A time to bend?

A good plea for centrism piece from Ynet's editor.

nobody in Israel today should consider themselves exempt from today's fast. It is clear (to me, at least) that the sort of free hatred that characterized that ancient period of time is in abundance today. Left-wing activists celebrated the destruction of 10,000 Jewish lives in Gush Katif last year, and continue to smugly wave scorn at their ongoing plight, while right-wing settlers couldn't care less about the moral reservations many Israelis feel about serving in Judea and Samaria.

In Jerusalem, homosexual activists continue to insist on holding their parade next month despite pleas by religious groups not to ignite the tinderbox city, and anti-gay haredim (ultra-Orthodox) have gone so far as to offer a bounty for each homosexual killed during the march. Archetypical "north Tel Avivians" don't like the haredim because they aren't Zionists, and they don't like religious Zionists because they are too Zionistic, and both of those groups in turn can't stand the "Hebrew-speaking goyim" from north Tel Aviv. And the list goes on and on.

Now, I'll admit it: Haredim and other more conservative residents of Israel have a point when they accuse the organizers of the Jerusalem Pride of using the rubric of "tolerance" to get their way. While gays should have the right to march, it's fairly clear that choosing Jerusalem is a political and ideological decision. This doesn't invalidate it, though, since:

• every decision to march anywhere is a political decision (marches tend to be political that way), and,
• almost every decision involving Jerusalem is political/ideological in the first place.

Yes, there is something to be said for respecting the cultural mores of the Haredim. You CAN walk around wearing a bikini in Mea Shearim, but it's not very nice. On the other hand, you don't get to mandate other people's behavior simply because it makes you uncomfortable. If the parades are orderly and unobscene (from the legal, not necessarily Haredi, viewpoint), the Haredim shouldn't have the automatic right to get their way on this. Jerusalem belongs to all Jews, at least that's what the Foreign Ministry is always saying. Giving them veto power over anything they find objectionable is unacceptable. I don't see anyone suggesting that people shouldn't be allowed to drive on Shabbat because the Haredim find it offensive/don't want to have to explain what a Sabbath-breaker is to their kids. There's a limit.

Furthermore, I notice that nobody seems to be mentioning things like this or this, which are apparently just fine and dandy with Israel's Haredim, mafdal, and datim.

JERUSALEM—The Holy City revealed itself as two Jerusalems yesterday, when Israelis pounded the drums of victory marking 38 years of conquest over traditionally Arab East Jerusalem.

Parading in the thousands, Jewish West Jerusalem carried the euphoria of Jerusalem Day only as far as a sieve of police checkpoints, where a deployment of 3,000 Israeli police sealed off the dispossessed Palestinian neighbourhoods to the east. On the seam line between the two, violence flared at the tinderbox holy site sacred to both, known alternately as the Temple Mount/al Aqsa Mosque, when crowds of Muslim worshippers clashed with religious Jews ascending for a tour. The standoff, which began with a barrage of stones, was broken up by Israeli guardsmen. Two Israelis suffered minor injuries. Jerusalem Day is in theory a celebration of the reunification of 1967 when Israelis awoke from the Six Day War to find their military reach extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. Thus began a postwar occupation comprising East Jerusalem, and its holy sites, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But that sense of unity evaporated yesterday at the Arab quarter of the Old City and the depressed enclaves flanking its eastern reaches, where black flags flew on a day of grim endurance. For Arab residents, a party denoting two generations of Israeli rule came as so much salt in their wounds.

Nothing like consistency, right? Incidentally, anyone familiar with Irish history might recall these delightful cross-cultural encounters. But of course, that can't be right, because the Israelis hate the British, and so of course they'd never act like them. My bad.