I wrote a post yesterday just before I headed out to the parade, but Officer Kalakaua ate it alas. I'm still getting used to this whole typing with my thumbs and not touching things by accident.

I also switched on the spell check, which happens to be the autocorrect, so my initial attempts at swearing were a bust. Truly, Officer, I really did mean to say "fuck" and not "fork".

Funny stuff. I may install a chat app just so Imcan screengrab things and send them to Damn You Autocorrect!

Any way, it was a successful march. I'd never taken any formal part in Pride, but the march in Jerusalem is of way more significance due to it's nature as a human rights march, as opposed to the pandering street party that the one in Tel-Aviv is. It's also far more significant due to it being a memorial of the shooting of the gay youth club three years ago, so you know, it's important.

I was very concerned about the police and the border patrol (the border police has more presence in spaces like these as opposed to the actual border), but my own paranoia was just that.

I stood with the security at the entrance to the assembly area and put bracelets on people to prove that they had been checked out by security, so that was annoying - also, the amount of Holocaust jokes were abound.

After standing around for two hours, I and the rest the ushers became the headers, basically making sure there were no people behind us except the police.

I forewent the post-march concerts and speeches, and along with a few other people went to celebrate [sexy!roommate]'s birthday on the grass a bit away from the the assembly.

Long, but rather good day, all in all.

I now have a t-shirt I can't wear ever again, due to it being an usher shirt, not because it was ruined. I also got burnt on the back of my neck.

Just call me Red Neck Mel.

... why I was so irritable yesterday.

I'd been avoiding thinking about it, talking about it... you name it, I avoided doing it in relation to the second anniversary of the QUILTBAG Youth Centre shooting.

Still no new leads on the killer.

Nor will there ever be.

The trail turned cold that night.

I had something more to say about it, but I can't find the words.

Maybe later.

Right now... I'm just speechless.

I've been staring at this page forever, the cursor mocking me with my inability to write a recap of yesterday's events.

I suppose it was because the actual event was, thankfully uneventful.

There was one counter demo at the march itself, in which Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel, easily the most disgusting specimens of humanity Israeli society has to offer came with signs reading "Holyland not Homoland" as we marched by.
If you are interested, you can read some of their hate speech and incitement here.

But we were safe, because the police (despite some asshattery earlier this month regarding the route to the Knesset) are very serious about the security. Now, I trust the police about as far as I can throw them (meaning, I don't) and it's really due to the fact that the Pride March in Jerusalem gets more threats than any other political march in the city - my sister, who is a Jeruselamite (of many years) was surprised at the fact that there weren't people on the sidelines hurling insults or worse. I explained that ever since the stabbing in 2005, the security had been upped. Not to mention that Pride is not an explicitly Leftist event and doesn't invite that kind of political ire from its opposers.

I, per usual, marched with the Reds :) along with Yael, tamara_russo, my sister (who next year will be bringing her husband and kids) and I saw my friend S and it was awesome.

There were great speeches in the pre-march events, an open stage for anyone who had something say, so there were many talks from grassroots activists, the kink community, the bi/pan community, the anarchists, the communists, an anonymous letter from a religious gay man... it was very heart warming.

As I've previously mentioned, this is the first time we marched to the Knesset, and it felt profound and meaningful. Which is how I felt during the Radical march back in June in Tel-Aviv and didn't feel during the Municipal march in Tel-Aviv - that's a carnival and has lost the political power it once held. I don't know how I feel about marching in the Municipal Tel-Aviv march considering the fact that Tel-Aviv is constantly used to pinkwash Israeli society - while we're called filth and animals everywhere else.

This was doubly clear at the Memorial rally held after the march in the Knesset rose garden in honour of Nir Katz and Liz Trobishi (z"l) which the 1st of August marks the year anniversary of their murder. Nir Katz's mother, Ayala, became a pivotal figure in the community, becoming the chairwoman on Tehila (the Israeli version of Parents and Friends and of [QUILTBAG] people) and she gave a very moving speech.

We were told that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "supposed" to send a letter for the community, but didn't get a chance to sign it. Tsipi Livny delivered a letter, which I don't appreciate thanks, seeing as gays are seen as nothing more than fodder for tourists, at best.
Gay and out MK Nitzan Horowitz gave a very passionate (and loud) speech and stated pretty blatantly that the other members of Knesset sucked when it came to policy concerning queers.
So, yeah.

