By Emily K. Alhadeff, Assistant Editor, JTNews
“When I think about Israel,” said Irit Zviely, “I don’t think, generally speaking, there is any place the LGBT community cannot live.”
Zviely is the director of Hoshen, Israel’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender information and education center. Zviely and another representative, Daled Dotan, spent three days talking with Jewish and non-Jewish community members earlier this month.
The events, hosted by StandWithUs Northwest, Hillel at the University of Washington’s Jconnect and Kolenu programs, Congregation Beth Shalom and the Consulate General of Israel, sought to address the victories, struggles and general reality of gay life in Israel.
Zviely and Dotan told JTNews about the relatively high quality of LGBT life in Israel. While they admit that Tel Aviv is the most comfortable city to be openly gay — with about 10 percent of its population identifying as such — most parts of Israel are accepting. Zviely herself lives in the relatively religious community of Ra’anana.
Hoshen has three focal points: Education through dialogue and personal stories; events, like conferences for educators and medical professionals; and research. Its programs include an LGBT civic studies program through Israel’s Ministry of Education, a kindergarten teachers program, academic studies, and advocacy work with the military.
“We tell our own personal stories,” said Zviely. “We believe that once you tell your own story, the story that comes out of the heart, it would meet another heart.”
Zviely and Dotan say they’ve seen major improvements in acceptance over the years. Whereas a few years ago they had to track down school counselors and convince them of the importance of LGBT education, now the schools are calling them.
“I don’t want to paint a too pink picture, though, because there are bad things and you can see them,” Dotan said. In “the religious school system, it’s much harder, and the religious communities it’s much harder and the Palestinian communities it’s much harder, and you can see that. But you compare that to other countries in our region, and to other countries as well, I’m quite proud of where we are, where we stand, and what we’ve achieved.”
With Israel being recognized, however quietly, as a safe place to be LGBT, Hoshen has provided protection for gay and lesbian Palestinians and members of surrounding Arab communities.
“Like in the religious community, as the population gets more conservative and more religious,” Dotan said, “you hear many more stories about Palestinian LGBTs that get thrown out of their homes, get persecuted, or murdered or other kinds of horrific stories.”
Hoshen’s approach to outreach is arguably more grassroots than political. Legislation “is not our issue as an organization,” said Zviely. “Whenever [there are] laws that need to be passed, our job is to bring the human story behind the issue.”
Whereas gay marriage is a hot-button issue for Americans, Zviely points out that the Israeli LGBT community itself does not agree that this is the most critical issue on its agenda. For one, common-law marriages grant the same rights to all unwed couples as married couples. Zviely and Dotan acknowledge that marriage in Israel, which is managed by the religious courts, is far too complicated for too many people to be considered an issue of just the LGBT community.
“There are much, much more important issues for us, more important fights for us, such as adoption, and surrogacy, and rights for pension and health care,” said Dotan.
And they are making strides. Zviely recalled a law that required unmarried women — whether gay or straight, single or common law — to receive psychiatric screenings before artificial insemination.
“‘Why do you think you need to give us permission to be mothers or check if we’re fit mothers, and other women in the entire country you don’t ask?’” Zviely said of the argument a lesbian couple took to Israel’s Supreme Court. “If you want to ask, ask everyone.”
The law was overturned.
Contrary to what one might expect, homophobia and opposition to LGBT rights in Israel do not necessarily fall on party lines.
“Homophobia can come from the religious person and the secular person,” said Zviely. When she went to court to adopt her non-biological child, she expected the judge to shoot down her request.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s religious. He will never allow this,’” she said. But he approved the adoption.
“Sometimes you get recognition from an unexpected person, and sometimes you’re totally shocked that a totally modern man or woman can say horrible things,” she said.
Zviely, with a larger delegation from Israel’s LGBT community, plans to return to Seattle in February to further share about gay life in Israel, as well as take back more information from the communities here.
“I think this U.S. tour strengthens the feeling that the education issue is not only an Israeli issue, it’s a worldwide issue,” Zviely said. “What I realized, because the globe is so small, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t do knowledge transfer. Maybe when we do round tables, the tables get bigger and bigger.”