My thoughts and prayers are with the people who lost family and friends in last week’s executions at the Aguda, Israel’s largest nationwide LGBT issues organization. And to anyone else who’s been thrown into fear from these events.
I’m hardly the most authoritative voice on the subject. I read reports from The Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz and Ynet the past week, but I didn’t read everything, and because I don’t have a TV, I didn’t watch news reports. I don’t personally know any of the victims, nor anyone who was there that night, nor any Aguda staff members. I’ve only been to a few of Tel Aviv’s gay clubs a handful of times, the same with Hilton Beach. Truthfully, I’m not that plugged into the LGBT community here yet. I’m new.
What I can tell you is that not only am I an oleh chadash, I’m an openly gay one. At one time, I struggled tremendously to accept my homosexuality, and in 1991, I even tried to take my own life. But since coming out eighteen years ago, I’ve become a proud, esteemable man, who has participated in activism and volunteer work for my community.
I was a proud member of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus from 2003 until I made Aliyah earlier this year. I volunteered for years in the kitchen of God’s Love We Deliver, a nonprofit organization that provides hot, nutritious meals to people living with HIV and AIDS. I challenged my own limits when I volunteered for Marriage Equality New York and The Power last year, handing out flyers to Times Square tourists while proclaiming “Support Same Sex Marriage!” And here in Tel Aviv, I volunteered at the “Happening” outside the G.L.B.T. Community Center in Meir Park before the Gay Pride Parade, and then in the parade itself.
I haven’t explored much of the country yet, but I feel with certainty that Tel Aviv is the only place I could live in Israel. Much like New York, I feel comfortable and accepted being gay here. I’m not sure I would feel this in other parts of the country, such as Jerusalem.
Since the events of August 1, I felt something for the first time in my eighteen years living as an out gay man: fear for my own safety. Although it is subsiding now, the first few days after the attack I felt afraid to go to a gay bar or back to Hilton Beach. What if there was a sniper there, wanting to blow my head off? Before murder violated an LGBT safe haven last week, it never even occurred to me to be afraid of something like this. I was very surprised to feel it for the first time…in Israel, where I expect to feel more at home than anywhere else in the world, with my people the Jews.
I was never inside the Aguda, but I was outside the space once, when I dropped off some flyers for work. Now I wish I hadn’t, because I’m better able to imagine the horrors that occurred inside there.
The public discussion going on in the wake of this atrocity is the only good that can come from what happened. Was this a hate crime? Was it a terror attack? People are now exposing the real-world effects of hateful speech against LGBTs made in the Knesset by elected officials. We have a new and urgent reason to validate and equalize LGBT relationships by legalizing same sex marriage in Israel.
I wish the events at the Aguda never happened. I’m sad not just for the victims’ family and friends, but also for the youngest and newest members of our community who have new reasons to fear coming out. The violence that took place is loathsome and unacceptable. It’s everyone’s responsibility now, through activism and participation, to strengthen protection and acceptance of LGBTs throughout all of Israel and to stigmatize hate speech of any kind.