Last update - 00:00 09/11/2006
Israelis' feeble enlightenment
By Yitzhak Laor
In general, when controversy rages, when the newspapers are full of arguments - and every lawyer knows how many arguments it is possible to find for and against any issue - and when many (organizers, police, opponents, politicians, publicists) are involved in a decision or action, the real nature of the event gets lost in the images of how its supporters, or opponents, want to present it. Therefore, it is worth asking a few leading questions in order to understand the nature of the Gay Pride parade, and clarify what does not belong in the debate over it.
Is the parade meant to emphasize that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel? If not, why is it specifically taking place in Jerusalem? Should the parade only go through West Jerusalem, or through the entire city? For if we are talking about united Jerusalem, why not also bring the tidings of sexual liberation to East Jerusalem, closed off within its wall, so that the march could also be seen as a parade about Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, thereby reflecting the consensus? Incidentally, is it not also worth asking such a question about the necessity of marching through Jewish neighborhoods that see the event as not only a "parade of perverts," but also a "parade of the secular rulers?"
And other questions should also be asked: Is it important to march in Jerusalem because there are many liberated homosexuals there, or because there are many oppressed homosexuals there? If it's because there are many oppressed homosexuals, it could very well be that it would be even better to march in Be'er Sheva, where there are apparently far more oppressed homosexuals. Or why not organize a Gay Pride parade in Yeruham or Sderot or Hatzor Haglilit? They say that it's harder to be a homosexual in those places than it is to be an ultra-Orthodox homosexual in Mea She'arim. Who says so? Among others, Haredi homosexuals, enjoy themselves quietly, without making a big fuss, in Jerusalem's gay entertainment venues. Incidentally, religious lesbians in Jerusalem also have public meeting places, and no one has ever made a big deal about it.
It's doubtful that the parade's organizers have ever been interested in Jerusalem's human mosaic. Parades - even in the name of an "oppressed minority" - tend to ignore the human mosaic, with all its contradictions and griefs. There is no doubt that now, Haredi homosexuals have been trapped along with their community, which is under attack - because the decisive issue ever since the debate over the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem began has not been the right to march, but the Haredim as "the enemies of enlightenment."
It is possible to ask a few more questions in order to examine the real nature of the parade: Should its slogans be limited to equal rights for homosexuals, or should it also raise the banner of support for other oppressed minorities, such as the Arab minority in Israel or the Arab Palestinian nation? This question is meant not to detract from the homosexuals' right to march, but to argue that this parade does not have the significance that all kinds of human rights defenders have bestowed on it. This parade channeled itself from the start into the most "convenient" arena in Israel for the "unenlightened enlightened": the one in which "enlightened" means "anti-Haredi."
For decades, the enlightened Israeli has freed himself of any obligation connected to human or civil rights - for instance, any thorough discussion of Israel's unwritten apartheid constitution - by means of a single battle cry: "The Haredim are to blame." There are two salient examples of this. It is not the religious who are responsible for the situation in which we are obligated to marry and divorce through the rabbinate. The state created this separation fence upon its inception. But it's convenient to blame the religious parties, who are the fence's subcontractors in this reactionary situation.
An even better example is Israel's lack of a constitution. For years, Israelis have ascribed this lack to religious opposition to a written constitution. They forget that a constitution is impossible because the State of Israel, that unenlightened enlightened state, does not want to open the constitution with a declaration of full equality for all its citizens, and particularly not regarding property rights.
None of the above absolves the religious parties, which are subcontractors that profit from the role assigned to them by the state. None of the above absolves the religious community of persecuting homosexuals. All of the above are meant only to point out that the present confrontation, which the homosexuals are hastening to celebrate as a victory over their persecutors, or as a defeat at the hands of their persecutors, is no different from the old, familiar battle over a "universal draft," in which all kinds of leftists - liberal publicists and "leftist" politicians - find themselves acting as the army's recruiting agents and Ehud Barak's soldiers.
The homosexuals, through the Gay Pride parade, are happy to be "part of the majority" for a moment, and they thereby erase the sensitivity that they had intended to promote: sensitivity toward minorities. Minorities never all fit into the same basket. That's why they need sensitivity. The ruling elite - Ashkenazi, secular and enlightened to a limited degree - will not suddenly become fans of homosexuals as of tomorrow. The secular Ashkenazi majority, which delights in defining itself for the umpteenth time as "enlightened," will not really become enlightened through this struggle. The opposite is true. Israeli enlightenment is being built, as always, in the most primitive fashion, through incitement a la Tommy Lapid: "We are not Haredim." In other words, we have left the ghetto, and therefore we are free people - just like in Europe.