Bringing Peace

October 2, 2007 - 3:30 PM by

If there is to be peace in the Mid East, who’s to say who or what might bring it about?

TIME/CNN blogger Andrew Lee Butters takes issue with the recent trend of dual passport holding Israelis surreptitiously crossing over into Lebanon or Syria in his most recent entry Israeli Reporters Without Borders.

At the same time, Butters posits that the gay population may very well be the forebears of a future “neighborly love” regional pact.

The consequence of these fly-by-night reporting trips is that it becomes harder for other foreign journalists to work in these countries. There has been a palpable clampdown on the foreign press in Lebanon ever since the Israeli reporters pulled their stunt. It’s a lot more complicated to get access to Hizballah, or to visit southern Lebanon, and the sense of humor failure is such that my TIME colleague Nick Blanford got detained a few weeks ago by Hizballah and the Lebanese authorities on suspicion of being an Israeli spy.

But there’s at least one good reason for Israelis to use their second passports to cross forbidden boundaries: brotherly love. That’s what brought 32 year-old Israeli Daniel Sharon to Lebanon. The gay Israeli used his German passport to visit boyfriends in Lebanon until Sunday when he was arrested in Beirut.

Though Sharon — who converted to Islam and seems to have something of an Arab fetish — might be a diplomatic headache for the German embassy (which is trying to secure his release), there’s a school of thought which holds that gay men — who face discrimination all over the Middle East — could be the key to brining peace to the region.

Go on over to get the rest.

Thanks, John, for the heads up.

Tags: • Category: A New Reality, Blogging, Pop Culture 

Comments

6 Comments on Bringing Peace

  1. David-Joe on Wed, Oct 3rd 2007 3:11 AM

    2. [...there’s a school of thought which holds that gay men — who face discrimination all over the Middle East — could be the key to brining peace to the region....]

    And everyone will sing kumbaya too.

    It may be a school but the thought part is definitely missing – something like that traitor Bar Rafaeli who dissed Israel in way that I cannot believe. But it is true.

    Y’see the money gods are at it. She may be pretty to many people, but she definitely has nothing else. Good riddance. Los Angeles [an awful city with equally messed up people] deserves her.

  2. Stephanie on Wed, Oct 3rd 2007 6:06 AM

    3. D-J: No need to condescend. We won’t be singing kumbaya together but we also don’t need to bring things down to the personal assault level. Keep your tone in check, please.

  3. Liza on Wed, Oct 3rd 2007 11:15 AM

    4. Butters’ post was pathetic. What a little whiner!

  4. Stephanie on Wed, Oct 3rd 2007 6:27 PM

    5. why pathetic? Because of what he wrote vis a vis Israeli journo’s messing it up for others?

  5. David-Joe on Sun, Oct 7th 2007 2:20 PM

    6. Stephanie, with respect I think you are being surprisingly sensitive. I grew up with vivid memories as a small child of bullets flying through our border kibbutz in the middle of the night from the Jordanian side only to have no sleep as quick responses from Arik’s boys quieted down everything.

    Then, came the Six Day war and we had no idea whether we would even be alive and have a country – at the age of 10 helping around units stationed for weeks in our kibbutz is not an ideal children’s playtime – which finally pushed the Arabs back across the Jordan. Then as I matured came the awful war in 1973 and I saw the results up close, losing people I respected and loved.

    I did my service and was in Lebanon and spent three months pushing the Arabs back to Beirut before we stopped living in military vehicles and on the move.

    I have fought for Israel, I have seen families devastated and I know very well the pressures Israel is constanty under.

    The Arabs have not changed and they will never. How many times must Israel experience Oslo and we always end up with Gaza? Tell me?

    This is not a matter of showing any Arab how loving and friendly we can be. It is a matter of making them realize that it is a bad idea to go on attacking Israel.

    And anyone thinking that a gay person can solve anything in the mid-east considering the religious attitudes to gay people – is seriously misguided.

    On the other hand all the Arabs want is what Daniel Sharon did, convert to Islam and submit to their barbaric practices.

    Finally, my manner may be somewhat abrasive but at no time do I mean to be offensive to you. If I wanted to do that I would not hide it.

  6. Stephanie on Sun, Oct 7th 2007 8:50 PM

    7. It’s not about being offensive to me, DJ. It’s about being offensive or insensitive to sensitivities of other groups or people at large. That doesn’t have to do with sensitivity. Merely with etiquette.

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