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Why We Can No Longer Look the Other Way
Camp Trans Confronts Transphobia at Michigan Women's Music Festival
Why We Can No Longer Look the Other Way
WorldPride 2006 to be Held in Jerusalem
by
Kerry Lobel and Julie Dorf
It
might seem rather myopic, even self-centered, to focus on an LGBTQ rights
demonstration in Israel during times like these. For now, Jerusalem WorldPride
(August 6-12) is still on after much debate. Its organizers are even more
determined to sound a message of peace and tolerance in the midst of growing
chaos in the region, but they can’t do it alone.
As foreigners, it’s hard to imagine
that business goes on as usual in Jerusalem. We see unending images of
complete destruction in Southern Lebanon, and attacks on Northern Israel.
Since the Israeli siege in Gaza earlier this summer, many activists, understandably,
have found it difficult to call for a focus on LGBTQ issues in the heart
of an occupied country at war knowing that Palestinians in Gaza do without
water and electricity under the 100-degree summer heat, and that the Israeli
army bombs not only Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, but roads, power lines,
and innocent families, displacing more than 600,000 people.
However, with international attention
now on this part of the globe, WorldPride can and must be seen as part
of a wider social justice agenda. Together, we must seize this opportunity
to show the interconnectedness of all movements for liberation.
In the two weeks prior to the Hezbollah
capture of two Israeli soldiers, WorldPride Jerusalem organizers and LGBTQ
leaders from around the world mounted a sustained and necessary response
to anti-LGBTQ attacks and death threats by right wing religious leaders,
particularly from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. These are the same
leaders who support the settler movement, and who oppose the creation
of a Palestinian state.
Calls by extremists for the world’s
largest anti-gay demonstration, combined with violence in the region,
has led Jerusalem authorities to deny WorldPride organizers the permit
needed to march. The connection between anti-LGBTQ and anti-Palestinian
attacks has been made for us, and these attacks are escalating on both
fronts.
With the escalating violence in Israel,
Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, it is time for LGBTQ leaders to help
WorldPride organizers make real their pledge to use this critical moment
and world stage to show solidarity with Palestinians and Israeli peace
and justice activists by calling for an end to the occupation, at the
same time as calling for the end to religious intolerance. Together, we
can work for a just resolution to this decades-long conflict.
The WorldPride Jerusalem 2006 website
reads: “The reality that surrounds us is one of violent conflict
and decades-long occupation. While painful enough, it is becoming even
more painful as a result of the separation wall being built up over the
last two years, which physically divides Jerusalem and leaves many Jerusalemites
behind the wall, denying access to most of Jerusalem for Palestinians,
including members from our LGBTQ community.
Our commitment is to challenge the
hostile environment around us and stand behind our principles. The separation
wall hurts everyone in our community. Within the official program of the
Jerusalem WorldPride events this August, we want to express our solidarity
with our community’s members who will not be able to be part of
WorldPride.”
As the WorldPride 2006 organizers
wrote, “Holding WorldPride in Jerusalem, the city at the heart of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is a significant opportunity for our
diverse community to raise a different voice, a voice for progressive
moral values, inclusion, and pluralism.”
If WorldPride organizers can speak
out against the occupation, our LGBTQ leaders from around the world can
do no less. As an LGBTQ movement, we have the responsibility to promote
our own deeply held values of human equality and civil rights and to speak
out against injustice wherever and however we find it. For those of us
spending WorldPride week at home, we can take action to bring peace to
Israel and Palestine, and now Lebanon. Kerry Lobel will be standing with
Women in Black in the Bay Area to call for an end tothe occupation. For
more information about an action near you, contact www.bayareawomeninblack.org
For those who are attending Jerusalem
World- Pride, please join Julie Dorf, WorldPride U.S. co-chair, who will
stand along with WorldPride organizers in solidarity with Palestinians
on Monday, August 7th at a Solidarity Rally at the Jerusalem Separation
Wall at 17:00. More information about the rally location can be found
at www.worldpride.net
With our every action, we can bring
peace. Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamliel said, “On three things the world
stands: on justice, on truth, and on peace.” (Zechariah 8:16).
Kerry Lobel is the former Executive Director of the National Gay &
Lesbian Task Force and is a consultant to national and international LGBT
and feminist organizations. She can be reached at kerrylobel@thechangegroup.org
Julie Dorf is the founder of the International Gay & Lesbian Human
Rights Commission, and is Chair of the advisory committee to Human Rights
Watch’s LGBT Rights Program.