ושיניתם לבביך

A change of heart is sorely needed.

Today, my fiancee and I attended the amended and contracted Gay Pride March. Well, it was originally a march. As a result of fears and negotiations and security concerns and all the rest of it, it was turned into a static event in an enclosed stadium surrounded on all sides with a wide and sweeping police presence.

The event, itself, was wonderful. It was a pleasure to see so many people who were not prepared to be intimidated, who were prepared to take the risk, and come together to stand up for themselves, their friends or family members, their partners. The drag queen comperes were also funny.

But what was incredible was that the only form of provocation that I could see was of the intellectual and emotional kind.

People seem to have the view that gay & lesbian people are ipso facto naked paedophile nymphomaniacs, who would walk down the main street of Mea Shearim humping haredi children and animals, to the tune of Dana International's Viva La Diva, if they could. It turns out that in practice, the Israeli Gay & Lesbian community are, on the whole, responsible and sympathetic to the sensitivities of other minority groups (of which haredim still are one or more) - and are, moreover, non-violent - and are more interested in having people stop trying to harm them than really anything else.

For me, this was the reason it was important that the March occur in Jerusalem, and this was the reason it was important for me to be there. It is impossible that Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish State, will turn into a hub of theocracy and intolerance. It is impossible that with the Jewish People's experience of vilification and persecution, we will allow minorities to be vilified and persecuted in our midst. Clearly it happens, and more often than we would like to believe. But not on my watch.

ושיננתם לבניך

On the same evening that we are commemorating the 11th anniversary of the murder of the former Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, certain haredim are carrying out acts of violence and intimidation against police, journalists and members of the public, over the holding of the annual Gay & Lesbian Pride March in Jerusalem.

It brings to mind all the times I have heard people say that the Palestinians should do something about the murderous acts carried out by their extremists. What the hell are we meant to do? Is it my civil obligation to go out and confront these dangerous criminals in the name of freedom of expression and the fundamental human right to life, family and equality? To form a militia? What have we come to? We live in a democratic state where a bunch of extremist thugs believe that they have the God-given right to throw rocks at citizens driving on the roads, assault police officers, burn tyres, and threaten to throw apples filled with razor blades, on the pretense that they don't want a bunch of people who have carried out acts prohibited in Leviticus to walk together in the streets of the city in which they live. Woe betide all of us when they decide to take up arms against those of us who violate the laws of kashrut, have extra-marital heterosexual relations, or light their stove on Shabbat.

And the police are now deliberating as to whether they will follow the order of the High Court of Justice and permit the march to take place (read, to provide it with adequate protection) or whether to postpone it again or cancel it (read, not to provide it protection). I can't believe that this is even a question. And of course, everyone's calling everyone else Nazis. To be honest, I think we may have bigger problems.

There's a joke

There's this joke that I read once, that went something like this:

"People who live in the United States think that it's dangerous living in Israel. But people who live in Israel will tell you don't be ridiculous, it's only dangerous if you live in the North. People who live in the North say relax, you're sensationalising things, it's only dangerous if you live in Nahariya, Haifa or Tiberias. People who live in Nahariya, Haifa, or Tiberias say that you've clearly been reading too much Ma'ariv, and that if you think sensibly, it's only dangerous in certain areas. The people who live in those certain areas will tell you, what, are you crazy, you can live in those areas all your life and never have any out of the ordinary happen to you, the only really dangerous area is this one street. People who live in that one street will tell you, what, you think there are really katyushot falling here? It's only at number 8 that it's dangerous. People who live at number 8 will tell you, no, not really, it's really quite okay here, it's only Apartment 6 which is a bit risky. The people living in Apartment 6 will tell you that it's only dangerous if you go out on the balcony between 10 and 12 in the morning, and particularly if you lean out over the railing beyond where the roof-line covers you and really stick your head out there ... so except for one guy who's hiding under a table somewhere, what are we all so worried about?"

The funny thing is that it's true. There is a war going on. Apparently. I know this because every so often I see the TV at work broadcasting things about the war that is going on, people every so often mention numbers of missiles that are in the tens and hundreds, some of the people I know have been called back into the army, whether on miluim or active service, and I get the occasional email asking me how it's all going what with the war and everything. And I can't help but believe that I've become so successful at cultivating the inborn human talent of setting boundaries at the borders separating what is "normal" from what is "not part of my world", that geographically, I've broken some kind of record. I mean, when I was living in Australia, those "borders of normality" were set (or at least, I thought they were set) at - the Western world and a bit more. They certainly excluded Africa and a bunch of other continental land-mass. It probably in fact excluded lots more, closer to home. But it was never really tested.

That's not so true. I did get mighty pissed off at the Australian government imprisoning people indefinitely in conditions fit for people who commit violent sex offences against children, for the "crime" of running away from people or situations that were out to kill them, purely because those people crossed an international border. And I certainly had a social conscience, even if that meant constantly feeling bad that I was quite powerless against the world. But I never really got a chance to see just how close a war could get without feeling that it affects me personally.

Don't get me wrong. The loss of human life that is occurring in vast numbers currently due to intentional acts of unpunished violence is a tragedy of immense proportions. Every time a person loses their life in this conflict, I experience emotion, but could it ever happen to me? Could I even need to be in a situation where I need to go to a bomb shelter in order to avoid a real threat of death? Unlikely. And whether it's likely or not (and it's not), I lack the feeling of fear that likelihood of death might be expected to bring.

I actually think that I'm going to live forever. Because the way I see it, death is a ceasing of being. So effectively, for as long as I have any ability to experience life, I'm going to be living. And when I'm not, my brief existence within these "life boundaries" will have never been, and there will be nothing.

What the ...? It seems that this blog can just turn on a dime from some kind of political social commentary to some kind of self-centred "let's talk about the universe for a bit" genre. I'm quite glad that I don't have readers, who could be thrown off by this kind of lax attitude to consistency in posting. In fact I feel sometimes that writing a blog is a little bit like shouting in a large empty echoing hall. It's quite cathartic, really. Like when I got my driver's license, at 16, the best part of it was not the ability to move a weighty piece of metal alloy by a process of internal combustion, but the ability to sing as loud as I could possibly want (whether to the radio or not), and be absolutely comfortable in the sense of my own privacy. I guess it says something about my desire for privacy and the feeling of its lack, at that age. But it was wicked fun.