A Meeting Made in Hyatt Print E-mail
Written by Megan Brown   

News Briefs
They saw what most folks who go to Israel from the ‘burbs see: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

But when an estimated 50 participants from the United States descended upon Israel in August for an LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered) "Mission to Israel," their experience became something the average Birthrighter doesn't get to boast about.

“There was a sense of untapped opportunity to engage more at a local level with the gay and lesbian community,” said Pride in Israel chair Stuart Kurlander, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, an international news agency. “This was an opportunity to visit Israel and learn about its history, as well as to understand the status of gays and lesbians and the challenges they face here.”

This opportunity for understanding included what might be expected. There were the speeches by Israeli politicians, the interaction with Ethiopian immigrants, and a visit to an Arab-Israeli coexistence center.

But the mission also gave participants a perspective of the Gaza Strip disengagement that few got to see. One hundred families from the Neve Dekalim settlement boarded at the Hyatt Regency, the same Jerusalem hotel as the Pride in Israel visitors.

New Voices is unaware of any scuffles or heartfelt "Trembling Before G-d" moments between the LGBT delegates and the settlers. Notwithstanding, it might be time to start circulating a joke on the Internet that begins, "A settler and a Boston lesbian walk into a bar."

While the mission enjoyed a private viewing of the Israel Museum and spent a Shabbat at the Jerusalem Open House LGBT community center, scattered reports of settlers throwing acid at soldiers and creating burning tire obstacles hit the news.

When the mission was first planned, many participants planned to stay for Jerusalem World Pride 2005. Plans for the ten-day festival were criticized by many conservative groups in Israel, and was impetus for unusual collaboration between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim groups—all united against the festival. Perhaps they will all meet again next year in Jerusalem, when Gaza’s on its way to being rebuilt and the streets of the holy city are filled with rainbows.
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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.
 
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