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On Wednesday of last week, the annual general meeting of the Halifax Pride voted down a controversial resolution that proposed to remove all mentions of Israel from the festival and parade, an 11-day long event attended by more than 200,000 people. The argument: Israel is using LGBTQ+ rights to sweep crimes against Palestinian people under the rug. In other words: Everything good and right Jews are doing, including at Halifax Pride, is nothing more than an attempt to shift attention away from human rights violations.
No one is denying the existence of human rights violations, not even the Jewish community. But constructing a link between that and LGBTQ+ rights in Israel? There is no empirical causation.
It was a very emotional evening for everyone involved, myself included. Since the motion’s defeat, some voices have been claiming that “white people took over the meeting and voted down the queer community.” This is a very narrow-minded perspective, if not categorically false account, of what happened. Most LGBTQ+ people in the room, including me, stood beside the Jewish community—which included LGBTQ+ Jewish people, despite claims otherwise to make them disappear—to show solidarity and to make sure that Halifax Pride remained open and inclusive to all groups.
As a gay German living in Halifax, I am shocked at the characterizations of the Jewish community at the Halifax Pride Society’s AGM. It is part of my people’s history that we killed about six million Jews in one of the deadliest genocides in history. Since then, all German governments and the German civil society have worked on the compensation of Holocaust survivors and their heirs. But, beyond that, we have also ensured that Jewish life is safe and that the contribution of the Jewish community to our society is valued.
My impression of the Halifax Pride AGM was that many people have forgotten how much the Jewish people have suffered over the last centuries. It is still not safe being Jewish in most countries of this world. I had hoped that Nova Scotia would not be one of those places. And, it was clear by the turnout of Jewish people at the Pride AGM that this community hoped so as well.
I am sure that the intentions of the resolutions’ supporters were important and legitimate but they were not sensitive enough about the consequences of their motion—an exclusion of the Jewish community from authenticity at the Halifax Pride.
I have always known Halifax—and especially the LGBTQ+ community within Halifax—to be an open-minded, diverse and safe environment based on acceptance and respect. Let us hope that the Halifax Pride remains open and inclusive for all Haligonians. In the end, we all just want to be included and to feel safe at Pride. We can surely do that, if we stop blaming each other. Let us all work together to ensure that Halifax and Nova Scotia are safe places for Arabs—but never at the expense of the Jewish people.
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This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2016.
Let’s be clear: QAH resolution targeted, exclusively, Size Doesn’t Matter materials. Not the state of Israel. Not the Jewish community. This is a blatant misrepresentation of the intent of the resolution.
International Human Rights is a 2SLGBTQ+ issue. Pinkwashing is a 2SLGBTQ+ issue. QAH and their allies are working in solidarity with 2SLGBTQ+ activists in Israel who themselves are confronting the realities of pinkwashing.
There’s a troubling tendency here, and in most criticism of the QAH anti-pinkwashing resolution, to conflate the Israeli state with the Jewish community. The two are not the same thing, and political criticism of the actions of the Israeli state, especially in the realm of pointing out their massive, ongoing, international human rights violations, especially with regard to the Palestinian people, is criticism /of a political state/ and not an ethnic or religious community.
I also find it alarming that so many people respond to a statement of, “This challenges our ability to be included, because it makes us feel unsafe and unwelcome,” coming from /people within the community that Pride is meant to serve/, is so frequently met with shouts of, “BUT WE NEED TO INCLUDE EVERYBODYYYYYYYYY.” How can people honestly claim that Pride is and remains inclusive in the face of people /literally telling them that they’re not included/?
Great article thanks for posting. Good to see there are still some cool heads around.
Hatreds should be left behind when immigrants come to Canada.
“Racism didnt happen and isnt a problem”
-White dude
I attended the Pride AGM and I have a very different view from most of the posts I have read. The one article duplicated and published by every media outlet from CBC to C.H. to Metro and the admittedly biased report published on the Halifax Examiner do not tell the whole story.
