by We begin in the US: …the Dyke March Collective also ejected three people carrying Jewish Pride flags (a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the center). According to one of those individuals—A Wider Bridge Midwest Manager Laurel Grauer—she and her friends were approached a number of times in the park because they were holding the flag. “It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching in the Dyke March with the same flag,” she told Windy City Times. She added that she lost count of the number of people who harassed her. One Dyke March collective member asked by Windy City Times for a response, said the women were told to leave because the flags “made people feel unsafe,” that the march
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We begin in the US:
…the Dyke March Collective also ejected three people carrying Jewish Pride flags (a rainbow flag with a Star of David in the center).
According to one of those individuals—A Wider Bridge Midwest Manager Laurel Grauer—she and her friends were approached a number of times in the park because they were holding the flag.“It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching in the Dyke March with the same flag,” she told Windy City Times.
She added that she lost count of the number of people who harassed her.
One Dyke March collective member asked by Windy City Times for a response, said the women were told to leave because the flags “made people feel unsafe,” that the march was “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian.”
“They were telling me to leave because my flag was a trigger to people that they found offensive,” Grauer said. “Prior to this [march] I had never been harassed or asked to leave and I had always carried the flag with me.”
Another of those individuals asked to leave was an Iranian Jew named Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson.
“I was here as a proud Jew in all of my identities,” Shoshany-Anderson asserted. “The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional. I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I fell that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”
A statement posted June 25 on the Dyke March Twitter account read, in part, “Sadly, our celebration of dyke, queer and trans solidarity was partly overshadowed by our decision to ask three individuals carrying Israeli flags superimposed on rainbow flags to leave the rally. This decision was made after they repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations with Dyke March Collective members.”
“Sadly, our celebration of dyke, queer and trans solidarity was partly overshadowed by our decision to ask three individuals carrying Israeli flags superimposed on rainbow flags to leave the rally. This decision was made after they repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations with Dyke March Collective members.”
“People asked me if I was a Zionist and I said ‘Yes, I do care about the state of Israel but I also believe in a two-state solution and an independent Palestine,’” Grauer said. “It’s hard to swallow the idea of inclusion when you are excluding people from that. People are saying ‘You can be gay but not in this way.’ We do not feel welcomed. We do not feel included.”
In their statement, Dyke March Collective organizers singled out Grauer’s organization A Wider Bridge for what they called “provocative actions at other LGBTQ events [and] for using Israel’s supposed ‘LGBTQ tolerance’ to pinkwash the violent occupation of Palestine.”
Social-media posts in support of the Dyke March Collective also claimed that a rainbow flag with a Star of David is a form of pink washing (a theory postulated by a City University of New York professor which claims that Israeli support of LGBTQ communities is designed to detract attention from civil and human rights abuses of Palestinian people.)
At about the same time, in Turkey:
Turkish police on Sunday prevented an attempt by Gay Pride activists to hold a parade in Istanbul, the country’s largest city, in defiance of an official ban by the local authorities.
Police fired rubber bullets at a group of around 40 activists, an AFP journalist reported, a day after the city governor’s office banned the march citing safety and public order concerns.Small groups gathered at Taksim Square but witnesses said there was a heavy police presence which outnumbered the activists, and at least four people were detained.
It is the third year in a row that the march has been banned, and organisers denounced the move.
“We are not scared, we are here, we will not change,” the Pride Committee said in a statement.
Of course they were not scared – there were no stars of David around.
In other gay pride news, last month in Tel Aviv:
Some 200,000 people took part in Tel Aviv’s Gay Pride Parade on Friday, of which approximately 30,000 had joined the celebrations from abroad, organizers said. With many roads closed to traffic for the occasion, the parade made its way through the heart of the city to the waterfront in a display of floats, music, dancers and rainbow flags.
It was the city’s 19th pride parade and according to Tel Aviv’s municipality, the largest in the Middle East and Asia, with a high number of international revelers arriving over the course of the week to take part in the parade and its related events. This year, the theme of the parade was “bisexual visibility.”
Not everyone at the parade was there to celebrate, however. Dozens of Israeli LGBTQ activists at one point blocked the Tel Aviv parade in protest against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The protesters erected a mock separation barrier upon which was written, “There’s no pride in occupation,” the website +972 Magazine reported. The protesters prevented the parade from proceeding through the city center for a few minutes, but were swiftly moved by police.
Pride parades are expected to be held in Be’er Sheva and Haifa and August in Jerusalem later on this month.
Also last month
A gay Palestinian man appealed to the High Court of Justice on Thursday to overturn the Interior Ministry’s decision to refuse him residency status, saying he risks death if he returns to the West Bank.
His petition testified that Palestinian police had arrested, tortured and severely beaten him because he is openly gay. Most members of his family have disowned him, and those who haven’t have warned him by phone to never come home, he stated.
The man has lived in Tel Aviv — widely hailed as one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world — with his partner for the last decade. The couple say that the Interior Ministry has repeatedly rejected their petition to legalize the Palestinian’s residence in Israel.
People who don’t understand how the world works do stupid things, make stupid assumptions, and ask stupid questions:
Usually that sort of stupid brings on horrible consequences. Fortunately, the universe occasionally displays a sense of humor.
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