“A poll published by the Hebrew-language daily Yediot Aharonot on Friday showed that nearly half of Israelis surveyed are ready for a gay prime minister, reports The Jerusalem Post .

Among respondents, 25% said they were certain they were ready for a gay prime minters, and 19% said they thought they were ready. Some 13% said they were unsure, while 7% said they were not ready, and 11% did not answer.

The findings come less than one month after the shooting that killed two at a Tel Aviv gay youth center, prompting dialogue about tolerance for Israeli LGBT people as well as threats against the community from religious conservatives.”

Read the full article from the Jerusalem Post.

Some critics worry that the rabbinate and its charismatic chief, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, are infusing a militant mix of Judaism and nationalism into a traditionally secular institution that embodies the Israeli consensus.

On the Palestinian side, Islamic hard-liners already see their war with Israel through an uncompromising religious lens, and the rabbinate’s critics warn that the Jewish state must not follow suit and risk pushing the conflict closer to a zero-sum holy war.

When Israeli soldiers massed on the Gaza border for the country’s offensive against Hamas militants six months ago, uniformed rabbis stood amid the tents and tanks, reciting prayers with the men as they prepared for battle. When the troops went into Gaza, Rontzki went in with them.

That might not have seemed unusual, but some rabbis went further, distributing pamphlets that put the conflict firmly in religious terms. One suggested a parallel between today’s Palestinians and the Philistines, the biblical foes of the Israelites.

After criticism arose, the army condemned the pamphlet and Rontzki said it was distributed without his knowledge.

But the critics say it was in line with a pattern that goes against the heterogeneous nature of Israel’s conscript army.

Although mostly Jewish, the Israel Defense Forces’ estimated 175,000 regular troops include some Muslim Arabs and immigrants from the former Soviet Union who identify as Christians. The military’s advocate-general is an Orthodox Jew, and the editor of its official magazine is openly gay. All soldiers have access to their own clergy and observe their religions’ holidays, though only Jewish chaplains wear uniforms and serve in the military rabbinate.

The army chose Rontzki “instead of a more moderate personality with the hope of avoiding the kind of problems discussed around the withdrawal from Gaza,” said Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli historian who has studied the settler movement.

“In the process, it has given a very prominent pulpit to someone whose views on other issues are extremely controversial,” he said.

Rontzki pioneered a new arm of the rabbinate dedicated to Jewish education, dubbed the Jewish Consciousness division. During the Gaza war his staff distributed colorful pamphlets exhorting soldiers to victory, accompanied by prayers, photographs of uniformed men in prayer shawls, and a number to call with questions of religious law.

“Under Rontzki’s command, the rabbinate is giving the conflict a religious overtone, and they are also using their free access to soldiers to work toward political goals,” said Michael Sfard, an attorney for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group. Those goals, critics like Sfard say, include making sure the West Bank, claimed by the Palestinians as part of their future state, remains in Jewish hands for good.

Rontzki has been accused of speaking out against military service for women – he denies it – and after Bamahane, the army magazine, profiled a homosexual major, Rontzki wrote to several senior officers to protest.

Israel’s army is proud of the opportunities it provides to women and openly gay soldiers. “A senior IDF officer who believes that it would be better for women not to be drafted and that homosexual soldiers should be erased from official army publications … does not deserve to serve in his position,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel wrote to the military chief of staff.

The military responded that Rontzki was expressing his personal opinions. It declined to let Rontzki be interviewed, but Maj. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman, said his actions were in line with military orders.

“The jobs of the rabbinate have not changed,” Leibovich said. “The rabbinate is not supposed to be a substitute for the commander on the ground, but to give a spiritual boost to a religious soldier who might need it.”

The rabbinate’s new approach comes at a time of rising Orthodox influence in the military’s combat units. Elite troops once came predominantly from the socialist kibbutz movement; today they are more likely to be people like Rontzki – skullcapped, seminary-educated and steeped in an ethos of national service, sacrifice and building settlements.

The military does not keep statistics on religious affiliation, but it is clear that more religious Jews are making their way up the ranks. Some estimates say a quarter of the troops now completing combat officers’ training are religious. However, skullcaps like the one worn by 57-year-old Ronzki are still rare among the top brass, which remains overwhelmingly secular.

Some Orthodox leaders and educators voice concern that serving alongside secular conscripts weakens religious conviction. One of Rontzki’s goals has been to counter that tendency.

Most in the army think Rontzki’s activist Judaism is good for morale, said Yaakov Amidror, a retired general who is Orthodox himself.

Rontzki “has pushed himself into areas the military rabbinate never went before,” Amidror said. Referring to the Gaza operation, he said, “His approach was that the spiritual guide needs to be with the flock – it can’t be that soldiers are in there and rabbis are not.”