My sister and I left after his speech and missed the (so I've heard) surreal speech by former Speaker of the Knesset and author Avrum Burg, who is a religious man and upholds universal values of human and civil rights and spoke about reconciling those with religion.

I spoke to my sister about the Statement of Principles I mentioned yesterday (LJ/DW) which is obviously connected to the whole reconciling of religion and homosexuality. And she said it's better than sitting Shiva on the child and mentioned that at least like this they can still have a place.
"Men" I said, as the Statement is very much tilted towards the male experience, despite the fact that gay women are mentioned, it's clear that the only people "really" affected are men, because there is this disbelief surrounding female desire towards sex that doesn't involve a penis belonging to a man.
My sister said that possibly being an unmarried woman in traditional Orthodox society is the worst position, because there really is no place.

Call me crazy. But to me this means traditional Orthodox society is just not the place to be if you're gay. Also, traditional orthodox people need to stop being bigoted ass-holes.

Just sayin'.

Yes, it is better not to sit Shiva over your child, just like common-law marriage is better than having no partner rights whatsoever.

So, yeah.

Here are some pictures, all taken by tamara_russo. Thank you babe, for being there with me!
( I'm cute )

As readers of mine may know, from here or otherwise, on August 1st 2009 an anonymous gunman (who is still at large) burst into a Tel-Aviv Gay Youth club in when it was filled with kids and opened fire, wounding 13 and murdering two, Nir Katz and Liz Trobishi (z"l).

I wrote about it extensively.

Their friend created a chain of rainbow cranes for them and put up this video, which is accompanied by the Hebrew translated song, "The Cranes":


The captions read as follow -
The Gay Crane Tree Project
On Saturday August 1st 2009
A masked man commenced a shooting at the "Bar-Noar"[the gay youth club]
The result: 13 wounded and 2 dead
Cranes are symbol of peace and happiness

This is our wish

We folded 200 cranes in the colours of Pride

We made them into a chain

And hung them on a tree on the corner of Nachmani st and Rotschild bv. near the "Bar-Noar"

[credits]

In Memory of Nir Katz and Liz Trobishi
August 2009

It's been over a month since the shooting at the LGBT youth centre.

On Saturday night there was a march commemorating the dead. The same article in Hebrew were the only reports I could find about it.

As you can imagine, the police has not reported any suspect, no leads and after what I call the "Shiva" week, it was no longer part of the News cycle.
There were more and other murders going around this summer.

A lynch on the beach, someone killed a couple, a father killed his daughter... it's all very gruesome and that's what makes the Yellow News on the television.

According to a Newspaper poll Israelis feel more secure.
Seeing a title like that, my immediate assumption that this means the people living outside Israel proper feel less secure than ever. That is, that the average Palestinian doesn't feel personally secure.

I can hear the apoplexy already.

But fuck it, because if my "personal security" (which doesn't feel that great by the way) is enhanced because we're crushing the freedoms of others... that's not real security, that's walking around willingly blindfolded in the middle of the road.

In that poll it says that "Leftists were also revealed as more confident on the national front than rightists. Just 39% of rightists said they felt very secure, while 51% of those describing themselves as leftists said they felt thus".

I do not know who these Leftists are, because I don't think I've ever felt, since becoming politically aware and knowing why I'm secure in my home, less secure. Simply because the situation we're in is just not sustainable. The fact that haven't been any Nationalistically motivated crime in a while (even the Qassam rockets in the South haven't been that active) the violence that saturates my society is spilling over onto the News and thus into our conciousness even more.

But our conciousness is dissonant. Us Israelis are so used to danger coming from "Them" that crimes like the shooting at the LGBT youth centre was a surprise, that murders coming from families of known Mafia families, that rape and murder are on the front of the national News pages... we feel more secure, because Palestinians aren't shooting us or blowing themselves up.

So they can keep demonstrating against the Separation Fence and Wall and the IDF can shoot at both Foreign (same story, different News agency) and Domestic journalists who go to witness how the IDF protects Us from Them.
After all: 85% [of civilians are] saying they believed the army would be capable of protecting Israel if it were attacked.

*Thumbs up*

In my previous entry one of my most excellent and good friends asked, more seriously than not, to remind her why she lived here.

I ask myself that as well, but that line of questioning is really counter productive, because I was born here. I've never lived any where else and very likely no place I ever live will ever feel like home.
There is violence, crime and hate everywhere.
Possibly there is a difference in the societal framing of those human behaviours.

