They mean to kill us. They have been saying so for a long time and murdering us as well. Usually, the world stood by as Jewish blood was shed.
But this time, given the rise of jihad in the Arab Middle East and the deadly rivalry between Sunni and Shia Islamists for who will control the Caliphate, it is not surprising that, as of Egyptian President Mubarak’s departure, Gaza-based Islamists, possibly backed by Iran, stepped up their rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel, or that, on March 23, a bomb blew up at a Jerusalem bus station filled with civilians. So far, one passenger, a woman, is dead and 39 are wounded, three seriously so.
Let us not forget—let us never forget—the recent murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar, which the world media turned into an opportunity to condemn Israeli “settlement” policy.
And now: Something closer to home but actually no less important. It must be seen as part of this same war, the war in which alleged Western progressives: leftists, feminists, anti-racists, and gay liberationists, are aiding, supporting, and funding the demonization of Israel, which they hope will lead to its demise which, in their view, will lead to world peace, even peace for the (unworthy) Jews (who have only themselves to blame if that doesn’t happen).
Yes, I am talking about all the self-righteous apparatchiks who call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions, who view Israel as a Nazi, apartheid state, who silence truth-tellers who are pro-Israel or anti-Islam in the streets, during lectures, at the United Nations, and on campuses all over America and Europe, and who scream ugly curses and carry hateful signs, and in every way try to imitate the hoarse roars of the “Arab street.”
I am talking about New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. According to their website, the Center receives 6,000 visitors and hosts more than 300 groups each week. “We provide groundbreaking social service, public policy, educational and cultural/recreational programs. We also serve as an incubator for grassroots groups that meet here. Indeed, we were the birthplace of organizations such as the AIDS activist group ACT UP and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the principal organization combating homophobia and stereotyping of gays in the media.”
According to its website, the Center reported in its audited financial statement that the government granted them $3,618,814 for the year ending June 30, 2010. That same year, it received $2,174,655 in private contributions. Apparently, the Center runs on an annual budget of approximately 10 million dollars and has 14 million dollars in assets. It has a major presence in the gay community both locally and worldwide.
Yesterday, I published a piece about a heroic Jewish gay man, Michael Lucas, who, together with other Center members such as Stuart Applebaum and Steven Goldstein, among others, actually stood up to the continued false portrayal of Israel as an “apartheid” state and the continued provision of space for the funding of possible foreign terrorist entities—and managed to have the third annual Israeli Apartheid Week party canceled at the LGBT Center.
The “party” planned to raise funding for yet another flotilla to break the siege of Gaza. The leader is Sherry Wolf, a socialist activist and writer who is an editor at the International Socialist Review. The anti-Israeli Apartheid group calls itself “Siegebusters”, and although they might have only 57 members, they are mainly Jewish lesbian feminists, and therefore, the Center trembles when they demand something. These are women who know how to yell, express anger, and simply persevere until they get their way.
Or so I have been told.
Next: Intimidation and demonization by “Palestinianized” lesbians —>
Please understand: For more than 44 years, I have worked with the most noble of lesbian-feminists. Their courage and ability to make sacrifices for larger ideals has given me the greatest joy. I especially want to mention Wanda and Brenda Henson of Camp Sister Spirit who ran a bookstore, a domestic violence and rape crisis center, a woman’s music festival, and faced down the most profound homophobic and racist wrath in the Deep South. I stood by their side in Ovett, Mississippi and hosted fundraisers for them here in New York City—but that is a tale for another day. My point: In addition to working with me on behalf of custodially embattled mothers and abused children, the Hensons really were anti-racists. They worked with and for African-Americans, and they held Passover sedarim each year in solidarity with the Jews.
I do not know who these new kinds of “Palestinianized” lesbians are.
This NYC LGBT Center is on record as a “home,” a safe haven for every kind of gay group and individual. And yet, amazingly enough, they really mean the Center is a safe space only for those gays, including Jews, who toe the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli line. After the Center canceled the March 5, 2011 Siegebusters event, they demonstrated outside the Center on that very day and, on March 14, 2011, Siegebusters packed a forum at the Center in which they drowned out the pro-Israel voices.
They also had their supporters sign petitions and email and call the Center. Thus, when the Gay and Lesbian Yeshiva Day School Alumni Association (GLYDSA), a gay Orthodox group which also meets regularly at the Center, requested that Michael Lucas deliver a lecture for their group at the Center—here’s what happened.
The Center canceled the Lucas lecture.
Well, not exactly. They intimidated and guilt-tripped GLYDSA and made them feel that they would be responsible for any unpleasantness or even danger the Lucas lecture might cause.
According to Lucas, they didn’t cancel it outright. Not at all. Instead, they took it upon themselves to call the GLYDSA representative to say that the “meeting is inappropriate because it won’t be safe…Jews will become afraid to come here. We have received so many threats, there will be protests, this is not a wise thing to do.”
The GLYDSA representative gamely hung in. He said: “At least, can you make sure that our meeting won’t be interrupted?” He was told: “Absolutely not. The Center is open to everyone, everyone is allowed to have their equal say. I suppose if you get interrupted or it seems dangerous, you yourself can call the police and the police can decide what to do.”
Thus, just as the universities, the United Nations, many churches, most mosques, and most other public forums in the West have become utterly dominated by angry hecklers, silencers of anything that is pro-Israel or anti-Islam, intimidators, shriekers, haters, Nazi brownshirts (who view themselves as liberationists and progressives and view the “other side” as Islamophobic demons)—the Gay and Lesbian Center of NYC has joined their ranks.
Increasingly, the only place one can speak the truth without being jeered, interrupted, silenced, and physically menaced is in the safety of one’s own home. Thus, Michael Lucas will be delivering a lecture in a private home for the Orthodox gay and lesbian Jews.
