What's in an email?

Most days, the political situation here (by which I mean Israel's pariah-like status in the Middle East) doesn't really enter my thinking. Whether that's because it's become so rote as to be ignorable or because it's more smoke-and-mirrors on the part of politicians (::coughthelattercough::) I don't know, but that's what it is. Every once in awhile, though, something happens that makes me a bit nervous. Today was one of those days.

Israel and the Color Pink

Israel has published a website touting it's record on gay rights and the GLBT community in Israel. Some of this has been met with derision and accusations of "pinkwashing" while other call these accusations nonsense. I think that both have interesting points, and there is something to note when the far-far-right Avigdor Lieberman suddenly becomes the GLBT community's best friend, but I don't know politics enough to know if there's truely "pinkwashing" going on or if Israel is just doing PR. But this sudden chumminess of the Israeli government, especially the current one, with the GLBT community makes me a bit skeptical.

The claim that Tel Aviv is the gay center of the Middle East is absolutely true; there is nowhere else in the Middle East that has an open gay community like that in Tel Aviv, that has the protection of the government, and that has laws explicitly providing equality to GLBT people. That is 100% correct. There are gay bars here, nightly GLBT parties at various clubs, the national gay rights organization Agudah and adjoined café, the annual GLBT film festival and pride parade, youth outreach programs, the Israel AIDS Taskforce; all located in Tel Aviv. There isn't even a "gay-borhood" in Tel Aviv, which I think says a lot to how integrated the GLBT community is into the wider community.

But, on the same hand, being the "gay capital of the Middle East" is a pretty low bar to clear considering most Arab countries still outlaw homosexuality, akin to saying you've got the biggest dick in the room if you're the only man standing in a nunnery. It's also a bit irrelevant since Tel Aviv is essentially off-limits to most Middle Easterners, due in part to Israel's own policies. Indeed, the one gay Arab population Israel could actively help, Palestinians, are forbidden from entering Israel or applying for asylum for any reason, including due to persecution based to their sexual orientation. So to call yourself the gay capital of the Middle East when most Middle Eastern gays can't come to it, and when you actively prevent Middle Eastern gays from coming to it, makes the title ring a bit hollow and feels more like stam marketing than a genuine effort.

Why Are They So Angry? | The Prospect

“High-pitched as Israeli political disputes are—and as eager as the Israeli parliamentary right is to restrict dissent, an Israeli dove visiting Jewish North America can still feel that he’s stumbled into a constricted, out-of-joint alternate universe. The moderate Israeli left’s argument that West Bank settlements undermine democracy and peace efforts is sometimes greeted in the U.S. as treasonous, sometimes as daringly unconventional. Ideas that have gone extinct in Israel still wander the American landscape, as if it were a Jurassic Park of the mind. What’s going on?” (source)

I’ve seen this disconnect and felt its resulting frustration many, many times, from foreigners, Jews and Palestinians alike, who arrive in Israel with an ideology that is completely disconnected from the “boots-on-the-ground” reality; almost like their reality is mitigated by their ideology instead of vice versa. In many ways, I think people (especially those in the diaspora) build their identities around their ideologies, making those ideologies completely rigid and intractable. I guess it’s that kind of thinking that gives FOX News an audience, wherein reality becomes debatable if I don’t like what you say.

And it’s sad, because that rigidness so detrimental to everyone involved.