The systematic Othering that I feel is so insidious and invidious is stifling. The way the campaign I spoke about in my previous entry very simply and without much thought, casually disseminates the idea that not only are Jews better than non-Jews (the Goyim, the Gentiles), but that we must keep Jews from choosing a life that may or may not include the Judaism that Israel proclaims to be the true path.

I've been told, more than once by more than one person, that I'm narrow-minded. I find, more often than not, that I'm told this when I challenge the ideas that have been presented to me as default.
An argument usually comes to a stalemate when the person I'm arguing with says "I'm secure in the knowledge that I'm right!".
What a lovely thing to have, righteousness.
To never doubt or question, or to have been doubted or questioned.
The last time I felt that way was when I was serving my time in the IDF and when I came back to reserve duty in the same place... my doubts left me less equipped with the ability to deal with the fact that my actions were contributed, contributing, to the death of people (innocent and not).

I know I'm one of the good guys. I don't know how "nice" I can be about it any more.

These many thought came about because of my slowly becoming more involved in fandom, developing ideas of my own for writing fan fiction, talking to other fans about these issues and real life events paralleling fandom events too closely in my mind.

About a year ago I wrote a post about why I'm obsessing with Torchwood.

Now I have some new thoughts.

But I think I need to write a little something that will further contextualize what I'm writing.

( A Bit About Buffy, because it's important )

Buffy and I parted ways a few years ago. It's still the best show to ever be on television; writing wise, thematically and just plain awesomeness. I have seven academic books about Buffy.

It changed my life, I'll always be grateful².

All that was a long way of saying, I take my entertainment seriously. Not only that, it takes me seriously as well.

Torchwood changed my life as well, in a vastly different way.

Not too long ago I wrote: I love Torchwood and generally speaking, Torchwood loves me..

It's obvious to me, but I suppose I should disclaim, that I'm well aware that the people on Torchwood , just like every other show, movie and book that I read, are fictional, I will not be able to go to Wales and meet any of them.
And despite a phenomenon like this, they are not real.

Except, that they are.

( Introspective Personal Thought On Texts That I Love )

When it comes down to it, the past year was hard and I really cannot imagine how I would have gotten through it were it not for my girlfriend and Torchwood (it helps that she enjoys the show as well). I had to deal with a real world that didn't go exactly like I expected.

Wake up call.

As most of you know, during July I was still pretty shook up over what happened in Torchwood: Children of Earth, you just need to browse back to see how deeply affected I was. I don't know how my GF stood me. I don't know how anyone stood me.
Then in August the real life tragedy of a Hate Crime against queer youth struck and I was shook up again.
Living in the country that I do exposes me to violence on a scale that at times is just too much.

I felt so disgusted with myself that I took the death of Ianto Jones as hard as I did.

It's gratifying knowing that I'm not alone. That I am validated and can validate others in their love of text and how it affects them.
How we affect it.

I think I'm going to be writing fic very soon.

( Notes )

Yesterday I went to FantasyCon, the one day summer Convention, the theme was Romance and Love in sci-fi and fantasy, seeing as it fell on the week of Tu b'Av, which is basically the Jewish Valentine Day.

I really needed it.

I wore my Torchwood t-shirt (with Jack and Ianto), there was a lecture on sub-textual romance in Doctor Who (pre-Eccleston... 'Ship wars are woe), which was great and I ended up talking a bunch with the lecturer who is writing her PhD (I think) on the Doctor Who.

I love academic geeks... my people.

There was also a really good lecture on Slash and the way it enables us to appropriate characters and content of media that isn't really representative of, well, us.

The atmosphere of the Con, despite the cosplayers and decorations and the baby Dalek on the floor, was quite sombre because of the shooting last Saturday night. There is a huge amount of intersection between the Con-going audience and participants and the LGBT community. One of the reasons I never felt, until I went to Uni, that I needed a queer community was because I had one in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy community.

I finally broke down and cried quite a lot when I spoke to morin, who I've been friends with since I was in the third grade and who is my BFF. We hung out before we went to the different lectures we had planned and eventually we began to talk about how much it sucked here.
Zie and hir partner have been talking about leaving Israel for a while now, but the past few months since Netanyahu took office and last Saturday being the last straw in a lot of ways, hir saying that really brought it home for me.
I can't think of anything that really good here.
And I started crying.
morin, having known me for such a long time (and possibly being a telepath) came prepared and gave me a bunch of tissues.
I got a bunch of hugs after by many people... a crying Mel is a very miserable looking Mel.
avgboojie even gave me a tentacle filled hug, simply because I hijacked her Cthulhu plushy.

