Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid will be marching in Montreal's Gay Pride Parade.
All righty then!
Leaving aside the group's apparent ignorance of the definition of "apartheid," there remain one or two questions about their perception of gay life in the Palestinian Territories versus Israel. There are, unfortunately, many instances that could be catalogued here of the persecution of homosexuals in the Territories. Rather than provide a list, I'll instead offer a quick primer on gay rights in Israel.
- Gay sex is legal.
- Same-sex partners can legally adopt children, including one another's biological children.
- Gay soldiers serve openly throughout the armed forces. Discrimination by the army against homosexuals of either gender in recruitment, placement or promotion is prohibited.
- Gay partners who are living together have the legal status of "unregistered cohabitation," a version of common-law marriage. They are viewed by the state as legal units for tax, real estate and financial purposes, including spousal benefits. Same-sex partners of civil service employees are entitled to survivor benefits.
- Insurance companies recognize same-sex partnerships. Surviving partners receive employment compensation.
- Same-sex marriages performed abroad are legally recognized by the state. (Note that for any marriage conducted inside Israel to be legal, it has to be performed by an Orthodox rabbi, so gay weddings are out. So are non-Orthodox straight weddings. Marriages abroad, however, are all legally recognized. There is thus a long tradition of couples marrying in Israel with the clergyman who suits them and then flying out of the country to have another ceremony. I did this. I got married in Jaffa in September 2001, a lovely wedding to a nice Jewish man, but treif (unkosher) according to the Chief Rabbinate since our rabbi wasn't Orthodox. We got married again in Cyprus a month later. If we hadn't, technically we wouldn't be married.)
- Foreign partners of gay Israelis are eligible for residency permits.
- Lesbians are granted the same access to IVF treatment as straight women.
- Individuals have the right to change their legal gender.
- The city of Tel Aviv recognizes all unmarried couples, straight or gay, as family units. This entitles them to the same discounts for municipal services -- things like day care, pools, sports facilities, and so on -- that married couples receive.
- Israel has had an open and thriving gay pride movement for decades.
Anyone has the right to opine about Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians (and they do), but it takes a special kind of tunnel vision to do so as a homosexual with no reference whatsoever to the largely grim reality of life for homosexuals in the Territories. Denouncing Israel as an apartheid state is apparently of greater value to these people than taking a public stand to improve that reality for gay Palestinians. I can’t help but wonder what said gay Palestinians – who can’t openly identify as such for fear of retribution -- think of all this.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
When is the Tehran Gay Pride Parade?
Jun '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
Arab men who engage in carnal acts of a homosexual sort aren't necessarily gay. Can I assume most Ricochet readers are sophisticated enough to know this? The Arabs have a strange double standard about homosexuality. Young men get their first sexual experiences with one another. Such activity is considered normal. But if a man is unmarried by age 30 and still indulging in homosexual behaviour, he might be considered gay. There is just no real equivalency between occidental notions of "gay" and Arab attitudes about the same behaviours. It's one of those weird things about Arab culture that's hard to fathom.
Jun '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
In the world of leftwing victimology, the side most likely to lose armed battles are automatically the "good guys," and the more lopsided their defeat, the better people they are. Did you think leftwing support had something to do with good and evil? Heavens no.
Aug '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
Judith Levy:
Note that for any marriage conducted inside Israel to be legal, it has to be performed by an Orthodox rabbi, so gay weddings are out. So are non-Orthodox straight weddings. Marriages abroad, however, are all legally recognized. There is thus a long tradition of couples marrying in Israel with the clergyman who suits them and then flying out of the country to have another ceremony.
Sheer innocent curiosity here: how did this arrangement come to be?
Israel is small enough that you don't have to travel too far to get out of the country. Still, is it common for people to marry in Israel with the clergy who suit them and then never get around to leaving the country for the "official wedding"?
Jul '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
Arab men who engage in carnal acts of a homosexual sort aren't necessarily gay. Can I assume most Ricochet readers are sophisticated enough to know this?
Well, considering that the penalty for homosexual acts under Sharia range from stoning to lashing to hanging, one wouldn't expect fellows in that part of the world to openly celebrate their "gay pride".
Jul '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
Sigh. I've never claimed we were smart. I mean, gay activists were the ones who stalled Vaughn Walker's appointment to the federal bench because they were convinced he was anti-gay. But you're right, this takes a very special kind of stupid.
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
Midget, this dates back to the end of the Mandate. In 1947, just before the Mandate ended, David Ben-Gurion agreed to allow the religious authorities to maintain their existing control over Jewish marriages and divorces. In 1951, the Supreme Court required the state to legally recognize marriages conducted abroad, but the Chief Rabbinate still has jurisdiction over those conducted inside Israel. The reason this is an issue for us garden-variety Israelis is that only marriages recognized by the Chief Rabbinate will in turn be recognized by the Interior Ministry. And while life unrecognized by the Interior Ministry is certainly possible, it's basically one big headache.
That's a great question about what proportion of Israelis never manage to get around to the "official wedding" abroad. I don't know the answer, but I expect it's not too high -- as you say, it's easy enough to hop somewhere close and take care of it. Most people want the official recognition in order to avoid future problems about the legal status of their children, whose own marriage rights might be affected by the marital status of their parents.
May '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
I cannot let this outrageous claim to stupidity by Montreal's gays stand. Here in Toronto (which is an old Indian word for "Centre of the Universe") the gay community also harbours a noxious crew billed as "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" and since Toronto's Gay Pride Parade was a month ago, that would make Toronto first across the finish-line of ignorance and mendacity. So there!
Now that I've addressed the most important issue (being Canadian intra-municipal bloodletting) may I say this of the secondary issue, what did anyone expect? The inevitability of this was well..... inevitable. Mr. Buckley's observation that organizations that are not specifically conservative become left-wing over time, applies as much to the Gay Pride Parade as it does to the Ford Foundation. The industrial workers of Scotland and England who hurled themselves into the fires of socialism through the 50's and 60's and thus destroyed in order, their industries, their living, their country and the expectations of their grandchildren, did so in the face of substantial evidence that socialism was antithetical to a decent life. But they got the frisson of being "revolutionaries" in return. Sound familiar?
May '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
@The Glaswegian,
With all due respect, it was John O'Sullivan, not Buckley. See here:
http://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback-jos062603.asp
One of my favorite NR pieces of all time.
May '10
Re: Just Don't March Too Close to Ramallah
I stand corrected.