Assi Azar, an openly gay Israeli television star and LGBTQ activist, was heckled and threatened by anti-Israel protesters during an appearance last week at Goucher College in Baltimore, The Times of Israel reported Wednesday.
Azar was screening his 2010 documentary Mom and Dad, I Have Something To Tell You, about Israelis coming out of the closet, when he noticed that 15 audience members had their mouths covered with pink tape.
Azar told the Times that he grew concerned when he saw the protesters at the Hillel-sponsored event.
When I saw the duct tape on their mouths and their signs, I asked the event’s organizer if they could be removed from the hall. But the organizer said that it was a public event so those students couldn’t be asked to leave. So, I turned to them and said that I wanted to have a productive dialogue with them.
He reported that the protesters were trying to shut down all dialogue and were aggressive toward those students who were trying to have a calm, respectful discussion.
After the screening, the protesters took the duct tape off their mounts, stood up, waved their placards, and shouted anti-Israel slogans.
Azar wrote on his Facebook page that what upset him the most was that Jewish protesters were among those defaming Israel.
What shocked me the most however, was the fact that some of the students who came out against Israel calling our State an apartheid state were Jews themselves!!!
I want to speak directly to those Jewish students now: Jews from around the globe are suffering from and victims of so many anti-Semitic attacks around the world. Students on campus are violently attacked only because they are Jews in the same way that Jews are murdered around the world and in Israel only because they are Jewish. Is this what you think you should be doing? Poisoning your own campus against Israel? I accept that you have different views about Israel; I do. I, in fact, do not agree with a lot of things that are happening there. Nonetheless, it is unforgiveable to be part of an organization that fights against Israel through spreading lies without bothering to check their sources.
Jews have no other country! Even if you don’t live in Israel –yes, Jews who live outside Israel – you have a role. You have a responsibility to fight for Israel, if only because there are enough who are fighting against our State and us. Moreover, so many Jews and Israelis have lost their lives for our homeland, both soldiers and civilians. So, is this how you choose to lead? To join a pro-Palestinian (anti-Israel) organization in order to express your criticism of Israel? Shame on you. What about your Jewish friends on campus who will now face explicit anti-Semitic attacks because of you? Don’t you have empathy for them?
Azar added that most of the Jewish students who were not involved in the protest acknowledged that they were afraid to speak up “as they would likely be targeted and possibly assaulted” for their views in the future. “It was very threatening. I could see the fear on the faces of the Jewish students that were sitting in the hall.”
On November 10, the Goucher College administration issued a letter regarding the protest at Azar’s presentation, which warned that the school’s code of conduct “does not allow for one group of students to disrupt or obstruct the event of another group.” The event was terminated by campus officials after 45 minutes due to concerns about the “dynamic of the dialogue.”
Azar describes himself as a “pinkwasher,” a term coined by anti-Israel professor Judith Butler to describe “those who claim Israel highlights its liberal, tolerant attitude toward LGBTQ individuals in order to direct attention away from its 48-year-old occupation of the West Bank.” Though Azar is known for his leftist political views and is often critical of Israeli policies, he said that when he encounters critics of Israel, he tells them, “I am here to pinkwash you, because you are colored only black and white when it comes to Israel.”
In The Next Struggle for Israel’s Gay Community, which was published in the September 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Liam Hoare described Azar’s efforts to advance LGBT rights in the Jewish state.
“The professional gay sweetheart of the state” is how a recent cover story in Time Out described Assi Azar. He is Israel’s gay best friend, Yanir Dekel writes, “a guy who’s fun and cute and funny and goofy,” a ubiquitous media presence and integral and beloved part of Israeli popular culture.
The co-host of Big Brother and a morning show on Radio Tel Aviv 102FM, Azar is also outspoken on LGBT rights. He made a documentary, Mom and Dad: I Have Something to Tell You, about how both parents and children experience coming out. He attends events and demonstrations in support of gay rights, and liaises with Knesset members to raise awareness of the problems facing LGBT schoolchildren. Azar also uses his social media platform to vocalize his political opinions, recently attacking MK Stav Shaffir for, in his view, “exploiting the gay community in a cynical and disappointing way” over the issue of civil unions.
Azar’s fame, coupled with his unguarded private life and outspoken political views, says a good deal about the tolerant nature of Israeli society in 2014, a place where the notion of live and let live as far as personal lives go is accepted by the majority of the public. But it has also been found that 43 percent of Israelis believe homosexuality is morally unacceptable and that 30.5 percent of Israeli Jews and 46.2 percent of Israeli Arabs would be bothered by having a homosexual couple as neighbors. Moreover, as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel reports, “The LGBT community still faces various forms of discrimination by government authorities and in the private sector.”
Azar’s prominence in popular culture within a society where homophobic attitudes remain deeply embedded in certain sectors is but one example of the triumphs and tensions that come with being gay in Israel today. Many of the basic rights for LGBT people have already been won, but formal legal equality, especially on the issue of marriage, remains elusive. Tel Aviv is today one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world, but in Jerusalem—just one hour down the road—it is almost impossible to be gay and live openly.
Being gay in Israel, then, is to be witness to a series of contradictions, paradoxes which show that Israel is in many ways a multicultural society within which LGBT people—not only celebrities—have been able to find a place for themselves.
[Photo: Yonatan Sindel / Flash 90 ]