Dreams of solidarity

Although today's gay pride march in Jerusalem was downgraded to a
stadium rally, the fact that it took place at all was a setback for
its opponents.

By Peter Tatchell

The Guardian – Comment is Free – 10 November 2006

 http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_tatchell/2006/11/middleeast_unity_against_gays.html

Jewish
and Arab gays have pulled off the biggest diplomatic coup in modern
Middle East history. They have got warring Christians, Judaists and
Muslims working together for the first time since the foundation of
the state of Israel.

Religionists who previously refused to even acknowledge each other’s
right to exist, are now talking to each other. In an unprecedented
show of multi-faith and multi-party unity, Israelis and Palestinians
have formed a common front – reaching out to one another in a
ground-breaking gesture of unity and solidarity.

They can't agree about peace in the Middle East, but the
fundamentalists of all three faiths are united in their opposition to
a Gay Pride march in Jerusalem. A “march of sodomites" is, they say,
the biggest ever threat to the “holy city” – a greater threat than
Israeli annexations of Palestinian land and a greater threat than
Palestinian suicide bombers. I kid you not.

Even more shocking, the zealots have won. The Gay Pride “March for
Tolerance,” which should have taken place in Jerusalem today, has been
cancelled on security grounds by the organisers, Jerusalem Open House,
and replaced by a stadium rally.

At last year’s Gay Pride march, Judaist fanatics attacked the
procession, stabbing three participants. This year, a three-faith
alliance of rabbis, priests and sheikhs threatened a million-strong
counter protest. The police warned they could not guarantee the safety
of the marchers, after a week of death threats and anti-Gay Pride
rioting by ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israel’s hard right extremists.

Calling for the killing of the Gay Pride march leaders, Jewish
fundamentalists pronounced against them the same rabbinic death curse
that was made against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a few days before
his assassination.

Religious bigots from other faiths chimed in, endorsing the
ultra-Orthodox threats and violence. Muslim leaders warned the march
would go ahead “over our dead bodies.” The Vatican also denounced the
march. So has Shimon Peres, the former Israeli Prime Minister and “man
of peace” who now allies himself with Israel’s war machine and
homophobes on the far right.

If nothing else, the fanatics from all three faiths have demonstrated
to the world the very real threat to human rights posed by religious
fundamentalism. They have made the controversy over the Gay Pride
march into something much bigger: a battle to defend the democratic
and humanitarian values of free speech and the right to protest. These
are values that ought to concern everyone, everywhere.

What Judaist, Muslim and Christian fundamentalists cannot stand is the
fact the lesbian and gay community is offering a model of acceptance,
unity and love that transcends religious, national, racial and
political hatreds.

In Jerusalem, lesbians and gays of all faiths and none socialise
together, campaign together, live together and love together. No other
community shows such solidarity between Arab and Jew, Israeli and
Palestinian, Muslim and Judaist.

The bearded straight men of ancient enmity and violence are enraged
that the hateful, tribal divisions they sow, and on which they depend
for their power, are being undermined by the show of unity and
solidarity exemplified by Palestinian and Israeli gays and lesbians.
To these backward, bigoted fundamentalists, queers are sexual
subversives and traitors.

It is no coincidence that the sub-theme of today’s cancelled “March
for Tolerance“ was “Love without borders” – a calculated condemnation
of national boundaries that divide people and, in particular, an
implicit attack on Israel’s “apartheid” wall, which has exacerbated
separations, blocked free movement and hindered dialogue.

Even though the Gay Pride march was downgraded to a stadium rally, the
fact that this rally took place at all was a big setback for the
Christian, Judaist and Muslim fundamentalists who had opposed any
manifestation of gay visibility and pride, and who believe lesbian and
gay people should be jailed, flogged and executed.

It has had the immense positive effect of promoting an unprecedented
public debate about gay issues in Israel and its Middle Eastern
neighbours; giving comfort and hope to isolated, downcast queers
throughout the Arab world.

In the Palestinian territories, lesbians and gays are subjected to
detention without trial, torture and execution by the Palestinian
Authority. There are also extra-judicial killings of gays, perpetrated
by armed groups from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah. These murderous
fundamentalist gangs are hailed as “liberation heroes” (sic) by many
western left-wingers.

For saying this, I can already predict the denunciations of the far
left: “Tatchell is a Zionist…a Mossad agent…a neo-con apologist.” Not
true.

I speak as someone who has supported the Palestinian freedom struggle
for 35 years. Together with the actress Vanessa Redgrave and many
other people, in the early 1970s I began campaigning for a unified,
democratic, federal, secular state, where Jews and Arabs can live
together in peace, unity, equality and justice. I still believe in
that dream.

The lesbian and gay communities in Israel and Palestine prove that
this dream is possible.

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