Rally in Tel Aviv
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, coexistence
(Photo: Reuters/ Ronen Zvulun)
“The bullets that hit the gay community at the beginning of the week struck us all as people, as Jews, as Israelis … criminals will not set our agenda,” said President Shimon Peres from the podium. “The Creator of the world did not endow anyone with the power to murder his peer.”
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai also spoke at the rally, saying that “we thought that in Tel Aviv-Yafo… we had created an open and accepting society for our children.”
Police still have the case under a gag order, and have not revealed a motive for the shooting. Speculation ranges from it being a hate crime against gays to a personal attack, either by a father of one of the center’s patron’s or perhaps a scorned romantic involvement. Outspoken activists were quick to point fingers at conservative, religious legislators for creating an environment that would enable the attack to occur, but there’s been no evidence released tying in any religious aspects to the shooting.
Last Saturday, a masked gunman burst into a community centre for gay teenagers in Tel Aviv and shot dead Nir Katz, 26-year-old, and a 16-year-old Liz Trubeshi. Thirteen other people were wounded.
Vigils have been held at cities around the world for the victims, and last night, several musicians and entertainers appeared at the Tel Aviv rally, including Rita, Dana International, Ninette Tayeb, Amir Fay Guttman, Keren Peles, Corinne Alal and Ivri Lider.
Would it better if if turned out that the shooter was targeting gays out of hate, or if it was simply a random mass shooting, the kind that takes place in the US on a weekly basis, like last week’s ramapage at a fitness center in Pennsylvania? Both scenarios are kind of horrific, and neither bode well for Israeli society.
Pride and parking in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion, coexistence
In Tel Aviv, there were parades and celebrations. In Jerusalem, there was a protest demonstration. Just another typical weekend in Israel.
Meretz MK Nitsan Horowitz must have been the busiest guy in the country, as he managed to participate in both events – the annual Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv on Friday, which this year, included the ‘weddings’ of five gay couples – and a Saturday protest in the capital by secular activists angered that the opening of a parking lot on Shabbat for Old City visitors was suspended due to riots the week before by haredi protestors.
Got that straight… um, clear?
According to supporters between 20,000 and 30,000 participants took place in the Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade, culminating in the joint wedding ceremony on the beach (which can be viewed on the accompanying video).
Ha’aretz wrote:
The ceremony, held at sundown after a boisterous disco on the sand, began with a serenade by gay pop star Ivri Lider as the three female and two male same-sex couples walked up to the Chuppah, the Jewish wedding altar.
The ceremony was performed according to Jewish marriage rites, with each couple exchanging rings and Hebrew vows before breaking the traditional glass as the crowd erupted in applause.
Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz, the Knesset’s first openly gay parliamentarian, attended the wedding, along with Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai.
“I hope that from this day weddings like this can happen in every place in Israel and not just in Tel Aviv,” Horowitz told Haaretz. “Weddings for everyone – man and woman, man and man, and woman and woman, and this will be the end of the monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox over our lives in Israel.”
The parade was sponsored by Tel Aviv municipality as part of the city’s centennial celebrations. It was a far cry from the scene the next day in Jerusalem when several hundred people gathered in the Kikar Safra to protest what they called Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s “capitulation” to the city’s haredi community over the Shabbat operation of a municipal parking lot.
The mayor had opened the garage last weekend, with the approval of his haredi coalition partners. But the move prompted a riot by thousands of haredim, and more rioting had been threatened for Saturday if the lot were opened again.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Barkat, on Friday, acceded to a request from the city’s police chief to close the municipal garage for two successive Saturdays. The plan is to find an alternative site to during that time to accommodate parking for visitors to the nearby Old City.
“This is just a warm-up demonstration,” Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Pepe Allalo of Meretz told the crowd, estimated by the organizers at 800, who sang and chatted in the afternoon sunshine. “But if [Barkat] doesn’t reopen the garage in two weeks, we’ll fill the whole square.”
Some haredim, said Allalo, “want to turn Jerusalem into another Bnei Brak… We won’t let that happen.”
Barkat’s spokesman Evyatar Elad said that the parking lot would be reopened in two weeks if no solution to the lack of weekend parking near the Old City could be found by then.
MK Horowitz, fresh from the Tel Aviv celebration the day before, told the crowd that the dispute over the garage was “part of the wider struggle over the very nature of the State of Israel.
“If there is no freedom for secular Jerusalemites, in time there will no freedom for the secular residents of Tel Aviv or anywhere else,” he declared.
Later this month, all of the issues will gloriously converge like a master plan from above. Jerusalem is holding its own annual gay pride parade on June 25th. In the past, despite a much lower profile than Tel Aviv’s parade, there have several confrontations with haredim in Jerusalem, including violence and injuries resulting.
