Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 17:03:16 -0600 From: Mike Mills Subject: Religious Conservatives in Israel Arrest Rights for Gays and Women ROY AARONS COLUMN Syndicated Week of July 1, 1996 (In his last report from his trip to the Mideast, where he covered the Israeli-Lebanon war 14 years ago, columnist Leroy Aarons says that Israel's sharp swing to the right now threatens the remarkable advances for gays and lesbians achieved there since 1992. ) By Roy Aarons While Israel's new conservative government has telegraphed its hawkish retrenchment on the peace process, less noticed is the prospect of the country taking a harsh right turn on social issues. This includes a chill on the extraordinary advances for gays and lesbians enacted during the Labor government's liberal four-year tenure. Confronted by the newly-empowered extreme religious bloc in the Knesset, issues such as womens' rights, gay rights, and religious reform are definitely on hold and may never see light of day as long as the present regime holds power. To non-gay reformers and a handful of gay activists who together forged Israel's dramatic leap forward on gay rights from 1992 to 1996, the sudden turnabout is devastating. For a nation that traces its origins to a Biblical admonition of death for same-gender sexuality, modern Israel has never practiced the hateful, gay-bashing tactics common in America. Despite laws against gay activity, and the claustrophobic geography of their tiny country, Israeli gays and lesbians managed to lead relatively unhassled lives in quiet, closeted obscurity. In the late 80s and early 90s, however, tremors from the gay movement in the U.S. and elsewhere reached Israeli liberals. In 1988, well-known straight progressive Shulamit Aloni quietly ushered repeal of the long-standing criminal sodomy law through the Israeli Parliament By 1992 when Yitzhak Rabin's Labor government swept out the Likud, the door opened to a dizzying rush of pro-gay developments. New Knesset member Yael Dayan, heterosexual daughter of the revered late war hero Moshe Dayan, took up the cause, engineering passage of a sweeping workplace protection law for gays and lesbians. Months later, Dayan spearheaded formation of a first-ever parliamentary subcommittee on gay affairs, which she chaired. In a highly-publicized open session jammed with press in February, 1993, a prominent University chemistry professor named Uzi Evan went public as gay. His dramatic testimony about how he had been drummed out of a top-secret position in the military made national news. The revelation and its reaction spurred high-level negotiations up the line to Rabin's chief of staff. By June, the Israeli military had eliminated all bars to service for gays regardless of sensitivity of position. (At the same time, President Clinton was upholding the U.S. military's right to cashier openly gay service personnel.) This presaged a string of precedents. In a landmark decision in 1994, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered El Al Airlines to recognize the petition of a gay flight attendant for domestic partner rights. Shortly thereafter, Professor Evan won major partner benefits from the university system for his male spouse, including pension beneficiary rights. The national Ministry of Education issued official guidelines for counseling gay students in public schools. Israeli culture reflected the change. Newspapers and television started covering gay issues regularly and sympathetically. Openly or tacitly gay pop stars emerged on the music and dance scene. Increased visibility triggered inevitable backlash. As long as the reforms had proceeded in relative quiet they drew little attention from politicians absorbed in life-and-death issues of war and peace. In 1995, with an election looming, the issue surfaced. Twice in Parliament religious-right members condemned gay reform measures, one rabbi calling for death to homosexuals. That provocation inspired death threat letters to known gay leaders and at least one vandalizing break-in. Mid-campaign, with then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres' re-election in jeopardy, he ordered Yael Dayan to withdraw a packet of gay-interest bills rather than face a forced vote of no confidence from the right. A Peres victory in the May election would most likely have restored those bills. Now, with religious parties having nearly doubled seats in Parliament, those bills are dead, says Dayan. "It's a terrible development. Everything will come to a standstill. There is no question they will not let us advance with it." A longtime champion of womens rights, Dayan fears that all government-inspired human rights advances will now be eclipsed. The predicament recalls the dismay of gay leaders in this country when conservative Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994. The big difference is that the United States has a mobilized, vocal and funded political gay movement. Israel has none. Ironically, most of the advances in Israel were initiated by friendly straights. For many reasons, the Israeli culture discourages gays and lesbians from stepping out and organizing politically. They include the emphasis on family, early marriage and producing children; a cultural aversion to separatist political identity; the up-to-now relative lack of hostility to gays in Israel; and the difficulty in a country of only five million to be publicly active and remain anonymous. Thus, most Israeli gays and lesbians are silent and resistant to organizing. Despite the tremendous gains made in their behalf, they watch from the sidelines as inexorable political forces carry them toward an uncertain future. *Leroy Aarons is president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. His book, "Prayers for Bobby," is out in softcover this August. EMAIL: RAARONS @AOL.com