I was not recruited to attend by the AJC or anyone but decided to come after reading mainstream articles on the QAH proposal. I firmly believe that this proposal was inappropriate to the spirit of Pride and is anti-semitic. It was good to see the large turn-out, of the rarely seen these days, larger Gay community of Halifax. Yes there were members of the local Jewish Community there to vote against the proposal but there were also many people who were not of the LGBTQ2 community, i.e Dalhousie Students For Palestine there too for the pro side. I and many others were profiled as “straight, old, white men in sports coats”. Really? A LGBTQ2 organization profiling people? Never mind your stated mandate of supporting Gay elders but when we show up and the vote doesn’t go your way we are invalidated.
Many of you in the 30 year old hipster crowd on the NSRAP Board may have not seen my face in the last 10 minutes but here’s who this “straight, old, white guy” is.
I’m 60 years old now. I came out 35 years ago before many of you were born. I was a board member of Aids Nova Scotia, at the height of the HIV crisis, I lost my best gay friends to HIV. I worked for years to raise money on the ANS Art fundraiser to raise money for amongst other things, monthly expenses for people living with HIV. I own one of the oldest gay-owned businesses in this Province and have been an outspoken gay business owner over these years. My business has been a supporter of The Youth Project, NSRAP and we support Halifax Pride through advertising in the annual Pride Guide.
So to say I am mystified by being described after all these years as a “straight old white guy” is an understatement but shows to me that the NSRAP board members who threw their loud and insulting comments during the meeting were not there to represent the wishes or opinions of the larger Nova Scotia Gay community but their own fringe political views.
The idea being put forward that this was a Straight take-over of Pride Halifax is wrong. What you saw Wednesday night, was people like me being heard. People who do not agree with your simplistic view of a very complex situation in a very complex part of the planet. You speak as though your personal political views are universally recognized. The Israeli LGBTQ community is something for us to be proud of, as an island of freedom and acceptance in a region of hate and murder towards their own LGBT communities. I would welcome pamphlets to be handed out at Halifax Pride to promote tourism to the wonderful LGBTQ communities of Jeddah, Baghdad or Damascus. It is time now for the QAH to look at a fresh approach, one that builds bridges and common ground, as in this country that’s what we do and that’s why we are a model for the World.
You, as the Board of NSRAP would do well to take note, listen and reflect on whether you are in fact in touch with the people you are there to represent, if you are to represent the whole Gay community in this Province. The conduct including tears and vitriolic name calling by several of the NSRAP Board members at the meeting Wednesday evening was unbecoming of members of a Provincial Board and as such they should now consider their resignations. Leave your political views outside and serve the community you claim to represent.
Willem and the Board of Halifax Pride who sat on the head table on Wednesday evening, did a very good job in very difficult circumstances and deserve our utmost respect.
The Pride Festival was always meant to be an open celebration, welcoming and not exclusionary and should remain that way, period.
As a white, middle aged, cis straight man, I am so NOT INTERESTED in being told by ANOTHER white male what is inclusive and what isn’t.
“I’m not Anti-Semitic. I’m Anti-Zionist” – Every Progressive SJW Since 1947
I’m glad someone in this thread also picked up on the just. Basic. Ignorance of this article. Do your homework about the Isreali/Palestinian conflict. The Queer Arabs of Halifax are not talking or even thinking about “Jews” as we see them in North America so why are you bringing up the holocaust and calling anti-semitism? They’re talking about the current nation of Isreal which they have been at war with for some time. So yes, if “Canadians” think it’s cool and inclusive to “allow” Arabs to live here, gay and all, then we’re going to have to be informed and compassionate about the conflict happening at their own home and how we are participating (whether we like or acknowledge it or not) directly in these conflicts.
What does a Middle Eastern War have to do with Pride? @ John Hutton why not look in the mirror?
One this I find sad, on a historical level.. is during the Nazi regime… it wasn’t just the Jews that were tattoo, and led to death camps.. it was also the gays… the pink triangle was the tattoo’d mark we were given which sealed our fates. Please keep that in mind.
@john hutton- “Racism is ok as long as it is directed at white folks only”
-Black Dude
Does the “Attention Seeking Parade” really have to be live soft porn? really?
“If you cut me, do I not bleed?”
I am not straight, I am not gay.
If you look beneath my skin I am the same as you.
Please do not use labels that separate us.
We are one tribe. One people. One label.
Human