Uganda is hoping that the world turns a blind eye to its evil of making being queer a crime punishable by death.
Nigeria too wants to criminalize being queer, including
ending funding to queer rights organizations, so that queer people will be even more
marginalized in that region of the world.
Now, on to Israel. So, Hamas, a militant, anti-Israel hate group and the State of Israel have agreed to an imposed cease-fire. Ok, fine. Though, here are the facts. Hamas has launched over 420 missiles into Israel, 420!! Israel has a kick-ass defense system and has stopped many of the missiles from entering the rest of the country.
Apart from Palestinians feeling justified in their vicious hate, with Hamas heading it all, the whole fucking world is totally biased against the state of Israel.
Two things: 1) Palestine is not a country. This fact has
been recognized by the UN.
2)
Anti-Jewish hate continues to frighteningly rise around the world. Organizations that sound legit, such
as The World Social Forum, which I had to look up, and learned about in the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal newsletter, will be all about helping
Palestine , at the event being hosted by Brazil, this year. What’s more, my idiot country is sending a rep. to the Forum from the postal
worker's union. Why? What the hell do postal workers have to do with hate
-based politics?! Moreover, postal workers are federal agents, ergo, our government is surreptitiously saying that it, in fact, doesn't support Israel, though, outwardly it says it does.
Ok three things: Israel not only has every right to defend itself, it is the ONLY country in that entire region of the world where queer rights exist.
This article outlines the politics of queer rights in Israel.
http://yulr.org/homosexual-rights-in-israel-balancing-the-religious-and-the-secular/
Israel, unlike all of its Muslim neighbouring countries, and area=Palestine, is very supportive of women's rights, and women's equality (the political Hasidim notwithstanding).
Here's an article written by a woman living in Israel working for the US-based National Council for Jewish Women, about women's reproductive rights in Israel.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/07/09/3100216/op-ed-dont-set-back-reproductive-rights-for-israeli-women
This past year Israel created a law banning underweight models
from working. This made headlines, no other country has followed suit..yet?
Israel also rallies for the rights of non-human animals.
Last year, Israel outlawed the declawing of cats! Canada, among many countries, has yet to follow.
Here’s an article about the woman who founded the Israeli
SPCA http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/anglo-file/a-pioneer-of-animal-rights-in-israel.premium-1.478223
That Israel fights back is a given. Violence and war are horrible realities, made worse by the fact that , in the case of Israel, that country has been having to defend its existence even before it was declared a nation-state. For all the shit that gets talked about that country, Israel unlike all the Muslims in the area is not a medieval throwback of a country where being queer will get you murdered, or where you will get stoned to death for, say, looking at someone you aren't married to.
Here in Toronto we have a hate group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid that has been marching in Toronto's Gay Pride parade for the past few years. Friends of Simon Wiesenthal ( FSW) has been denouncing that group as a hate group. Pride receives funding for the parade, and FSW has been asking the city to revoke funding to the parade if it continues to support hate. To date, the group is still being permitted to march in the upcoming parade this Summer.
This link gives clear facts about what has been going on recently in Israel and the Gaza zone.
http://www.friendsofsimonwiesenthalcenter.com/
Ignorance and sheer biased stupidity continue to fuel people's warped realities about Israel. Israel not only has no allies in its region, but, fewer and fewer people and countries and organizations choose to publicly lend their voice in support of the Jewish state and its right to exist, and that's what this is all about.
I remember once, some years ago, talking about Israel with someone I worked with. I was shocked when he said that Jewish people didn't need Israel, they had Canada or Argentina as places to live. I was livid. He believed that Israel should belong to the Muslims, or more rightly, the Islamists=Palestinians, and because the Jewish people had displaced them ,they, he felt, should leave.
Sadly, I think many people similarly to him;that even after all the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish people still don't belong in Israel. Israel is a Jewish state; it is the only one in the world. There are 50 Muslim states in the world, Palestine is not one of them because it is not a state. Israel has to constantly defend itself against all the Muslim countries, not just because it exists, but because it exits among so much anti-Jewish hate. We can't say anti- Semitism when so many of those who hate Israel are also Semites.
