Living Conditions
Israel has an active gay community, with well attended annual gay pride festivals held in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem since 1998. Pride events are also held regularly in Haifa, Beer Sheva, Petah Tikva, Hadera, Ra'anana, Eilat and Rishon LeZion.
The Jerusalem parade gained international coverage when three marchers were stabbed in 2005. The perpetrator was subsequently sentenced to twelve years in prison. An attempt by Jerusalem's mayor, a Haredi Jew, to thwart Jerusalem pride in June 2005 had been challenged in the courts. The mayor lost and was ordered to contribute funds to the event.
The World Pride Festival was planned for Jerusalem in August 2005, despite protests and opposition from members of the three major religions in Jerusalem. However, it was postponed due to Israel's pull out from Gaza Strip, which required the presence of most Israeli police forces and would thus leave the parade with little to no security. However, that parade had been plagued with threats of violence, as well as consistent grandstanding against it by some Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders and members of the Knesset.
In November 2006, more than two thousand members of the Haredi community jammed into streets in an Orthodox neighbourhood in a show of force aimed at pressuring authorities into cancelling the gay pride parade to be held in Jerusalem. About a dozen people were reported injured.
Israel is one of only eleven foreign countries to have a chapter of the U.S. PFLAG group called TEHILA.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Israel
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