1. I’m no expert (yet), but panhandling strikes me as a profession that requires a soft sell.

2. Do all Oklahoma politicians dance with the crazy?

3. Is it a good idea to keep allies from joining the federal lawsuit for gay marriage?

4. A Merlose Place redux? The first one stank. What TV executive green lighted this wreck?

5. Israeli Army soldier Shmuel Freimark’s lawyer needs to come up with a better excuse for his client’s madness. Threats to kill because your tribe is getting bad press is a dumb tactic.

6. The initial TABC report shows what most knew. The authorities had no business raiding the Rainbow Lounge this past June.

7. Are most baseball fans by nature nostalgic and anti-modernity?

8. For the first time in awhile I was able to go to my local bar this weekend, and not feign interest for a conversation.

9. Never liked any film by John Hughes (RIP). For some reason they never resonated. I did however, have a serious crush on Anthony Michael Hall. Always have love for the nerds.

10. This story shows it’s time for us old-heads to change up our views on sexuality.

As protesters with rainbow flags mourned the victims and condemned the homophobic sentiment assumed to be behind the attack, police hunted for the assailant throughout a city that has long prided itself on a live-and-let-live attitude and a thriving gay community.

“I fear that if the man who did this is not found, the consequences to the gay community might be far-reaching – they might live in fear,” said Arnon Hirsch, a 47-year-old lawyer who was one of several hundred people who took part in the protest near the center attacked Saturday night.

Hirsch said he is openly gay and does not intend to act differently now. “I have no intention of giving in to terror,” he said. “I’m not going to hide anywhere.”

Outside the center, a bouquet of flowers rested on the curb near barricades erected by police and a sign reading, “Stop Homophobia.”

A masked man entered the center for gay teens in downtown Tel Aviv late Saturday night, pulled out a pistol and opened fire, according to Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman. The shooter then fled the scene on foot, Rosenfeld said.

Photographs taken inside after the shooting showed bodies lying near a billiard table and a smear of blood on the white-tile floor.

The dead were identified as a 26-year-old man who was a counselor at the center and a 17-year-old girl. Eleven people were wounded, four of them critically.

“I took cover with someone under a table, and he kept firing,” 16-year-old Or Gil, who was shot twice in the legs, recounted in news footage aired on the YNet news Web site. “When I got up it was horrifying, I just saw blood.”

Jonathan Bower, 23, said he had been in the club before the attack and was outside when the shots began.

“One of my friends came out shouting and screaming, ‘He has a gun, he has a gun,’” Bower said.

Bower said the city’s usually uninhibited gay population would have to be more careful now.

“This is a moment when I have to keep a low profile, I have to tone it down, because now we are afraid,” he said.

Police slapped a gag order on the case, saying publication of details could compromise their investigation.

Mike Hamel, a gay rights activist whose organization runs the youth club, said the center was meant to be a safe place where gay teens – many of them still concealing their sexual identity from their families and friends – could meet with counselors and other teenagers. He blamed religious incitement against homosexuals for the attack.

“Beyond the pain, the frustration and the anger, we are facing a situation in which the incitement to hate creates an environment that allows this to happen,” Hamel said.

The attack drew condemnations from Tel Aviv’s mayor, Cabinet ministers, the country’s chief rabbis and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We’ll bring him to justice and exercise the full extent of the law against him,” Netanyahu said of the killer, speaking at the Israeli Cabinet’s weekly meeting.

Nitzan Horowitz, Israel’s only openly gay lawmaker, called the attack a “hate crime.”

“This is the worst attack ever against the gay community in Israel,” he said. “This act was a blind attack against innocent youths, and I expect the authorities to exercise all means in apprehending the shooter.”

Israel’s gays and lesbians typically enjoy freedoms similar to their counterparts in European countries. Gay soldiers serve openly in the military, and gay musicians and actors are among the country’s most popular. Tel Aviv holds a festive annual gay parade, rainbow flags are often seen flying from apartment windows and there is a city-funded community center for gays.

Things are different in conservative Jerusalem, however, where there have been clashes between religious and gay activists. In 2005, an ultra-Orthodox protester stabbed three marchers at a Jerusalem gay parade. Last year, a lawmaker from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party suggested in Parliament that earthquakes were divine punishment for homosexual activity.

The party, whose members have been among the most frequent critics of gays, also issued a statement condemning Saturday’s attack.

The youth at the club “go there because it is a refuge of sorts for them,” songwriter and gay activist Rona Keinan wrote in the daily Yediot Ahronot. “The very thought that a person might enter that protected space and simply open fire at them is shocking. I just want to cry.”

Some of the parents of the wounded teenagers were not aware their children were gay until they were summoned to the hospital Saturday night, said Avi Soffer, 60, a volunteer at the center.

