Earlier today, a human rights advocacy group called out Israel’s Foreign Ministry for opening a kiosk at Berlin Pride less than a week after large LGBTQ rights protests.
According to the Time of Israel, the Foreign Ministry set up an Israeli advocacy stand at the Pride event this past weekend. This stand passed out Israeli flags with rainbow colors on them and tried to entice gay tourists to the visit the country.
The Aguda Rights Organization questioned the government for this action after what happened less than a week before that. Recently, the legislature changed surrogacy laws to allow single women the right to surrogacy but not gay men and women. This then caused large protests and riots in Tel Aviv.
“There is no limit to the hypocrisy,” said Ohed Hizki, director of Aguda, in a statement. “With one hand, the government takes away from the LGBT community the basic right to a family and parenthood, and with the other hand markets the country to LGBT tourism from around the world.
“Instead of trying to create equal rights for the LGBT citizens of Israel, they are chasing after the friends of the community abroad,” he continued. “It is about time to put into practice in Hebrew what the country says so well in English, German, and French.”
Yair Hochner, the recent director of Tel Aviv’s LGBT film festival, spoke to Haaretz about the issue.
“It irks me so much to see how the week after the mass protest in Rabin Square, the Foreign Ministry is promoting the next parade in Tel Aviv on huge screens on the center stage. They’re simply taking advantage of us to promote an economic tourism agenda and false propaganda as if everything’s great for the LGBT community in Israel,” he said.
Hochner now says he will no longer organize Israeli LGBTQ film programs for festivals abroad that are funded by the Foreign Ministry.
h/t: The Times of Israel, Haaretz
