After destroying the morality of America with her hilarious and catchy songs, the ever-delicious Willam has set her sights on The Holy Land of Israel, where she made a few appearances in Tel Aviv and marched in the Tel Aviv Pride parade (solo, now that her girl group DWV is dead).
Fortunately, she took a moment out of her busy jet-set schedule and graced us with some highlights of why she thinks Tel Aviv, the center of LGBT life in the Middle East, is such a spectacular place.
- The gay beach (Hilton Beach) is right next to the dog beach so they can keep all the bitches together. Although the roads along the beach are very ’90s Miami. The roads are terrible with lots of run down/vacant/blighted apartment buildings. And they have the worst taxi drivers I’ve yet to experience so far out of four continents I’ve been on. So rude it made me laugh. I thought I gave no fucks. Shiiiit. You ain’t seen no fucks given until you’ve tried to tell an Israeli cab driver to turn on the air and maybe not smoke and yell in his phone.
- Another hotspot is any set of stairs on a Saturday because waiting for Kosher elevators will take up half your day. The kosher elevators (much like air conditioners) are all on timers to get around the no-machines/work rule on the Jewish Sabbath.
- The Dead Sea is salty water you can float in with mud that you smear on yourself. If you shut your eyes, you can pretend it’s a combo of two very specific types of fetishes.
- Dana International — Find her and meet her. She is a legendary Eurovision winner and welcoming, warm representative for Israel. Everyone there seemed really nice actually. They like to talk and are 100 percent cool with LGBT folks. Totally Westernized in that sense.
- The men are beyond compare. I think the three year mandatory army service for citizens does wonders on all their bodies.
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Mezaien
M m m m m Israeli, men are way more hottest then the American.
fagburn
‘The men are beyond compare. I think the three year mandatory army service for citizens does wonders on all their bodies.’
Unbelievable.
Dr. Mo
It does!
DarkZephyr
@Mezaien: But racially they are Caucasian, I thought you hated white guys?
FStratford
pfft. Ive been there and while its more open than most places in the middle east, that really is a very very very very very low bar. I wont pick Tel Aviv over any major Western and Central European, North American, South American and Asia-Pacific city.
odeded
I you want to learn more about the LGBT community @TelAviv or planning a trip you can check our expert for that matter: http://www.localyoo.com/experts/kristof-steiner
Sumidagawa
NO PRIDE IN OCCUPATION.
Cam
@Sumidagawa:
Remind me again about how many gay Palestinian groups there are? 1 or 2? And remind me WHERE they are based? Oh THAT’S right, in Israel because being gay is not only illegal in Palestine but punished with prison, and with govt. sanctioned police beatings as well as having a blind eye turned when families kill gay children. That is why Isreal accepts gay refugees from Palestine, due to the fact that they could be killed if sent back.
So sorry, but I’m not going to feel sorry for a country that kills us no matter what B.S. you try to post on here. Let the Palestinians stop arresting and killing gays, THEN they can ask for my sympathy.
Sumidagawa
The stare of Israel is a machine for creating refugees, especially among indigenous Arab populations of the Middle East. It doesn’t get extra credit for not criminalizing some gay sex and relationships, something it should do anyway. Despite an Israeli propaganda campaign promoting the settler colonialist state as “tolerant,” relationships–both gay and straight–between Jewish and Arab people are frequently stigmatized in myriad ways within Jewish Israeli communities.
DarkZephyr
@Sumidagawa: “It doesn’t get extra credit for not criminalizing some gay sex and relationships”
Yes it does. Homophobes can eat it. That includes Palestinian ones.
Sumidagawa
@DarkZephyr: That doesn’t make any sense, except as a failed attempt to divert attention from Israeli occupation and apartheid.
For example, it’s a bit like arguing that the convicted murderer should not receive any punishment because, as it turns out, he hasn’t committed tax fraud recently. In fact, he should have submitted an honest tax return in the first place; doing so doesn’t count in his favor against crimes committed.
Does your condemnation of homophobia extend to that committed by Jewish Israeli citizens and enshrined in Israeli laws?
DarkZephyr
@Sumidagawa: Why are you trying to convince me to be sympathetic to such a violent and homophobic country? Is there any way you can explain that to me? What redeemable quality do they have that I as a gay man should take into consideration? Thanks in advance.
DarkZephyr
@Sumidagawa: The most you could possibly hope to achieve is make me dislike both countries. Is that your goal? Will that satisfy you?
Sumidagawa
@DarkZephyr: Good questions.
I think it’s important to begin by understanding that the US, Israel and EU countries do not even recognize Palestine as a country, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of countries worldwide do so. So when you talk about “the two countries,” this kind of constructive discourse is not currently possible at the level of international politics (such as the UN) as a direct result of the refusal on the part of the US and Israel to grant Palestine a place at the table.
So it shouldn’t be a case of “dislik[ing] both countries,” and that’s of course not my wish. I want to challenge a situation in which the very idea of “two countries”–or a “two-state solution” to the conflict in the Mid East–is rendered unthinkable. Israeli colonialism in the West Bank makes it impossible to determine where a state of Palestine could even be located in such a way that Israel would find acceptable.
As a gay man, you may think it’s important for LGBT Palestinians to bring human rights issues to the UN. Yet this is not fully possible when the US and Israel don’t recognize Palestine as a country.