Gay rights parade called off in Israel

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict boiled over this week, it competed for headlines here with a pivotal clash in Israel’s culture war between secular and Orthodox Jewish values.

The inflammatory issue: gay rights in the Holy Land.

For days, Israeli television aired images of ultra-Orthodox Jews in black suits and hats, pelting police with stones and setting cars afire in a crusade against a planned gay pride march through Jerusalem.

The battle ended Friday in a setback for Israel’s gay community, which bowed to police and rabbinical pressure to take the annual event off the streets and confine it to a stadium. Nearly 4,000 revelers waved rainbow flags and danced to live rock and rap music, but the mood was dampened by a sense of retreat.

“They decided to lock us in a cage,” said Ronen Hady-Cohen, a 30-year-old medical student who walked through a protective cordon of 3,000 police officers to get to the rally at Hebrew University’s fenced-in sports field. “The ultra-Orthodox interpret this as a victory, and I’m afraid that a lot of Israelis agree.”

The flap over the parade reflected a sharp divide in Israeli society.

The country’s democracy encompasses an array of secular groups that defend gay interests and have begun a campaign for same-sex marriage. Tel Aviv has a vibrant gay scene. Like nearly every Israeli, gays and lesbians are drafted into the army and given an opportunity to advance up the ranks.

But ultra-Orthodox religious leaders, who consider homosexuality an abomination, wield enormous power. They and their 500,000 followers -- about 7% of Israel’s population -- are especially numerous and influential in Jerusalem, a city sacred not only to Jews but to Christians and Muslims as well.

Ultra-Orthodox clerics lobbied to have the gay parade stopped for the first time since it was first held in 2001 and called for a death curse on the organizers.

They got support from the top Muslim cleric in the Palestinian territories, Jerusalem Grand Mufti Mohammed Hussein, who declared that being gay is a crime. The Vatican and Christian evangelical groups denounced the planned parade as an offense to religious sensibilities.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert weighed in, saying a gay parade would be a “provocative act,” even though his lesbian daughter, Dana, of whom he is supportive, planned to take part.

Israel’s Supreme Court turned down an appeal to block the march, and the attorney general ordered police officials to meet with organizers to agree on a route. But with ultra-Orthodox groups promising a large counter-demonstration, police feared a repeat of the bloodshed of last year, when three gay marchers were stabbed.

By midweek, Israel’s other conflict had complicated the picture: Armed Palestinians were vowing to avenge Wednesday’s killing of 18 civilians in Gaza by errant Israeli artillery shells.

Police officials said they could not mobilize the 9,000 officers needed to keep peace between gay marchers and their antagonists and still defend the country from terrorism.

Under a deal worked out by Jerusalem’s police chief, the parade was canceled and Orthodox leaders agreed not to hold street demonstrations against the stadium rally.

“Today is a great victory for religious power,” said Yehuda Levin, a New York-based ultra-Orthodox rabbi who came here to lobby. “The sodomites are back in the figurative closet. They are not free to provoke.”

About 50 gay activists tried to march along the proposed route anyway but were blocked by police, who detained 20. Meanwhile, five young Orthodox men armed with brass knuckles, knives, clubs and a loaded pistol were arrested in a park near the stadium.

In the stadium, police detained a man who rushed the stage shouting antigay slurs.

The crowd at the event included a group of observant Jews from the Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism, who held signs calling for peaceful coexistence.

Hady-Cohen, the medical student, was there representing a small group of gay Orthodox Jews.

“Despite the caustic reactions, the religious community is finally talking about the subject and starting to realize it has homosexual and lesbian members,” said Avigail Sperber, a 33-year-old filmmaker who leads an Orthodox Jewish lesbian group called Bat Kol, a term meaning God’s female voice.

In a speech to the crowd, rally organizer Elena Canetti said she had rejected appeals to move the event to a more gay-friendly environment.

“Why not leave Jerusalem to the fanatics? Because I will not give up my right to live openly as a lesbian in my city,” she said.

“If we flee to another city, to Tel Aviv, or Amsterdam, or San Francisco, we will find ourselves centimeter by centimeter giving way to bullies and violence.”

boudreaux@latimes.com