[Southern!Girl] is staying over and I spoke to her about how I felt. Really, this is a very visceral feeling, wanting to say "fuck it", get my degree and fucking leave.
I don't know of any place which is that much better, that I can imagine building a new home in.
I've thought about living elsewhere for a while, being a part of a different place at some point, but I always thought that I'd come back here and live here and just be here.

I'm not wanted here.

Israel is basically a unique blend of the USA and Iran and I feel very little hope for that mix.

I don't know how much more I can tolerate not being tolerated. In this place that I can only see as a negation of everything my parents hoped it would be when they chose to leave South Africa.

Today I came out to my hair dresser, who has been cutting my hair for seven years.

It had never come up, because I had never spoken to her about anyone I had been dating, I'd vent about my mom, we'd talk about my hair... sexuality was not the top of the agenda.

Her exclamation of surprise: "You're gay?!" irked me a bit, but that passed and now I can process why that is.

Obviously the whole discussion came up because I went to get a hair cut in order to somehow make a change in myself and somehow deal with the tragedy of my community.

I mentioned that that was one of the reasons I needed a hair cut.

"You were there?" she asked anxiously.
"No," I replied "but it was an attack on my community"
"You're gay?!" she exclaimed.
Feeling far too worn out to start the whole gay vs. bi thing I simply said "Yeah".
"Well hello!"

The next half an hour was filled with me talking, venting and pretty much being pissed off, but nicely.

What irked me, is the constant assumption of heterosexuality. I'm not blaming my hair dresser or anything, this is the way society is constructed. The assumption is that most people are straight, so how are we supposed to know who is not until they say so.

And along with the assumption of heterosexuality, come the stigma of queer.
I've now veered away from my hair dresser (my hair looks great, just my the way).
Through out the past few days, I've been reading articles upon articles telling me that the police have no clue as to where the gunman is.
People raising hypothesis that this was a vendetta by a spurned lover, that it was a self-hating queer person who was rejected from the youth group (what?!) and of course that the LGBT community are falsely accusing the Orthodox community and spreading the hate.

I have had it up to *here*, I swear.
My dad asked me about that "lead" the police had regarding the spurned lover and at the vigil I attended yesterday someone glibly said that if it the killer wasn't hate motivated then it would feel really empty.
I opened my mouth on both that person and my dad:

#1 How can one even try and justify murder in that way, because that's what it is. Trying to find an "excuse" as to why a killer decided to kill.

#2 It's derailment of the issue. This is a hate crime. Homophobia is a prejudice that goes on without censure. It is transparent, it is jokes and violence committed because of it goes under reported more often than not.

#3 The degradation and defamation of LGBT people is ongoing. The reason we had no "build up" for this tragedy is because we are under constant attack. All the time. Every day. Every where. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

And finally #4 Whoever this person was, he didn't just go after one person, or a specific individual. The man carried an Uzi. That mass destruction and multiple shots in rapid succession.

Coming out to my hair dresser (see what I did there) was my choice. Those kids lying in the hospital were Outed in a way that will leave them scarred forever, beyond the physical and emotional trauma of being the victims of a shooting attack because some of the families have rejected them.

We've been told to not be afraid.

I can't help but seethe in the dark and I am afraid.

That ended up being much more dramatic than I intended..

I still can't stop thinking about Saturday night.

I didn't know the people who were murdered, nor any of the wounded.

It was a youth group meeting, just a bunch of teenagers playing cards while one of the few adults they could trust was there to just... be there for them.

A friend I spoke to today feared this will just be the first of many incidences and I find that so heart breaking and it pisses me off, because I honestly thought that while things were crappy, it wasn't all full of shit.

I wasn't too keen on the anti-religious rhetoric that came out, mainly because I fear it will backfire and I honestly don't believe that all religious people are evil.

Reading this article though, makes me hope that something might actually be done to curb the power of religion in this country.
( Long quote, includes links )
I suggest you read the whole thing, that isn't even the worst.