“They didn’t even know the kids were coming,” Soffer said.

1. Slogging through The Brothers Karamazov. Hopefully will be done in three more weeks. Right now all I can say is Grushenka was not worth the effort.

2. Still no one in custody for the murder of three at a Tel Aviv gay and lesbian center. There might have been a personal, not political, motive.

3. Glad the media stopped talking about the “beer summit.” Wish the story was handled  better, but when the (perceived) topic is race there are only so many narratives we like to hear.

4. If you call a  black person a “jungle monkey”  you are not allowed to announce how utterly free of racist animus your soul is.

5. Any summer  movie suggestions?

6. The suspect in the murder of sailor  August Provost, III killed himself. Not sure there will ever be a satisfactory answer to why Provost was murdered.

7. Blueberries are expensive this summer.

8. The leader of the “birther movement” is nutty and needs a cosmetic adviser. And birther crazies? Please leave no comments. Just go fix your tin foil hats.

9. What will I do now that the Olberman and O’Reilly feud is kaput? These two knot heads having a beef is why I don’t miss TV.

10. I’ve said this before, but it needs repeating . Spent the weekend watching season one of  The Wire. Anyone who didn’t nominate the show for an Emmy is a moron.

The shooter walked into the center during a meeting for LGBT teens. Most of the victims were very young, and many were not yet out to their families.

Police are searching for the gunman, and believe the incident was a homophobic attack rather than a part of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflicts.

Tel Aviv has an active LGBT scene, but several conservative groups in Israel frown on homosexuality.

The Jerusalem Post reports that police have ordered the closing of gay clubs all over the city as a safety precaution, and that one of the people killed was a youth counselor.

There is a short version of the story up at Reuters.

A story on Ynet News indicates that the attack took place during a regular meeting for LGBT teenagers. At least one witness says the gunman was masked.

Bruno is an over-the-top gay Austrian fashionista with a Nazi streak whose goal is to become the biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler. To do so he travels to America, where he is told he must take on a charitable cause to achieve worldwide fame. So he decides to bring peace to a troubled place he calls “Middle Earth.”

There, he nearly sparks a riot in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem when he struts down the street in a sexed-up Hassidic outfit that includes skintight shorts. On the Palestinian side, he tries to convince a West Bank militant to kidnap him, while giving the man condescending fashion tips. Bruno confuses the popular chickpea spread “hummus” with the Islamic militant group “Hamas” when he tries to bring together Israeli and Palestinian personalities to make peace.

Baron Cohen, an observant, Hebrew-speaking Jew with close ties to Israel, has ribbed the region before. In his 2006 movie Borat, his fake Kazakh language was actually Hebrew and his shtick was peppered with Israeli slang. In Bruno he goes a step further, taking aim at the Middle East’s most sacred cows.

The movie opened worldwide a week ago and became the top grossing film in the U.S. over the weekend. It’s making waves in Israel, too.

The locally shot scenes got big rounds of applause and hearty laughs at a recent Jerusalem screening. But the subjects of his pranks don’t seem to be in on the joke.

“This man, I think he is not a man,” said Ayman Abu Aita, a former member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militant group that has been largely disbanded. “He is not saying the truth about me. He lied.”

In their scene together, Bruno identifies Abu Aita as a “terrorist” and asks to be abducted.

“I want to be famous, and I want the best guys in the business to kidnap me,” Bruno says. “Al-Qaida are so 2001.”

Before Abu Aita has a chance to reply, Bruno suggests that the mustachioed man lose his facial hair. “Because your King Osama looks like a kind of dirty wizard or a homeless Santa,” he says before being kicked out.

In an interview with David Letterman, Baron Cohen, 37, said he set up the meeting in the West Bank with the help of a CIA agent.

Abu Aita’s Israeli-Arab lawyer, Hatem Abu Ahmad, denied his client has been involved in any acts of violence. He said he is preparing a lawsuit against Baron Cohen and Universal Studios alleging that the terrorist reference could get Abu Aita in trouble with the Israelis and the homosexual association could get him killed by Palestinians. “This joke is very dangerous. We are not in the United States, we are not in Europe. We are in the Middle East and the world operates differently here,” Abu Ahmad said.

The jokes apparently had their share of dangers for Baron Cohen as well. His production team said he narrowly escaped an angry mob during his prance in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Jonathan Rosenblum, an ultra-Orthodox columnist, said he hasn’t viewed the scene but said the reaction was to be expected.

“It was offensive. It was meant to be offensive and it succeeded,” he said. “I don’t have any interest in going to the movie but I am sure it will have its fans.”

Yossi Alpher, a former Israeli Mossad officer, and Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister, are apparently not among them.

In a panel Bruno holds with them in the movie, he tries to find common ground.

