How can Israelis
be antigay?

Of all the countries in the world, Israel is the last one from which I would expect to find a headline such as "Bounty for Killing Gays at World Pride."

Press reports coming out of Jerusalem indicate that flyers have arrived in the mailboxes of Israeli citizens offering what amounts to $4,500 to anyone who kills a gay person who comes to the Holy City for the World Pride celebration scheduled for August 6-12. The flyer reportedly refers to gays as "corrupt animals" who seek to defile as many Israeli children as possible. Did Dobson, Falwell, or Robertson write this Goebbels-like propaganda, by chance?

Instructions are then given in the flyer on how to make firebombs in order to kill as many gays as possible in one fell swoop. Not to be outdone, of course, some Muslim leaders are also making threats against any potential gays who would "dare approach the Temple Mount."

How is it possible that any Jew in Israel could possibly forget the horror of the Holocaust? How could they forget that the Gestapo and the SS hunted down Jews throughout Germany and Europe with the expressed purpose of killing them by any method possible, including fire? How could they forget rewards being posted for the capture or killing of Jews? How could they forget the hatred, prejudice, and brutality inflicted upon the Jewish people by the Nazis and the Communists? How could they even begin to forget the camps and the ultimate horror they contained?

It is quite beyond me how these once-hunted people could now substitute one group of people for themselves and hand out similar treatment. Where is their conscience? Where is their education? Where is their humanity?

Just as the Nazis wallowed in ignorance, fear, and scapegoating, these antigay Jews in Israel now do the same to the LGBT people of the world. Do they not understand that unless all people are free, then none are? Do they not understand that as long as it is acceptable to carve out one group for such hatred and treatment then all groups including themselves are liable to be carved out by someone else seeking to rain death down upon their heads and the heads of their children? Do they not get daily reminders from the Islamists that hatred breeds hatred, and that violence begets more violence?

How can these particular Israelis ever hope to have the support of all humankind when they cannot extend that same compassion and understanding to one of the largest minorities in the world? What is 10% of the world's population anyway? There are quite possibly 600 million gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders in the world, far more than the people of Israel. There may well be more gay people in the world than followers of the Torah and the United States combined.

How can such a total barbaric mindset even begin to exist in the mind of an Israeli is beyond me and shows just how much work we have to do in order to achieve even safety of life, let alone such luxuries as marriage equaltiy. I pray that the unending violence against both gay people and Israelis comes to an end soon. It is the 21st century--it is time humankind recognizes that we are no longer living in the times of Leviticus.