Mideast Crisis Won’t Deter World Pride
by Peter Cassels
Despite the current violence in Lebanon and Israel, most World Pride events will be held as planned in Jerusalem in August, its organizers vowed July 25.
World Pride will be held in Jerusalem Aug. 6-12 and is expected to draw thousands of GLBTs from around the world. The event is held in a different city every four years. It was to have been in Jerusalem last summer but was postponed because of the Israeli pullout from the Gaza. The first World Pride was held in 2000 in Rome.
Extensive security, including the need for police reinforcements from other parts of Israel, made it impractical to hold a march, considered a World Pride highlight, Aug. 8 because of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah terrorist organization, organizers say. They plan to announce a new date for the march as soon as a ceasefire is achieved.
Jerusalem Open House, the city’s GLBT community center, is organizing World Pride events, which include conferences, a film festival, exhibitions, shows, and religious, activist and literary events.
Organizers conducted a telephone news conference with North American journalists from Jerusalem July 25.
"Jerusalem is as peaceful as it was three weeks ago," Hagai El-Ad, Jerusalem Open House executive director, emphasized. "That situation has not changed." He went on to report that the first World Pride attendees began streaming into Jerusalem in the last 48 hours. He said the city is more crowded than usual because many from Haifa and other areas near the Lebanon border have sought the comparative safety of the city to be with relatives and friends.
"We will not give in to violence," El-Ad said of threats by World Pride opponents. "All of the events we are holding will be coordinated in an appropriate fashion with the local police force. It is their assessment that there will be ample measures provided. We are committed to making sure it is successful." The Israeli government’s tourism office is one of the event’s sponsors.
"Jerusalem is as peaceful as it was three weeks ago. That situation has not changed." Several religious figures have condemned staging World Pride in the city, a holy place for Christians, Jews and Muslims, just as they did in 2000 when it was held in Rome, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church.
"I can tell you that we are not going to be satisfied until all events associated with Jerusalem Pride will close down," Rabbi Yehuda Levin of New York, has said.
"All the objections around the world are based on faith arguments," Noa Sattah, Jerusalem Open House chair, said at the news conference. "We have a stake in religion, too, and moral values as well. We reject the basic assumption on which our rights are denied."
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, North American World Pride co-chair, also participated in the session with reporters. The head rabbi of New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the largest GLBT synagogue in the world, compared criticisms of holding the event in locations of significance to religions to those of lunch counter sit-in demonstrations in the South during the 1960s. "It was necessary for black people and white people in good faith to stand together and reject discrimination," she explained. "We are standing together to reject the bigotry that religion has been identified with."
One event that has not been cancelled, but has the potential to be a target of protests, is a solidarity rally Aug. 7 at the Separation Wall, a project begun two years ago that divides the city, leaves many of its residents behind the barrier and denies access to most of the city to Palestinians, including GLBTs. El-Ad noted that many Palestinians who are Israeli citizens are members of Jerusalem Open House and will participate in World Pride.
El-Ad told journalists about an orthodox Jew who is gay and lives in one of Jerusalem’s orthodox neighborhoods. About ten days ago, he visited the community center "and told one of staffers with wet eyes how much every time he walks in the center of the city and sees the big rainbow flying...how grateful he is for us being here in downtown Jerusalem. He knows he is not alone. One of the things that World Pride has already accomplished is that through the unprecedented visibility of our community there is not a single gay person in the city that does not know that there is a gay community and does not know there is going to be a World Pride in 12 days."
Visit www.worldpride.net for more information about Jerusalem World Pride 2006.
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