In praise of melting pot

My neighbor sent me a text message Saturday night to ask whether I’ll be getting to the gay solidarity rally at Rabin Square on my scooter. She said she’ll bring a helmet. If was clear to her that we’re going. As it turns out, may people – both gay and straight – found this clear. As opposed to the image portrayed by media reports, it was not only a solidarity display held by the gay community; rather, it was a display of solidarity with the community.

As opposed to a recent press poll (that was worded and presented in a misleading manner,) the conclusion that “Israelis are homophobes” - as one of the headlines put it - are not quite accurate. In addition to the masses at the Square, we can say that nowhere else in the world have we seen such broad coalition of government leaders openly backing the homo-lesbian community.

One of the people hurt in the recent attack at the gay center, Chen Langer, spoke at the rally and said it was a “terrible moment.” But he was wrong. The terrible moment took place a week earlier. The rally Saturday night was actually an especially beautiful moment. One had to be there in order to feel the kind of emotions that prevailed amidst the colorful flags: Something stable, warm, and restrained.

It was not a sense of a just and besieged minority, as is often the case with peace camp rallies, but rather, broad solidarity that cuts across political camps. There was something simple, quiet and determined there.

This was certainly a moment we can be proud of. Proud of the gays who refused to bow their heads, proud of the open and accepting city of Tel Aviv, and proud of Israel and of our Israeliness. I think the latter needs to be emphasized, because the beautiful and important thing that was revealed in the week between the murder and rally did not happen to us coincidently. It stemmed from the pillars of the modernization project known as Israel.

Halfway there

The intellectual elites today tend to assume that the Israeli melting pot is no more than an act of oppression by one group towards all others. Therefore they see the remedy in forging a coalition of minorities against uniformity. This is called multiculturalism. However, this image is explicitly false.

Tolerance and acceptance of those different than us in fact hinge on reinforcing the joint Israeli project.

As a colleague of mine at Hebrew University remarked, this is quite noticeable in the results of the recent homophobia poll I mentioned earlier. The deeper the process of “Israelization,” the more we see homophobia waning. According to the poll, 29% of the haredim and 33% of religious respondents do not think homosexuality is a perversion (surprising, given the Torah ban.) Meanwhile, 34% of Arab Israelis don’t think homosexuality is a perversion (I bet these figures are higher than what you would find in Egypt or Kuwait.) The same is true for 43% of former Soviet Union immigrants, 56% of Israelis identifying themselves as masorti, and 76% of the seculars living here.

It is therefore difficult to ignore the fact that the more progressive the Israeli melting pot is, the more tolerance we see, while anti-democratic forces pull back.

Is it surprising? Not really. It is the Declaration of Independence and its values that guarantee Israeli democracy, and the more we enforce it (in the face of those who deprive women, Palestinians, and homosexual of their rights) the more open our society will be.

Yet this doesn’t happen overnight. About 100 years ago, Zionist Movement institutions forced religious Jews in Israel to accept the right of women to elect and be elected. Today this right is taken for granted. On the issue of homosexuals and lesbians there is still a long way to go. Yet on Saturday night in Rabin Square we saw that we are already halfway there. It is for good reason that the rally ended with the singing of our national anthem, Hatikva.