But the more I read up on the language several Rabbis used, that religious Members of Knesset used over the years to denigrate and demean LBGT people:
Comparing us to bird flu.
That we're sick.
That we aren't legible to adopt and actually went so far as to push for legislation.
Saying that our "lifestyle" causes natural disasters - the famous earthquake comment.
That we undermine the entire Jewish religion.
That we are AIDS ridden.
That we are we are worse than beasts unfit for consumption.
That we have no souls.
That we corrupt children.
That we are the agents of autogenocide in Israeli society.

Bigotry, upon lies, based upon the twisted mindedness of religious people who have too much power and too much air-time.

Now it's our turn and fuck if we're going to be quiet.

I think I may be able to write coherently about what happened.

First of all, thanks you everyone who commented on my previous post, sent me an sms, an email, a phone call, all that.

I was safe and snug at home away from Tel-Aviv.

I didn't go to the impromptu Pride March that took place in the vicinity, nor will I be able to go to any vigil today (possibly tomorrow). I am going to go to the big demo that's going to happen in Rabin Square on Tuesday.

The number of injured rose to 15, at least 7 of them went into surgery during the night. Almost all the injured are minors (i.e. under the age of 18).
The death toll remains two, though over the night there were reports that a third had died but that turned out to be a mistake.
The murder victims are a 16 year old woman/girl and a 26 year old boy/man.

The girl (and all the other minors) went to this little underground floor which for nearly 20 years has acted as the headquarters of the LGBT Rights Association, colloquially known as The Aguda. The place has acted as a place of gathering for various queer groups, including this youth support group. There was no security guard, because this place for more than a decade, has been considered a "safe space" smack in the middle of Midtown Tel Aviv.
Talk about Queer central.

That dead man/boy acted as a councillor to these kids, many of them (if not most) closeted. This was where they came to be themselves, to vent, to get support, to be with others who are like them.
Like us.

During the months leading up to Pride (Fuck, just a month ago!) and during June Pride month, I wrote a bit about various homophobic incidences that happened over the country and one of them was a "random" would-be gay bashing in Tel Aviv, simply because two guys were kissing in the street.

There can really be no doubt that this was anything other than a homophobia motivated attack. Anyone trying to think of alternative scenarios is fooling themselves, or trying to. That little corner in the middle of the alley streets of central Tel Aviv was a known venue. Even if the little piece of shit didn't know it was going to be Teens and Young Adults there last night, the shooter knew damn well that there were going to be queer people there.

The recent entry written at the Israel Left blogging website begins like this:

Something happened in Tel-Aviv tonight, a milestone in the delicate relationship between minority and majority, left and right, and whatever other classifications you may wish to use here.

Honestly, I do not think so.
This is perhaps that most violent incident in scale, and it is overwhelming when an incident like this happens in the supposed cosmopolitan metropolis of "the only Democracy in the Middle East", however, we do not know how many queers do not report incidences of violence against them all year 'round. The statistics of this are very, very iffy. Queer people exist in every single intersecting demography. A large portion of them are closeted.
Just like these kids.

I think it is incredibly naive to believe that this is a milestone in anything. This is a flare of a disease, an acute symptom of a social disfigurement. The violence in which it was committed is alarming and may indicate that the pressure in the melting pot is reaching critical, but homophobia has been and is alive and kicking and only the incredibly clueless would thing otherwise, yes, even in liberal Tel Aviv.

Just last week [Southern!Girl] and I went to a Butch/Femme event, she was the Butch and I was the Femme and it was such a clear dyke event, that just walking in the street we both felt exposed but at the event itself in the Rogatka bar it felt so incredibly safe and good and fucking fun.
I did mention that if we were a little bit more on the South end of Tel Aviv I don't know how safe I would have felt walking down the street in my fancy dress and her in a fancy suit.

That centre is just a few kilometres South-West of where were.

I'm feeling kind of queasy.

The police's response to this was to close down the other LGBT clubs and meeting spaces because the gunman is still at large.
Seriously?
That's your immediate answer? To try and police our movements even more, especially when Queers are fucking everywhere in Tel Aviv and the majority are really not going to be "hanging out" at the community gathering centres unless there is an event.
And that's the point.
We go to the same cafe's as straight people, the same movie theatres, the same bloody streets okay!
This attack was deliberate and for our safety you're telling us you're closing down our other (what we believed) were safe spaces.

Last night I was in shock. Today I'm fucking pissed.
You can follow my Twitter which I used last night to disseminate information.