DS writes: "On Monday night, about one hundred people assembled honoring the youth were killed and injured in the Tel Aviv LGBT Center last week.To be honest, I was dreading this event. I needed to mourn – for the youth who were killed, and also for the sense of safety that I lost, years ago, when I first realized that my own LGBTQ youth center was an unsafe space for me. I worried, though, that I wouldn’t be able to mourn, but would instead be distracted by anger and alienation at the Zionist rhetoric that almost always accompanies any public Jewish event. I was pleasantly surprised in so many ways."

"Monday’s vigil focused entirely on the tragedy of the youths’ lost lives. Speakers from the Jewish community and the broader community emphasized the need to stand up for queer youth in our own communities and worldwide. One speaker talked about creating safety for “all residents” of Tel Aviv – not “all citizens,” as pro-Israel speakers usually say."

"Only two Israeli flags were present, one of them the rainbow version created for this June’s Jews March For Pride contingent– which, despite my dislike for all national flags and especially this one, I can see the relevance of for this particular vigil. Nobody used this event as an excuse to repeat the nonsensical rhetoric of many official Israeli sources, that this level of violence is “unheard of” in Israel. In fact, people hardly mentioned Israel. And that is as it should be – these youth were targeted because they were queer, not because they were Jewish, not because they were Israeli. The organizers of this vigil did an amazing job of keeping Zionist politics out of it, to an extent I have never seen at any Jewish event." Read more |

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