Jerusalem Pride 6/25/09

Jerusalem's annual Gay Pride Parade is more political and less festive than the Tel Aviv equivalent, and this year it was also more peaceful than usual.  According to Haaretz, Ultra-Orthodox leaders who usually plan mass protests decided against it this year, in order to "avoid exposing their young people to the issue of homosexuality."  While in 2006 the parade had about 12,000 police officers assigned to the parade, this year there were only 1,600.  About 5,000 participants showed up in support of the parade.

This was actually my first Pride parade, and I enjoyed it a lot, even though it was far more conservative than most.  Few participants dressed or danced provocatively, and the mood was more like a protest march than a parade, though I suppose that is appropriate for Jerusalem.  Here, the queer community is trying to maintain its standing in a religious city, so Pride is an act of solidarity, not a celebration. The crowd was fairly diverse, with a lot of families and older people in attendance.

I've written before about the small size and intimacy of the Israeli left-wing, but here I realized how much overlap there is between progressive causes.  This is of course true everywhere, that like-minded people flock together at all kinds of activist events.  But here, it was clear that a large portion of the crowd was made up of peace and anti-occupation activists, and I bumped into lots of people who I had met in the West Bank.

Above: The Meretz Party marched in the parade, all wearing green T-shirts and holding a giant rainbow flag that was really fun to run around under.  It was interesting to see that political parties in Israel are like communities, showing up together to support the queer cause.

The day before the parade, I went with the ICAHD interns to watch a protest of about 15 Ultra-Orthodox protesting in downtown Jerusalem.  The protest was gender segregated.  These signs say something like "God Hates Filth." 

The Israeli Transgender Group

Hadash, the joint Arab-Israeli socialist party, was by far the loudest groupin the parade.  While they sometimes chanted about queer issues, most of their chants said things like "Lieberman is racist" or "Israel is a place for Arabs and Jews together."  No one really seemed to mind this irrelevance.

The Rebel Clown Army, wearing ripped-up IDF uniforms, taunted soldiers and acted silly.  Danya, center in the pink dress, is an ICAHD intern.

This man stood all by himself, wearing an absent-minded smile.  The crowd laughed at him and took pictures posing with him, but he seemed unphased.  The one soldier assigned to guard him looked terribly bored and embarassed. 

A handful of participants donned rainbow flags while in IDF uniform.  This man was an officer, and breaking explicit rules by doing so.

Bat-Kol, Orthodox lesbians