Is Israel becoming a gay paradise? Lately our army was brought as an example
that gays can do a military service without having to persuade stupid generals
that they are human. Our first gay pride demonstration was held on June, 
attracting about a thousand gays, lesbian and their supporters to the streets
of Tel Aviv (mind you, one thousand people are considered a lot here!). And
now, the next revolution: the Israeli National TV, that old dinosaur, 
until now renowned only for a collection of exceptionally boring religion 
programs, after about 2 years without any successful production, after a 25
years history of the most embarrassing attempts to produce an Hebrew talking
citcom, began last week to broadcast a really funny one. And wait till you
here the details...

The citcom is called "Strait ve-la-inian", which is (if you insist you 
forgot all the hebrew you learned in high school) something like 
"Strait ahead". In the two episodes I've seen so far, a gay young guy, 
Roni, rents an apartment with a young woman. She has a crash on him only 
to find out that he is gay, but she gets over it. He encounters the obvious 
difficulties to explain to his ignorant (mail) neighbors that "No, even 
when I see a very beautiful woman I'm not attracted to her. The same way 
you [and here he pats the other guy's chick] are not attracted to handsome men". 
Roni is, off course, very cute, clever, and manly enough to break a few 
stereotypes.  The other two male characters are what is called in Yiddish 
"Nebech" - the crawling type of people.

And think that just a few years ago the same channel cancelled a talkshow,
because one of the items was on gays, and some of these bizarre creatures
were even brought to the studio!

Except that this is a routine week: channel two showed the excellent "Lost 
Language of cranes" on Sunday (the British version of course, not the American
"dissent" one); the Jerusalem cinematheque shows again "the Wedding Banquet", 
to the rquest of the public; and the Tel Aviv Cinematheque holds a two day 
marathon of gay and lesbian movies.

Happy new year to all of you!

- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Meiri                                          dafid@sunrise.huji.ac.il 
The Hebrew University,   Jerusalem.