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Loading ...Jerusalem mayoral candidate would ban gay pride
08.25.2008 3:44pm EDT
(Jerusalem) Jerusalem mayoral candidate Arkadi Gaydamak says if he is elected he will ensure gays and lesbians will never again hold an LGBT pride march in the city.
A multi-millionaire, Gaydamak is considered a dark horse in the campaign to lead the city. He currently is placed third in public opinion polls.Gaydamak told an audience at a hospital he owns that he is prepared to lie down on the road and risk death to prevent the parade from taking place.
Nevertheless, he said he was not homophobic, telling supporters that gays are a part of society and must be accepted. He said his objections to the parade were based on religious concerns because Jerusalem is considered holy to Jews, Christians and Moslems.
This year’s gay pride parade went ahead despite attempts by the city to get an injunction blocking it. The Supreme Court denied the injunction in June.
More than three-thousand people marched through the city, guarded by some 2,000 police.
At one point a small group of haredi, the ultra-Orthodox sect that disrupted pervious pride celebrations, were blocked by police from coming close to the parade route. One protestor was arrested.
Last year, moments before the gay pride march was to begin in Jerusalem, police arrested a man carrying a homemade bomb. Police said the 32 year old said he planned to detonate it near the parade route to scare people away.
The arrest was one of nearly 200 as members of the haredi rioted for several days leading up to the parade. Garbage cans were set on fire and stones thrown at police. Twenty-two officers were reportedly injured.
Last year some 7,000 police – many brought in from other cities – were stationed along the gay pride parade route, far outnumbering the the marchers estimated at about 1,000.
At one point police rerouted about 500 haredim armed with eggs and bags of excrement. At another point on the parade route, only a few blocks long, protestors tried to pour cooking oil on the road so marchers would slip and fall.
The 2006 pride march was cancelled following a week of rioting in Jerusalem by the haredi.
Thousands of sect members took to the streets for a week, setting fires and injuring more than a dozen people.
Instead of holding a march, Open House held a pride concert and celebration at Hebrew University where anyone entering the grounds was checked by police. There were no incidents.
In 2005 the parade was marred by violence. More than a than a dozen protestors were arrested and three people were stabbed.
Almost 1,000 protestors lined the parade route. Bottles of urine and bags containing feces were hurled at marchers.
Shortly after the parade began Shai Schlissel, a haredi member, rushed into the marchers on Ben Yehuda Street stabbing a man and a woman.
Others in the parade attempted to subdue him. The third victim was a marcher who went to the aid of the other two victims. Schlissel is in prison for the attack.
OK, so he said that. Even if he did stand a chance to win, which he doesn’t, it’s not his decision to make. For a few years now Jerusalem’s current mayor (a Haredi guy) has been trying to block the parade, but the Supreme Court not only frustrated his efforts, but also made city hall pay for it and hang rainbow flags along the route.
Gaydamak knows this well, which is why he has no problems trying to woo right-wing voters (who are a majority in Jerusalem) by his inflamatory rhetoric, knowing full well that he won’t have to be taken for his word, since the decision is out of his hands anyway.
Zionism = Racism & Homophobia.
My how the wheels have turned. From victims of one of the worst crimes in human history to perpetrators of the same prejudice and intolerance that led to those crimes in the first place. I guess the term Jewish Nazi doesn’t seem so ridiculous.
Jewish Nazis…the term is not so ridiculous it seems.
Yes, sure he is not Homophobic. Just like Bush is born again, – maybe that is true, but he is missing the little narrow dark mustache he had in his previous life.
But while we are Jewish, and my wife (female btw) wants to go see Israel, I guarantee you that if he wins and does his disgraceful dead, I am not going, and the wifes passport will be shredded the night before she is scheduled to leave.
And talk about Jewish Nazi’s… What the real issue here is we need a world in which conservative, right wing religions are disgraced and left to die. And their fates should be recorded in the history books as one of mankinds greatest failures, and they are nothing but an abomination before God. Whatever their creed.
Well, seeing that LGBT rights in Israel are better protected than almost anywhere else in the world, and definitely better than in the USA; not to mention the extent of scary, violent homophobia in America and in some European countries, which is unheard-of in Israel – indeed, those stabbings in 2005, that ended in minor injuries, are pretty much the only physical attacks on gays in the country’s history; your comments don’t make much sense.