Israel’s Pride Parade Stabbings And The Gay-Rights Intifada
Ah,
summer in the Holy Land—Mediterranean beaches, buses of birth-right
babes, all the hummus your pita can hold and, all too often, war. Last
summer it was a war with Gaza; this summer, one glance at the headlines
suggests that Israel is at war with herself.
Two acts of terror committed by Israeli Jews last week—the firebombing of a home in a Palestinian village, which killed an 18-month-old boy, and the stabbingof six marchers in Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, including a 16-year-old girl who later died of her injuries—illustrate the deep and dangerous tension tearing Israel apart from within.
Though ancient Israel was composed of 12 tribes, modern Israel, as President Reuven Rivlin remarked this
past June, is fast becoming a state of four tribes—secular Jews,
religious Zionist Jews, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs, all of them
inimical to each other and even to affiliates of their own group.
Schlissel himself served 10 years in prison for stabbing participants in the annual Gay Pride Parade in 2005.
“The stabbing was not random” Alon Harel, a law professor at Hebrew University and leading Israeli human-rights advocate, himself a member of the gay community, told me from his Jerusalem home.
“There’s
an inherent fear and hatred at the foundation of some of Israeli
society. Admittedly, murder is rare. But it’s a possibility given the
kind of cultural undercurrent and extreme politics characterizing
Israeli society and the growing general hostility. The violence of
Israel in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t isolated from the violence taking
place against gays or refugees. They feed each other.”
Harel
noted, however, that the stabbing was unexpected by virtue of the
assailant’s identity. The alleged stabber, Yishai Schlissel, is a member
of the Ultra-Orthodox “tribe,” a group which usually keeps to itself.
Major
hostility towards the LGBT community in Israel usually simmers among
“Chardalim,” the small community that is a fusion of the Ultra-Orthodox
and the religious Zionists: extreme in both their nationalism as well as
their orthodoxy.
Muammar Awad/Reuters
This
is not the first attack of its kind for Israel. Schlissel himself
served 10 years in prison for stabbing participants in the annual Gay
Pride Parade in 2005. The year 2009 saw a shooting resulting in the
deaths of two people and injuries to at least 15 others at the Tel Aviv
branch of the Israeli LGBT Association, “Bar-Noar.”
“I
don’t think there is a sense of daily fear,” Harel tells me. “But there
is a sense of knowing that it’s possible. Unlikely but possible.”
Oddly, this description is often how Israelis describe Palestinian
terrorism: an unlikely possibility.
Asked
about the perceived conflict between gay rights and religion, he added
“Among seculars and the modern Orthodox, there is a feeling that
homosexuality is ok even though it’s a sin. No one beats up those who
sin by not keeping the Sabbath.”
Harel
was once proud of Israel’s record on LGBT rights. In the ‘90’s, the
country’s Supreme Court was quite advanced relative to Western
countries—but since then, Israel has not moved at the same rate, and is
now behind the times. The ‘90’s were also the Oslo years where it seemed
as if peace with the Palestinians was on the horizon. Feelings of
security, prosperity and a greater willingness to become part of Western
world, which marked this era, are no longer present in Israel after the
murder of Yitzhak Rabin and the Second Intifada. Instead, these
feelings have been replaced by a growing sense of nationalism,
religiosity, and tribalism.
And
so now, for many Israelis, Harel says, one’s stance towards the LGBT
community has become a short-hand to identify which tribe one belongs
to. “It’s like anti-Semitism in the 19th century, in that regard. Like
abortion in the United States. It’s a litmus test for one’s stance on
general social issues.”
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