Soul-Searching in Israel After Attacks on Gays and Arabs
After two attacks, attributed to religious
fanatics, that underscored Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and
its internal struggle, there has been outrage, blame and backlash.
JERUSALEM
— On one edge of the Zion Square gathering, an Orthodox yeshiva
student was in heated debate with a secular couple over the hierarchy of
sin. On the other, young men wearing skullcaps rocked back and forth,
reciting the evening prayer. In between, people sat cross-legged on the
cobblestones amid an array of memorial candles and banners decrying
violence, promoting love, demanding change.
The
focal point was a black cloth with simple white chalk Hebrew letters
spelling out “Ali Saad Dawabsheh” and “Shira Banki,” the Palestinian toddler burned to death in his West Bank home and the 16-year-old Jewish girl fatally stabbed at a gay pride march in Jerusalem.
The back-to-back attacks a week ago, attributed to religious fanatics,
set off a national outcry and reflection, with hundreds flocking here
each night for a mixture of mourning and protest.
“Both
names, Shira Banki and Ali Dawabsheh, are names that are going to be
etched in Israeli history as a trigger point,” said Asher Krueger, a
guitarist who led the group in songs of grief and hope. “And time will
tell. Is this going to be a tearing apart,” he asked, “or a pivot point
of people trying to understand each other, trying to live together?”
This is a time of deep questioning across Israel, after two deaths that underscored both the endless conflict with the Palestinians
and its own internal struggle to balance a rising religiosity with
civil rights. Have government policies and rabbinical authorities
inspired or at least allowed a radical fringe to reach new depths of
depravity? Who interprets Jewish law and Jewish values for the Jewish
state? How did it come to this?
The trauma hit during anniversary commemorations of both last summer’s war between Israel and Palestinian
militants in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s contentious withdrawal of
settlements and forces from Gaza a decade ago. It comes just five months
after a divisive election that yielded the narrowest and most conservative government in recent memory.
For
days now, there has been an outpouring of outrage: Israel’s chief
rabbis published a newspaper ad declaring, “Violence is not the way of
our holy Torah.” Sheikhs and rabbis, as well as politicians from
opposing camps, made joint pilgrimages to visit Ali’s badly burned
mother and 4-year-old brother in the hospital. Security forces have also
reinvigorated their pursuit of right-wing radicals.
There
has also been a backlash. The leader of a group that harasses gays and
Jewish-Arab couples was recorded declaring that “churches must be
burned.” Posters honoring the man arrested after stabbing six people at
the pride march — “We pray that all of God’s nation were as filled with
awe as you” — appeared in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, where many
consider homosexuality an affront to God. Death threats against the
right-wing leaders who vowed vengeance against the arsonists have been
posted on social media sites.
And
there has been blame. Palestinians and leftist Israelis argue that
Israel’s nearly half-century occupation of the West Bank and impunity
for settler vandals inevitably led to Friday’s firebombing of the
Dawabsheh home. Gay rights advocates cannot understand how the police
failed to stop the man accused in the knife attacks, Yishai Schissel,
who had recently been released from prison for a similar attack at the
2005 pride march and had openly declared his intention to repeat it.
“Israeli
society is embarrassed, because we know this is not who we are, it’s
not who we want to think we are,” said Donniel Hartman, an Orthodox
rabbi and the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research and
education group. “The interesting question for all of us is, ‘Is this
going to be a growth moment or is it going to be another wasted Yom
Kippur? Oh, we’ve sinned, and we feel so righteous for saying we’ve
sinned.’
“I’m
afraid there isn’t a context yet in which this could really create a
societal change,” he added. “The core narrative in Israel is still an
us-them, they’re-threatening-us narrative, and in an us-them, these are
just moments.”
The attack on the Dawabsheh home
may have more international significance; the Palestinian foreign
minister raised it in a meeting this week with the prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court, the official Palestinian news agency,
Wafa, reported. But for many in Jerusalem, the stabbing that killed
young Shira was equally painful, highlighting the tension in a city
where a third of the Jewish residents are ultra-Orthodox.
While
Tel Aviv is celebrated for its gay nightclubs and same-sex couples
pushing strollers, Jerusalem remains a place where gay and transgender
youth often must choose between their orientation and their religious
communities. It was only in 2012, after a decade-long court battle, that
the Jerusalem Open House, which runs an H.I.V. clinic, support groups
and a drop-in center, secured funding from City Hall. In the years
between Mr. Schissel’s attacks, the pride march has been marred by
Orthodox protesters hurling epithets and bags of urine.
“There’s
a very mainstream perception in Israel that gays shouldn’t live openly
in Jerusalem,” said Tom Canning, Open House’s director of development.
“This is not religious people, it’s also secular people. ‘Why are you
marching in Jerusalem? Go to Tel Aviv, you have Tel Aviv.’”
Mr.
Canning said the group’s top priority is to gain access to public
religious schools for tolerance education, and that it pressed for this
in a meeting Monday with Naftali Bennett, the education minister, but
“he didn’t make any promises.” Still, Rabbi Noa Sattath, who was
chairwoman of Open House at the time of Mr. Schissel’s first stabbing,
said “the reaction from the community is completely different.”
At
that time, a post-stabbing rally drew 150 people and “we couldn’t get
one member of Parliament to come,” Rabbi Sattath recalled. At a rally on
Saturday night, Israel’s president spoke to a crowd of thousands, she
noted, adding, “Our pain has become visible.”
The
gathering in Zion Square, a bustling hub for tourists and Israeli
teenagers alike, began spontaneously on Sunday after Shira, a pianist
who had excelled at biology and theater at an elite Jerusalem high
school, died of her wounds. Open House, the city government and other
organizations then made efforts to turn it into a public shiva, the
seven-day period of intense Jewish mourning, bringing in facilitators to
lead structured conversations.
Sarah
Weil has been there for hours each night, holding a large rainbow flag
with a Star of David. She has been called an “animal” and an
“abomination” by ultra-Orthodox passers-by. She has also had
“confrontational dialogue” that she described as “raw and difficult and
painful,” and “like witnessing revelation.”
“We
have young ultra-Orthodox men coming, they’re coming because they’re
actually curious, they want to meet a gay person,” Ms. Weil said. “We
can pass laws and we can stage protests and we can write articles, but
the way to open hearts and minds is to talk face to face.”
On
Wednesday night, as Mr. Krueger crooned on the cobblestones, Noam Eyal,
30, whom Mr. Schissel had stabbed in the back at the parade, was in the
crowd. Uniformed Israeli soldiers leaned on the police barriers
surrounding the circle, smoking cigarettes, next to a middle-age couple
licking ice cream cones. Inside, someone had painted a new placard that
read, “Our hands did not spill this blood,” adorned with red handprints.
Naftali
Sirchuk, 20, in the signature white button-down, black pants and
black-velvet skullcap of his yeshiva, sat for nearly an hour arguing
with Nir Cohen, 30, and Vered Hoshmand, 29, who both have degrees in
philosophy. They debated the difference, biblically speaking, between
homosexual love and pedophilia. They dissected the gemarah,
centuries-old rabbinical teachings. They spoke of the Holocaust and the
death penalty and whether murder can ever be just.
Just
the sight of Mr. Sirchuk engaging with Ms. Hoshmand, who wore a
spaghetti-strap tank top and short jeans skirt, was shocking in tribal
Jerusalem. But after the long conversation, did any of the three think
any differently?
“No,” said Mr. Sirchuk.
“No,” said Mr. Cohen.
“That’s
not the right question,” said Ms. Hoshmand. “The most important thing
is that the conversation is happening, not that we will change our
view.”
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