It's official: the much-contested 2005 gay pride, scheduled for Jerusalem in August, there will be no. It has been canceled. The reason? The unfortunate timing. The event, which had miraculously succeeded in uniting Jews, Christians, and Muslims in a single opposition front, had been scheduled for August 18th, coinciding with the announced withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. El-Ad, executive director of the Israeli Gay and Lesbian Center, initially strenuously opposed any cancellation. But then, along with the activists, he had to give in: the police would never have issued the necessary permits to hold the demonstration in conjunction with the withdrawal from the West Bank town.
Naturally, as soon as the suppression was made official, the controversy broke out. In a strange combination, the ultra-Orthodox clerics – happy to prevent a demonstration in the Holy City that disrespects the Jewish religion – have joined forces against gay pride with the ubiquitous opinion polls, whose findings leave no doubt, in the sense that the most benevolent would indicate only one in four Jerusalemites in favor of the event, while the most sympathetic ones even go so far as to indicate the opposition in the Bulgarian figure of 96% of those interviewed.
But can minority rights be made dependent on polls? Certainly not. Especially since, again, the polls discouraged gay Italians from organizing a gay pride parade in the ultra-conservative city of Bari. Yet, even today, two years after the event, the people of Bari remember it as one of the friendliest civic events in recent decades. Of course: Bari is no Jerusalem, yet even then, the most "academic" marketing failed to grasp that the participation of entire families in the spectacular parades "colorful" with Brazilian viados merely anticipated the long-lasting victory of openly gay Nichi Vendola in the regional elections.
Returning to the Jerusalem event, in reality support had even arrived from Ehud Bandel, chief rabbi of an Orthodox branch of Judaism. And after him, albeit more predictably, by David Lazar, one of the first rabbis in the world to perform gay marriages, and by Amy Klein, of the "Reconstructionist" branch (founded by Rabbi Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, originally as a schism from the Conservative movement, but now closer to Reform).
What's more, even the most influential Israeli daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, had come out clearly in favor of the event. And for very "commercial" and image-related reasons. Indeed, gays (according to the Jewish Bulletin News, they amount to approximately 101 TP3T of the population in Israel) would have projected Holy Jerusalem into the empyrean of major international capitals, from Paris to Rome to London, freeing Jewish universalism from the tri-religious cloak that hampers its spiritual, cultural, and economic growth. "Even earthly Jerusalem has the right to exist," the newspaper shouted. Moral: that the withdrawal from Gaza is a plain excuse is admitted between the lines even by Al Jazeera, which, in reporting it, insinuates that the evacuation itself from the West Bank may not even happen.
Yet, gays are useful in Israel. In the army – as the beautiful film testifies. Yossi and Jagger – to cement relationships between soldiers. To cities like Tel Aviv because they represent a driving force of the economy. And, more generally, to institutions because they allow gay Palestinians to seek refuge in Israel, thus saving them from the unpleasant fate they would meet in the Territories. In short, gays are strategic, but evidently not enough to break the asphyxiating social climate of a city culturally involuted by an interminable conflict. What a shame.
