protected by law against unlawful treatment and defamation, you can sue if you were mistreated for being gay, lesbian, bi and/or gender variant.
So Israel isn't totally backward, but Israel must progress and I don't know if we're going in that direction, because in previous years there were marches and last year a man was stabbed simply because he decided to march, he could have been a straight ally, but he was a gay activist and this year we had a closed rally and party in a stadium.
We'd better be there next year.
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I disagree, partialy
Date: 2006-11-12 04:21 pm (UTC)