Love, Rage and the Occupation, Part 3: the JOH protest vigil (2006)

Remember I posted about my article Love, Rage and the Occupation, which got published on Journal of Bisexuality? So, I discovered that I can put the text on my blog without breaching copyrights. Now everyone can read it for free. Hooray!

Since this article is very long, I’m going to be posting it in parts over the next few weeks. This is part 2 out of maybe 8-9, so stay tuned for further updates.

Previous:
Love, Rage and the Occupation: Bisexual Politics in Israel/Palestine – Part 1
Love, Rage and the Occupation, Part 2: Queeruption (2006)

Second story (2006): the JOH protest vigil

In that summer, the Jerusalem pride march was canceled.

Jerusalem Pride became a hotly contested territory three years after its inception. From 2002 and until 2004, it ran annually, relatively smoothly and with few negative side effects. However, the parade came to national attention in 2005, when a single terrorist (an orthodox Jew) stabbed three of the attendants with a knife, with intent to kill. (Interestingly enough, the person who jumped the perpetrator and caused his arrest, was one of the Jerusalem bisexual activists). When, one year later, the Jerusalem Open House¹ had started organizing an international pride parade in Jerusalem (under the ironic title of “Love Without Borders”²), a city dominated by religious populations sprouted a hitherto-unforeseen coalition between the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities not to let us dirty perverts march in “their” city. The police’s official reason for denying permission to march was… the Lebanon war, deciding it was “unsafe” to march at such a time.

Previous years: The pink black block in Jerusalem Pride. Credit: Oren Ziv

Love, Rage and the Occupation: Bisexual Politics in Israel/Palestine

Update 15.4.2012: You can now read this here on my blog for free: Click here

I just got a new article published on Journal of Bisexuality, how exciting ^_^

Click to download: Love, Rage and the Occupation: Bisexual Politics in Israel/Palestine

Abstract

This text narrates the writer’s story as a bisexual activist and, through it, also the story of the bisexual movement in Israel so far. In addition, the text endeavors to highlight the strands of militarism, violence and racism in Israeli culture, with a focus on the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian people. This is meant to achieve two things: first, to deconstruct the false separation between the two fields of ‘LGBT rights’ and antiwar activism; and second, to promote the principles of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, encouraging solidarity with the Palestinian people and nonviolent struggle against the Israeli occupation.

* If you have any problems with downloading the file, don’t hesitate to email me and ask me for a copy (or leave a comment below).

Love, rage and the occupation – my talk from London BiCon

First, an apology: I really sincerely was intending to embed this video into my post so as to save my readers the hassel of a seperate site. But alas, try as I might, I could not convince WordPress to do my bidding.

And so, I provide you with the link to the talk I gave in September at the International BiCon in London:

http://makore.6tzvaim.com/node/524

Summary:

Love, rage and the occupation: bisexual politics in Israel/Palestine

The Israeli occupation of Palestine has had a deep influence over both external and internal LGBTQ and bisexual/pansexual politics. What is the connection between the occupation and inner LGBTQ violence? How does that connect to last year’s Bar-No’ar shooting? How are all of these events related to bisexual erasure? And what does the Israeli bisexual community think about all this?

(For more topics mentioned in the talk, check out the tags).

Video length: 69 mins. Language: English, no subtitles :(

Please feel free to ask me any questions or to make any comments.

P.S.

Also worth checking out: Lilach Ben-David’s talk about queer resistance to the occupation.