Gays celebrate victory in Jerusalem

[oberliner]

Following the successful, and relatively peaceful pride parade Thursday, members of the gay and lesbian community pledged to hold the same parade in the capital next year as well.

"This is a great victory for the community," said chairman of the Open House Noa Satat. "We wanted to march at the heart of Jerusalem, and I'm very glad we did it… the community members' turnout and the fact that the parade went through quietly and without any casualties is very impressive and encouraging."

Satat said that she appreciated the efforts put forth by the police to secure the marchers, but stated that in the end – this was the police's duty. "I wish to thank all the policemen and policewomen who came and did an excellent job and succeeded in securing the event.

"I think that the police were very concerned about the pride parade in Jerusalem, and therefore our relations with them became quite tense. The district chief is not doing the community a favor by securing the parade, but I can definitely appreciate this where the pride parade is concerned."

Saar Netanel, a Jerusalem City Council member and a prominent gay community leader, was also happy with the parade's outcome. "I think we won, for me this is a victory. We marched in the center of Jerusalem, and our pride flags, which represent tolerance and equality, were flown through the streets, despite the mayor's discontent and his attempt to sabotage the parade," he said.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3416092,00.html

[tomreedtoon]

1. Why are they celebrating? They're in the Middle East!!!

They're in Jerusalem! They're gonna DIE! They're going to be blown up or machine-gunned by one faction or another. True, in many cases they don't have kids whose arms and legs will be blown off, but that's pretty cold comfort in a country where only revenge is served cold.

Now, put them on a boat to some other section of the globe, anyplace but the Middle East, and THEN they'll have a reason to celebrate.

[rayofreason]

3. Israel is the ONLY place...

...in the Middle East where Gays are safe from murder and abuse.

Kudos to them.

And by the way, we are all going to die. It is how we live that counts.

[tomreedtoon]

4. "Gays are safe from murder???" NO ONE is safe in the Middle East!

Anywhere in that misbegotten, Godforsaken place - ironically, a place held as sacred by a lot of religions - is a killing floor.

What prevents the fanatics of whatever cause from killing gays? If they are so safe, why haven't I seen any suggestions that people sew rainbow flag patches to their clothing to keep them from getting blown up there?

And yes, we are all going to die. Few of us will die as a fanatic enemy screams curses at us, unloading machine gun fire at our friends, our family and our genitals. That's a real special death, especially for the kids. The Middle East is the only place that makes New York City seem safe by comparison. Gays, straights, EVERYBODY who can should get the hell away from there.

[eyl]

5. Y'know, I originally assumed

you were being sarcastic. Apparently, I was wrong.

You seem to have a rather distorted image of daily life in the Middle East in general and in Israel in particular. No-one has tried to kill me, in, oh, at least a week.

And to read your post, one might think gays are perfectly safe outside the Middle East - a contention which is not exactly accurate.

[tomreedtoon]

8. You guys seem to have a weird sense of "safety."

Don't lecture me about gay prejudice, dude. I know about it. So they won't kill you in the Middle East if you're gay? It doesn't matter. They will kill you because you still have a pulse.

This world is full of people who love to kill. A lot of them are in the Middle East and New York. A higher concentration of them in those locations than any other part of the world. And I'm not talking about places like Abu Gareb where, horrible as it is, there is some rationale for killing. Untrue or not, most of the soldiers doing the killing honestly believe they're helping security in the United States. They kill because they think it will keep their families from being killed down the line.

In New York and Iraq, people kill other people because they think killing is fun. They are both places that rational people, gay, straight, whatever, should leave and stay the hell away from.

[eyl]

9. I'm officially speechless n/t

[pampango]

10. Correct me, if I am wrong, but the citizens of Israel are free to leave

the country and live somewhere else, as we are here, if they so choose. You may feel that all of the Middle East, including Israel, is one big killing field, but many may feel an allegiance to the country that more than makes up for the dangers that go with living there. Those that feel it is worth it to stay and live in Israel are to be commended for trying to make it a better place. The same could be said, I hope, for the citizens in any country in the Middle East.

[tomreedtoon]

11. Interesting that you should bring that up.

The esteemed Bartcop, the progressive blogger from Knuckledrag, Oklahoma - http://www.bartcop.com if you didn't know - spoke about this several times. He pointed out that Israelis would have much more peaceful lives and wouldn't see as many of their kids being gutted in the streets...

...if they would get the hell out of Israel and locate to Oklahoma. It is always a sensible policy to get the hell away from the people who want to kill you. Now, while Bart may have an ulterior motive here (maybe finally getting good bagels in Knuckledrag, maybe raising the average intelligence of Oklahoma to the nominal level of IQ 100) he has an excellent point.

