PRIDE in Jerusalem

Having lived in the South most of my life, and having worked briefly with the Fairness Campaign in Louisville, I am more than aware fo the blatant homophobia that fear and hatred can produce. I myself, and many of my friends and family members, have felt the brunt of intolerance based on sexual orientation far too many times. Thus, the past week in Jerusalem has made me more upset then I thought I would be; yet the resistance has been incredible.

For the past two years, Pride parades have been held here in Jerusalem, and have been recieved with outright hostility by the ultra-orothodox communities, both Muslim and Jewish. In an ironic twist, one of the few things going on in Palestine and Israel that both side's religious leaders have been able to agree upon is protesting the Gay Pride parade in the Holy City. Last year, three people attending the parade were stabbed by a few ultra-orthodox Hassidic Jews living in the area. This year, in response to former extremist violence, the city was flooded with over 7,000 police and army members- the disengagement from Gaza (when 8,000 colonialists were removed from Gaza) involved around 5,000. The police had been using water cannons against the Hassids as the Hassids burned trash and chanted homophobics slurs in their Jewish Quarter- every night for the past few weeks.

Whereas Tel Aviv in the Gay Mecca of the Middle East, being openly gay in Jerusalem seems to be difficult. I once spoke with a member of the radical queer group, Black Laundry, who informed me that gays in this city face a good deal of harassment, and after visiting the Jewish Quarter late last night and being given scowls and have trash thtowards my friends and I as we stood beneath a balcony, it wasn't hard to assume today's actions against the parade would be awful. Yet, I was pleasantly surprised- the head rabbis of the ultra-orthodox told their followers that they did not want the Hassids protesting the parade- they clamied to not want their children to be exposed to these "alternative lifestyles."

Hence, aside from police going through everyone's bag (and were talking thousands of people who came out for the parade, so passing the first checkpoint took awhile) and about 30-40 Hassidic teenage girls who held signs, the parade was a success. Gays, lesbians, trangenders, straights, old men and women, childern, babies, and dogs on leashes- it was the largest Pride parade I had ever been to. Queer anarchists gave out zines on breaking the gender binary, signs read "Gay=Straight, Jews=Arabs" and "Fuck Gender, Fuck Zionism" people sang and danced, lovers kissed as they marched, and I could hear people speaking in an array of lanuages. And luckily, I did not see any of the corporate advertising that seems so apparent at the Pride parades in the States. It was refreshing to see a pride parade that did not consist of upper-middle class, white liberal gays, but rather involved all peoples- minus the corporate takeover.

And lastly, as we passed a storefront where the shopkeeper had posted a sign reading "NO PRIDE IN SHAME" and a young man stood out front holding a homophobic sign in Hebrew and shouted at the parade, Rion yelled back to him "Come out of the closet!!" Many people in the parade laughed and a man slapped him on the back and complemented Rion in Hebrew for calling ou this homophobic guy. As a queer shirt read- "We're Here, We're Queer, We Riot."

Shalom,
Simone