Jews, Muslims join to fight gay parade !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: Boston Globe
November 9, 2006 Author: Thanassis Cambanis


JERUSALEM -- Ultra-Orthodox Jewish pop singer Benny Elbaz was so angry about the gay pride march planned for tomorrow that he joined forces with a Muslim man he normally would consider an enemy, to sing a duet he composed denouncing the event.

"Jerusalem Will Burn!" Elbaz croons in Hebrew on the single, released the week before the parade. "There will be no gay march!"

Religious Jews and Muslims are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum on most issues, especially over who should control the contested city of Jerusalem, which Israelis and Palestinians both claim as their capital. But Jews, Muslims, and even some Christians have formed a common front against Jerusalem's gay community, whose planned march they say besmirches the city.

"Only this onslaught of homosexual radicalism could bring together such disparate voices," said Rabbi Yehuda Levin, an anti gay activist from Brooklyn, N.Y., who has traveled to Israel several times this year to rally opposition to the gay pride parade.

Levin has joined forces with Tayseer Tamimi, the head judge of the Islamic Sharia court in the West Bank.

"This march is part of the wild campaign against Islam, the doctrine, the holy sites," Tamimi said. "All religions discredit gays . . . because it is against the decent human nature created by God."

In June, Levin and four senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis shared a podium with two Arab-Israeli members of the Knesset to denounce the march.

Islamic religious leaders from the West Bank joined by video link because they are barred by Israel from visiting Jerusalem.

The religious anti gay activists said the gay pride event has prompted new dialogue between them that extends to a broader discussion of religion and politics. The anti gay activists believe their cause has opened up a valuable avenue of dialogue between the Islamic and Jewish religious leadership.

Elbaz formed another of the unlikely partnerships that has characterized the vociferous and at times violent campaign. "I decided to sing with an Arab singer to emphasize that both religions are opposed to the gay parade," Elbaz said. "No religion will have it, especially not in the Holy City."

"Politicians will never make peace," Elbaz said. "But maybe we can."

But the rhetoric of the anti gay religious and secular leaders -- mostly Jewish, but some Muslim -- dwarfs Elbaz's comparatively tame lyrics.

The angry talk and open threats against the march have provoked alarm among gay rights leaders, who recall that last year an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed three people during the gay pride march.

"The incitement to use violence against us is so severe, it's meant to scare people away from the march," said Ayelet Schnur, 32, the vice chairwoman of the Jerusalem Open House, a nonprofit group organizing the march.

Open House leaders have called on the ultra-Orthodox rabbis to instruct their followers that violence against homosexuals is wrong.

But nearly every night for the last week, ultra-Orthodox men have rioted in religious neighborhoods, setting trash on fire and throwing stones at police -- in a show of force they hope will prompt officials to cancel the march.

"We're demonstrating so the cops realize it's too much trouble," said a 22-year-old religious student who gave only his first name, Robert. He was skipping yeshiva class for a violent protest in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Sharim.

Posters in Orthodox neighborhoods warn the religious to do everything they can to stop the march.

"We call on all the people of Israel to stop this city from becoming Sodom and Gomorrah," reads the poster signed by Orthodox rabbis.

Anti gay slurs are common in Jerusalem in the public debate over the march, in marked contrast to secular Tel Aviv, where the mayor has an adviser on gay and lesbian affairs and gay leaders say their community encounters little hostility.

Jerusalem has become increasingly religious and right-wing over the last decade, and the gay parade is only one of many issues on which the ultra-Orthodox community has asserted itself. One American activist repeatedly used profanity to describe gays during a Knesset hearing, declaring that homosexuals were "no better than pigs or horses."

If the police allow the parade to go ahead, it will mark the fifth year in a row that Jerusalem's gay and lesbian community has marched in a demonstration that is much less colorful and more muted than similar parades in other places, including Tel Aviv.

March organizers at the Jerusalem Open House have deliberately taken a low-key approach, promising that, as in past years, there would be no floats, no music, and no nudity during the march. They offered to cancel the event if religious political parties would agree to support a civil marriage law, an offer refused by the march's opponents.

On Sunday, gay leaders agreed to move the march from the city's modern downtown to a location even farther from the old city and the religious neighborhoods, near the Knesset west of the city center , in a bid to deescalate tensions.

"Somewhere over the rainbow God is watching his holy city," reads a flier distributed by the anti-parade coalition. "Love has limits. Stop the gay parade."

[Qaarxiye]

They should hand Israel to the orthodox jews.

[Basra-]

Qaarxiye r u coming out?

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

Gays have rights just like the rest of us. Jesus Christ are all Muslims fascists?

[Beenaale_No1]

[quote="MAD MAC"]Gays have rights just like the rest of us. Jesus Christ are all Muslims fascists?[/quote]

This is Jews and Muslims coming together to fight this filth homosexuality, but yet you only pick on muslims (as usual). And this time for doing the right thing.

And then you wonder why people never take serious.

[Kamal35]

The Vatican also joined to the demonstrations...

Man, where is the 'live and let live' thing?