Nostalgia Sunday – 1 Year Later: GLBT Youth Center

August 1, 2010 - 3:00 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Religion 

Sometimes its important to look back at the not-so-distant past and take a measure of how far we’ve progressed — or not.

Despite yesterday’s infernal heat, thousands of people, gay and straight, gathered in Tel Aviv to mark the one-year memorial anniversary of the GLBT Drop-in Center killings that took two young lives, injured 13 physically and damaged countless others psychologically.

Last year, photographer Gil Lavi documented the spontaneous outpouring of emotion and mourning that followed the horrifying event. The shooter has still not been found.

At the time, Lavi wrote: “This occurred inside a community center for gay and lesbian youth who are afraid to come out to the wider community. A man with a loaded gun came in at around 11pm and opened fire. The statements coming from the police say that he wore a mask. You could say that all those youths who depended on this center for their free expression are forced to wear a mask on a daily basis. Their mask doesn’t cover their face, rather their soul.”

This year, there are signs of increasing tolerance on the horizon and — at least as far as the secular community is concerned — they come from an unexpected source. Orthodox rabbis and educators from Israel and abroad have created and signed a statement of principles “on the place of our brothers and sisters in our community who have a homosexual orientation”. “We hope and pray that by sharing these thoughts we will help the Orthodox community to fully live out its commitment to the principles and values of Torah and Halakha as practiced and cherished by the children of Abraham, who our sages teach us are recognized by the qualities of being rahamanim (merciful), bayshanim (modest), and gomelei hasadim (engaging in acts of loving-kindness).”

Let us hope that these prayers provide much-needed direction to the children of Abraham and come true, speedily and in our days.

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Attack in the heart of Tel Aviv

August 2, 2009 - 11:16 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Life, Religion 

The Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade - will it ever be the same after Saturday's attack?

The Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade - will it ever be the same after Saturday's attack?

We always tout Israel’s – and specifically Tel Aviv’s – tolerant policies and attitudes toward alternative lifestyles. Which makes the horrible news about a masked gunman entering gay youth center in downtown Tel Aviv Saturday night and opening fire killing two and wounding 15 particularly difficult to digest.

According to the police, the masked gunman opened fire, then holstered his pistol and fled the scene by foot to the busy streets of Tel Aviv. The victims of the attack were named as Nir Katz, 26, of Givatayim, and Liz Troubishi, 17, of Holon. According to patrons, the center was not a club or disco, but just a place for teens from 14-21 to hang out in a non-threatening environment.

According to Ha’aretz, Gays and lesbians enjoy great freedom and liberties in Israel. Soldiers serve openly in the military, and openly gay musicians and actors like Ivry Lider are among the most popular in the country. Meretz MK Nitsan Horovitz is openly gay and ran for the current Knesset on a platform of gay rights.

Tel Aviv, one of the more liberal cities in the world, holds a festive annual gay parade, and the there is even a city-sponsored open house for the community. The media in Israel was full of speculation on Sunday whether this was the work of a crazed, lone gunman, or whether it was due to the cultivation of intolerance that certain segments of society have toward gays.

Israel is a place which, on the one hand has liberal laws, but on the other does not attempt to counter homophobia, claimed Danny Zak, a gay activist and journalist,

“The Shas party has the blood of two innocent kids on their hands,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “Shas has blamed gays for earthquakes and diseases. This is incitement, but no one is put on trial for it,” he said.

Shas released a statement following the shooting in which it called for the attacker “to be found and tried. Murder is of course against the Torah’s path and every attack is a contravention of the religion of Israel.”

All of the countries leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Deputy PM Silvan Shalom and Oppostion leader MK Tzippi Livni condemmed the attack. But MK Horovitz also raised the spectre of incitement from public leaders being behind the attack.

“There has been non-stop incitement,” he told the Post. “I very much hope this is not the result of comments made by public figures and Knesset members. They need to understand that some people will take action.”

He said the fact that the location of the center had been disclosed and that the murderer knew exactly where to go were serious blows to the gay community.

While the attack against the center was horrific, the public outcry against the attack and the unanimous condemnation across the board from public officials hopefully points to a future where an environment will not be allowed to develop where something like this could happen.

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