Stay in New York, Israel, Iraq or Iran and people will kill you for giggles, faster than the paint will dry on your new house. Move to Oklahoma or Florida and your people's murder rate will drop significantly.

[pampango]

12. On a practical, personal safety, level you are undoubtedly right.

Life expectancy of Israeli citizens would undoubtedly increase if Israel moved to Oklahoma. We all make decisions in life, where to live, work, vacation, hobbies to pursue, that do not all have increasing our life expectancy as the main goal. There are other reasons we do things. My guess is that Israelis have "other reasons" for choosing to stay where they are.

[LeftishBrit]

13. Actually, while I don't know about Oklahoma specifically...

the overall life expectancy in the United States (75 for a man; 80 for a woman) is lower than in Israel (78 for a man; 82 for a woman).

Even homicide rates were lower in Israel than in the USA in 2004:

http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000396.htm

Of course, things could have changed since then. In any case, as you point out, there are many reasons why people choose to live where they do! And few people will uproot just to get an extra year or two's life expectancy.

And all this is assuming that it would even be possible - would Oklahoma suddenly be prepared to accept an influx of immigrants from Israel or even New York.

BTW, I have visited both Tel Aviv and New York. I certainly didn't fear for my life in either place, unless you count occasionally feeling a little nervous in both cities about the rather 'determined' drivers who were not that interested in stopping for pedestrians!

[eyl]

14. It might interest you to know

that the life expectancy in Israel is considerably higher than in Oklahoma; in fact, Israel has a higher life expectancy than all but two states in the US*.

*The data in the CDC link is from 2000, but I doubt it's changed that much.

[rayofreason]

6. You are right! Everyone will be dead tomorrow!!!!

Please get a grip.

[Shaktimaan]

7. Wow! So you seem to be just as misinformed about New York as the Middle East.

That is actually quite an achievement. Let's see... everyone in the entire middle east should be in a state of perpetual panic because they are going to be ruthlessly murdered by a fanatical enemy, one who will undoubtedly empty banana clip after banana clip into their and their children's genitals. And it is the only place on earth that makes New York City seem comparatively safe.

OK, let's go with NYC this time because that's where I happen to live. Now, most people already know that New York is the most diverse, interesting, cosmopolitan, all-around-awesome city on the planet. But what many folks aren't aware of is that NYC is also, officially, the safest big city in America, and has been for many years now.

New York was the safest large U.S. city again last year, according to FBI crime statistics, even as violent crime rose for the first time in five years in the rest of the country.

While violent crime increased nationwide by 2.5 percent, the largest increase since 1991, violent crime in the city fell 1.9 percent, according to the survey of preliminary crime statistics issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington. New York property crimes, such as burglary and car thefts, fell 5.1 percent, beating the national average decline of 1.6 percent.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aHWGwSJjpbOU&refer=us

I know what you're thinking. "How does New York do it? They have everything, every ethnicity and religion under the sun, and everyone gets along!" Well, one of the big tricks to peaceful coexistence is to not pre-judge other people's cities, countries, religions, regions, etc. before reading so much as a magazine article about it. Especially if you're gonna make sweeping, negative remarks. Because one of the few things worse than negative stereotypes are incorrect negative stereotypes.

Predjudice sucks! I hope the next twister takes the door clean off your trailer-home allowing all your hogs to get out and trample your best still. That'll learn ya!

[Meshuga]

2. They're here, they're queer - be proud of Israel

They're here, they're queer - be proud of Israel

By Bradley Burston

JERUSALEM - I'm proud of the State of Israel. It may have more faults per capita than any nation in the world, faults which are duly broadcast, rerun, critiqued, and condemned as nowhere else. It may have more critics per capita than anywhere else in the world, in particular among its majority population of restive, instinctively kvetching, eternally disappointed Jews.

I know every criticism by heart. I'll see your every damning denunciation, and raise you 10. But I am proud of this country, and the gay pride parade in Jerusalem goes a long way toward explaining why.

I am proud of a country which - under the burden of a 24/7 threat of Islamic Jihad terrorism, under a daily Hamas barrage of Qassam missiles on a small town in the Negev, under an explicit Iranian threat of erasure in the future and client militia brushfire wars in the near present - deploys 8,000 police, nearly half of its entire active-duty force, to protect a parade in Jerusalem by a minority group that is routinely denigrated by many members of two of the holy city's largest and most vocal communities: the ultra-Orthodox and the Palestinians...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873728.html