“Why are you so anti-Hamas? I mean isn’t pita bread the real enemy here?” Bruno asks with a straight face.

The dumbfounded interviewees look awkwardly at each other before taking the bait.

“You think there is a relation between Hamas and Hummus?” Khatib asks.

“Hummus has nothing to do with Hamas,” Alpher insists. “It’s a food. We eat it, they eat it.”

To which Khatib responds: “It’s vegetarian, it’s healthy, it’s beans.”

Both men declined comment for this article. But following the prank, Alpher published his account of the meeting in the Jewish publication The Forward in which he said he became suspicious when he saw Baron Cohen dressed in leather and studs, his face heavily powdered, and his arms and chest shaven.

In the movie, Bruno encourages the Palestinians to return the pyramids and asks Jews why they can’t get along with Hindus.

Among the nuggets not appearing in the movie but said nonetheless, according to Alpher, were: “Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse” and “Vy don’t you Jews and Arabs settle the conflict with a time share on the land?”

(Tel Aviv, Israel) Yossi finally has a legal family – even though he’s 30 years old and it took nearly 14 years for a court to approve his adoption by a male same-sex couple.

The Tel Aviv family court for the first time has approved an adoption by a gay couple. This week the court approved the adoption by former Knesset member Uzi Even and his husband Amit Kama.

Yossi was disowned by his parents when he was 16 and came out to them.  Even and Kama took him in. Eventually a court accepted the men as foster parents but it took two events for the couple to begin the fight to adopt Yossi.

The first came in 2004 when Even and Kama flew to Toronto and were married, shortly after gay marriage became legal in Canada – even though the marriage is not recognized in Israel. The second came when Yossi applied to university.

Even is a chemistry professor at Tel Aviv University and in 2007 Yossi sought the reduced tuition rate that the children of professors receive. He was turned down because Even was not his legal father.

Even turned to Dori Spivak, the deputy director of the law clinic programs at the university and the legal process to adopt Yossi began.

The Welfare Ministry began a probe to determine whether the Even-Kama’s and Yossi had a legitimate parent-child relationship. The report was submitted to the Family Court with the adoption application.

In her ruling Family Court Judge Alissa Miller said “I was convinced that the necessary conditions as proscribed by the laws concerning adoption of children had been fulfilled.”

“The significance of this decision is that tomorrow homosexual couples can turn into a family and adopt a child,” Kama told The Jerusalem Post. “After speaking with Dori Spivak we decided to shoot into the mist and we said that we don’t have anything to lose. The Welfare Ministry was shocked by our demand to recognize the adoption.

“The parent-child relationship has existed with us for 14 years. Its not that we adopted a child yesterday. We always were a loving, living family but were not recognized by the authorities. Personally, there is great excitement and great happiness. The authorities and the state know now officially that the life that we live is the life of a loving family. This is a great victory,” he told The Post.

Although this was the first case involving a gay male couple it is not the first where a same-sex couple has been given parenting rights.

In 2005, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the lesbian partner of a woman who birthed a child had co-parenting rights and approved an adoption in the that case.

Horowitz was among 120 MKs sworn in by President Shimon Peres – 30, like Horowitz, are serving their first term.

A former television journalist, Horowitz is a member of the left-of-center Meretz Party.

Last week he announced plans to bring in legislation that would allow any two couples to marry or have a civil union.

Currently only a rabbi can perform a marriage in Israel. A bill already before the Knesset would allow civil marriage, but only for opposite-sex couples.

Horovitz said his measure would allow both opposite-sex and same-sex couples to have a civil marriage.

It’s doubtful Horovitz bill will get far in the Knesset.  This month’s election saw large gains by conservatives, including the small-but-powerful religious parties.

Nevertheless, Horovitz said he is hopeful of a dialogue in the parliament.

Gays and lesbians in Israel have been steadily gaining civil rights since the government overturned the law against sodomy in 1988.

There have been no restrictions on gays serving in the military since 1993. In 2000, the age of consent for gays was lowered to 16, to match the legal age for consensual sex for heterosexuals.

Gay couples are given most federal rights in Israel, although gay marriage has been rejected by the courts.

While Tel Aviv is liberal and gays enjoy a vibrant community, in the conservative Jerusalem, the LGBT community is frequently under attack.

Authorities and ultra-Orthodox religious leaders have constantly attempted to bar gay pride from Jerusalem.

Last year’s gay pride parade went ahead despite attempts by the city to get an injunction blocking it

In 2007, moments before the gay pride march was to begin in Jerusalem, police arrested a man carrying a homemade bomb.

The 2006 pride march was cancelled following a week of rioting in Jerusalem by the ultra-Orthodox haredi sect.

In 2005 the parade also was marred by violence. More than a than a dozen protestors were arrested and three people were stabbed.