Which demonstration will the haredim choose to attend? The ‘close the parking lot’ or the ’stop the gay pride parade’ protests? And just where will all the gay pride parade attendees park?
Stay tuned…
Life in Tel Aviv is a beach
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Travel
If you can’t make it Tel Aviv this summer to enjoy one of the greatest beaches in the world, Israel can bring the beach to you.
Artificial beach fronts, complete with ‘arcticim’ (ice pops), ‘matkot’ (paddle ball), DJs, food, and live musical performances will be set up this summer in honor of Tel Aviv’s 100th birthday in three locations – New York’s Central Park on June 21, Vienna (from April 28 to September 1) and Copenhagen (from July 25 to August 2)
Sponsored by the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Centennial Administration, the Foreign and Tourism ministries, and corporate partner El Al Israel Airways, the Tel Aviv beach project is attempting to give people a taste of what our Mediterranean coast is really like.
In New York, that means shipping in 30 tons of sand to cover the 15 yard by 15 yard ‘beach’ that’s being erected at the Naumberg Bandshell in Central Park. That costs money, and $200,000 is being allocated to the NY-Tel Aviv beach, an expenditure that Mayor Ron Huldai thinks is money well spent.
“If tourists are going to come to Israel, it will cover the project tenfold,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “There is another Israel, not only wars and crisis.”
The one-day event, which is free to the public, will start at 11 a.m. and finish at 6 p.m. At noon, DJ Hadar Marks will host a beach party and Israeli reggae band Hatikva 6 and rock band Flow will perform.
The notion that most Americans don’t have a notion that the Tel Aviv beach is one happening place was brought home during a comedy routine Sunday night by US comic David Crowe, one of four American funnymen currently touring Israel on behalf of Comedy For Koby.
Crowe, along with fellow comics Avi Liberman, AJ Jamal, and Jeffrey Ross, wowed the sold out Jerusalem show, and the Catholic-raised Crowe (“My grandfather was a priest… evidently not a very good one”) described his first experience in the Holy Land.
“I go down to the beach outside my hotel in Tel Aviv, and I can’t believe it. There’s bronzed-skin women in tiny bikinis, drum circles, dance music. I know the Jews wanted a homeland, but I didn’t know it was Brazil!”
Gearing up for Tel Aviv’s 100th
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Travel
A poster in competition for the Tel Aviv Centennial.
Arriving there from Jerusalem is always like entering a different country, that’s moving a noticeably more rapid pace. Yup, Tel Aviv has alot to be proud of, and starting next month, the city is launching its Centennial celebrations with six months of exhibits, shows, programs, and educational and cultural offerings.
Just a few highlights from a press briefing that Mayor Ron Huldai and Centennial director general Hila Oren gave this week
* A NIS 500,000 statue of Tel Aviv’s first mayor Meir Dizengoff, designed by artist David Zondolovitz will be unveiled in front of the mayor’s home on Rothschild Boulevard to coincide with a conference on April 23rd at the Cameri Theater on the descendants of the city’s founding fathers. (By the way, a recent survey of high school students showed that most thought famed Dizengoff Street was named after the Dizengoff Center shopping mall – so there’s something to be said for those educational programs they’re planning).
* The city has embarked on 15 major renovation projects to mark the Centennial, including the restoration of the Jaffa Port, the Manshia train station at the edge of Jaffa, the restoration of the Trumpeldor Street cemetery where many of the city’s founders are buried, and new wings for the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the Museum of Art and Habimah Theater.
* A gala opening celebration at Kikar Rabin on April 4th
* The Tel Aviv Marathon on April 24th
* Little Tel Aviv’s White Nights nostalgia festival on May 27th
* The Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade on June 12th
* The Blue-Mediterranean Festival in Jaffa on June 16th
* A gala performance of Verdi’s Requiem by La Scala at Ganei Yehoshua on July 16th
Huldai spoke about the actual 100th birthday of the city – marked as April 11, 1909 when several dozen families gathered on the sand dunes outside Jaffa to choose plots for land for a new neighborhood called Ahuzat Bayit, later renamed Tel Aviv. Since they couldn’t decide who would get which plot, they held a lottery by gathering 60 gray and 60 white seashells. Akiva Arieh Weiss, chairman of the lottery committee, wrote the names of the participants on the white shells and the plot numbers on the gray shells, and paired the names with the plots.
“Every day it’s a miracle. When I think about 100 years ago and those families standing on the sand dunes and picking up shells for the lottery, and then seeing this metropolis today, it’s just a miracle,” said Huldai.
So, if you’re planning a trip in the next few months, think about Tel Aviv and join in celebrating the miracle.
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