Here is an interview I recently conducted with Michael Lucas.
Next: Read the full Q & A with Michael Lucas —>
Q: What happened on March 14, 2011?
A: The opponents who showed up for the meeting were just a handful of people who do not represent the gay community, but are well organized. There were people there from several different factions. The loudest group was one of about 30-50 Jewish lesbians. Some of them belonged to groups like Siegebusters and some of them didn’t and were speaking for themselves. Some of them were even hissing and booing. A very old man, who founded the first gay Jewish synagogue, was told by one of the young speakers from Siegebusters, “Dude. It’s enough.”
They were talking about their right to free speech and claiming that those who supported the Center’s decision to cancel the Siegebusters event were suppressing it, which is not true. They can exercise their right to free speech, just not at the LGBT Center. That is not the appropriate venue. The real issue is the fact that this organization has nothing to do with the mission of the Center. The group is not LGBT focused. It doesn’t have a gay agenda. Their agenda is to destroy Israel by making it a multiracial state, doing away with Israel as the Jewish homeland. This is very anti-Semitic since Israel was founded as a Jewish state and is the only Jewish country in the world.
I think we still have not succeeded in getting our key point across —- we are not fighting “criticism of Israel” as many gay journalists wrote. We are fighting the delegitimization of the State of Israel. The stated goal of these groups is a united, multiracial Palestine. That’s inevitably a Palestine with a growing Muslim majority and the end of the Jewish homeland.
Q: Were Arabs involved in the protest on March 5th and in the March 14th meeting?
A: Not really. I think there was one phony Palestinian, speaking without any accent, who has probably never even been to Gaza. I later read in a gay publication his ridiculous suggestion that queers in Palestine were living fine lives, and opinion that the agenda of every queer in Palestine is fighting Israel because they feel that they should “survive first as a Palestinian and then as a queer.” It seemed to me that many gay Muslims do not care about gay rights in their native countries. They don’t care about their gay brothers and sisters who are being hanged, beheaded and mutilated. Living in the safety of the West and not speaking on behalf of gay Muslims in Palestine, their agenda is to crush Israel, which is quite sad, because Palestinians are running to Israel for safety and are being granted asylum. The Jerusalem Open House and the gay center in Tel Aviv have meetings and programs to help queer Palestinians to find new homes in Israel.
Q: Do you think that your experiences in Soviet Russia have taught you what Brownshirt fascism is really about, what totalitarianism is and can do?
A: Russia taught me that Israel is incredibly important. Russia was so anti-Semitic that for many Jews, Israel is a logical answer, just as it is for European Jews and for Jews who survived the Holocaust. My experience is the opposite of some arrogant American Jews that, for the most part, don’t know about anti-Semitism. That’s the reason why they don’t understand what Israel is about and don’t know of its purpose and creation.
Q: How do you answer their challenge that not being allowed to hate Israel and tell Big Lies about Israel is equivalent to squashing their First Amendment and Free Speech rights?
A: As I stated before, this has nothing to do with free speech. They can exercise their right to free speech somewhere else. The Gay Center is not some lousy community Center or Columbia University, which hosted Ahmadinejad, who declared that he wants to wipe Israel from the face of the earth and announced that there are no gay people in Iran. Siegebusters and other anti-Semitic groups have plenty of other places to meet, but the LGBT Center is not the right place. The KKK can make the same point, saying that they have the right to excercise free speech and demanding to speak at the LGBT Center. Their event does not belong in the Gay Center, which was founded on giving space to gay focused groups who are forwarding the LGBT agenda. It’s the same with Siegebusters. Hate towards Israel has nothing to do with the mission of the Center.
Q: What do you think will happen next at the Center?
A: It’s difficult to say. During the meeting, we felt that the Center’s board was crumbling under the pressure of Siegebusters. The Executive Director of the Center, Glennda Testone, said in an email to me that the Center is “focusing on creating a process to review and clarify our space guidelines going forward. And I imagine many meeting with various individuals and groups will be part of that.” This is precisely the problem that I have with the Center. They don’t seem to understand that it is not their mission to meet with anti-Semitic groups. They should not go out of their way to listen to or take into account what members of Israeli Apartheid Week have to say. This has nothing to do with the agenda that the Center was founded on, which is the gay agenda. It seems very peculiar to me that the Gay Center had hosting these groups for two years and were willing to let them have a fundraising campaign in which they were to raise money to break the blockade of a US ally, which is there to prevent further terrorist attacks on Israeli soil. And now the Center is still having meetings and conversations with them.
I believe that gay people in New York deserve to have the full attention of the Center given to LGBT needs. We have problems with homeless gay youth, gay people suffering from AIDS, and hate crimes against gays, among many others. Glennda Testone and the Center board should not try to wrap their heads around an issue that is not their concern. Their peculiar preoccupation with this matter makes me wonder if they themselves are in bed with the organizers of IAW. I think that the board of the Center should resign and be replaced with a board that will not waste federal and donor funding and instead put their energies into helping people in the LGBT community who so greatly need their aid. There is so much in our community that desperately needs to be done. I am starting the new non-profit organization- Out! for Israel- that among many other missions will be making sure that anti-Israeli groups will not be involved in shaping the LGBT Center’s policies.
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/24/out-for-israel-an-answer-to-the-hate-speech-of-queers-for-palestine/
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D (website) is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She is an author, psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious and human rights campaigns in the United States and in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. A popular guest on campuses and in national and international print, television, radio and online media, she has been an expert commentator on the major events of our time. She has lived in Kabul, Afghanistan, and in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She currently resides in Manhattan.
