Plan for gay pride parade roils Israel - Fear of attacks forces move to stadium site

Plan for gay pride parade roils Israel - Fear of attacks forces move to stadium site

JERUSALEM -- After midnight at Shushan, the only gay bar in Jerusalem, Tallulah Bonnet, a local drag queen, was on stage, lip-synching another number before an enthusiastic crowd.

Spirits were high, but there was an undercurrent of apprehension after plans for a gay pride parade on Friday set off violent street protests in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods and raised fears of attacks against the marchers.

"Who's afraid here?" asked an announcer from the stage. "Who's going to march even though they're afraid?" A cheer and a forest of hands went up in the darkened room.

There have been gay pride parades in Jerusalem in recent years, but this time the planned march triggered a particularly fierce campaign of opposition from ultra-Orthodox Jews, who said the public display would defile the Holy City and deeply offend its residents.

Compromise reached

In a compromise reached Thursday, gay organizers agreed to hold a stadium rally, rather than a procession through downtown streets that would have required a more extensive deployment of police already stretched thin by a heightened security alert.

The concerns about violence against marchers were real. Last year an ultra-Orthodox assailant stabbed three participants in the gay pride parade as it wound through downtown Jerusalem.

Every night over the last week, youths and riot police have squared off on the streets of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim. The protesters burned garbage bins, blocked roads with flaming barricades and pelted police with rocks.

"Jerusalem is not Sodom!" shouted demonstrators on a recent night as they confronted the police. Wall posters in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods denounced the gay pride organizers as "wicked beasts preparing to defile the Holy City" with a "march of abomination."

One of Israel's two chief rabbis, Shlomo Amar, went on radio to denounce the gay celebration, calling it a "negative influence on children and youth that is destructive to the life of society."

There were also protests from Muslim clerics and even from the Vatican, which in a statement issued Wednesday said that a gay parade in Jerusalem would "prove offensive to the great majority of Jews, Muslims and Christians, given the sacred character of the city."

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski, himself an ultra-Orthodox Jew, said the event threatened coexistence in the city among its various ethnic and religious groups.

But for the organizers, the gay festival is an affirmation of their presence in Jerusalem, a conservative place where the gay lifestyle is not widely accepted.

"Calling the march a provocation is calling the existence of the gay community here a provocation," said Noa Sattath, director of the Open House, the gay center in Jerusalem. "This is going to be a human-rights demonstration. Human rights also have to be protected in the Holy City."

Religious-secular debate

Sa'ar Netanel, a gay member of the Jerusalem City Council, said the battle was over nothing less than the character of Israel's capital.

"The question is whether we want a democratic, pluralistic capital city or a twin city with Tehran or Kabul," Netanel said. "The conflict with the Arabs tends to unite us in a way that prevents discussion of the real problems of Israeli society, which is deeply divided between religious and secular. That debate has not yet been decided."

On the streets of Mea Shearim, the issue was seen differently.

"We have only one holy city in the whole world, why come here and cause a provocation?" said Yossef Demgi, 35, a yeshiva student. "Let them go to Tel Aviv."

The stadium rally, instead of a march, was grudgingly agreed to by the ultra-Orthodox leadership, which called off further protests.

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, an ultra-Orthodox activist, claimed victory.

"They were downtown," he said. "We've pushed them to the edge of town, and next year, with God's help, we'll run them out of town."