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Equality Forum: ‘Pink Wash’ Of Human Rights Abuses Decried By Protesters At Israel Panel

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The New Civil Rights Movement’s John Culhane is the official blogger for Equality Forum, Philadelphia’s internationally known and always interesting cavalcade of events that celebrates, informs and provokes on all (or many, anyway) things LGBT. John will be sharing reports daily over the next few days. Read all John’s Equality Forum posts here. 

Well, that was interesting.

About an hour into last night’s Equality ForumFeatured Nation: Israel” panel, four or five protesters barged into the room and began shouting about Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. They had a huge banner that they never managed to unfurl, and what looked like a manifesto that they never managed to read — because they were quickly dragged out of the room by the hotel’s security staff.

All but one woman. Inexplicably wearing what looked like a Mardi Gras mask, she moved toward the front of the room and tried to speak. For a minute or so, there was a bizarre stand-off between her and several loud and angry audience members, who shouted (unhelpfully) “Get out.”

Enter Nurit Shein, the panel moderator (and Executive Director the Mazzoni Center), who tried to quell the disturbance by calming stating that she understood the reason for the protests, but that this wasn’t the right forum. Then, in a welcome surprise, another panelist — Anat Nir, a young Israeli activist who works on the economic side of LGBT equality — somewhat disagreed with her, contending that these were issues that needed airing. Then she and other panelists described the work that the LGBT leadership in Tel Aviv was doing with Palestinians in Gaza and Arabs living in Israel in order to help them deal with a culture that was more repressive than Israel’s. The activist seems disarmed by this civil response, and, while she didn’t exactly go quietly (a security guy “helped” her out), the panelists had found the antidote to the venom in her voice.

Was the event the better for the protesters? I’d say yes, but not in the way they’d intended. They did succeed in getting the panelists to talk about the challenges of doing LGBT rights in a society where there are other injustices that go unaddressed; although, as more than one of them painfully pointed out, the situation isn’t markedly different in the U.S. (It was either Shein or Nir who pointed out that, for example, the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan is problematic, but that’s no reason for the work of LGBT activists to stop.) And they did, in a way, get people to consider what they were saying. But really, their goal was to disrupt and to shut people up. And that rarely (not never!) seems like a good idea to me. Why not be part of the audience and ask penetrating questions? And then set up your protest outside? They did that — as I walked to my car, a small group of college-age students were standing on the sidewalk bearing signs that rebuked the “pink washing” of Israel — by which I gather they mean the effort to use progress on LGBT rights to camouflage the deeper human rights abuses that continue.

———-

The protest aside, the panel was remarkably informative. Shai Doitsh, the Chairperson of the Israeli National LGBT Task Force, provided a succinct summary of LGBT rights progress in Israel over the past thirty years. Until 1988, it was illegal to be gay (by which I took him to mean that the law criminalized acts of same-sex intimacy, as the Israelis had uncritically imported English law into their system when the nation was founded). Then that law changed, and, a few years later, the exclusion of gays from the military was lifted. (More than one panelist described the importance of this legal change in Israel, given the social standing of the Israeli Army and the expectation that everyone will serve.) And — in a reminder that high-profile media events are as important as legal change in moving a rights agenda — he pointed to the 1998 EuroVision win of an Israeli transgendered woman, Dana International, for the song (wait for it!) “Diva.” (For those who don’t know what EuroVision is, shame on you! One word: ABBA!)

Doitsh said that many of the advances had come from the courts and not Parliament, a statement that provided a smooth segue into the remarks by Irit Rosenblum, a very smart lawyer who directs the New Family Organization. This title isn’t a politically motivated misdirection for a group that deals with LGBT rights — as its name implies, “New Family” is concerned with the rights of all kinds of families that aren’t recognized under Israeli law. And because that law is grounded in religion, the group of legal outliers includes couples interfaith couples, non-religious couples, and foreign workers — along with LGBT couples. The strategy has been to pursue practical solutions to the legal problems of parenthood, private contracting, inheritance, and so on by “flooding” the family courts with petitions and cases. And this has paid off, because dozens of adverse rulings are quickly swamped by one or two good ones. Once a court has simply seen and protected the couples in front of them, it becomes harder for later courts to backtrack. This approach has also gained some traction here in the U.S., with scholars like Nancy Polikoff emphasizing the need for the law to “value all families” — not just the LGBT ones that are, for many of us, our primary concern. Small victories can be used to pry bigger ones out of the courts. (I was particularly interested in the story of how a gay couple was forced to cool its heels in India with the baby they’d created with a surrogate, until a combination of legal and social pressure resulted in their repatriation.)

Yaniv Weizman, a Tel Aviv city council member and advisor to the mayor on LGBT issues, thanked Rosenblum for her work and then, movingly, gestured to his husband in the front row as evidence of its effect. “Tel Aviv is so gay!”, said Weizman. While we have a “Gayborhood” (I hate that name!) in Philadelphia, Tel Aviv is an entirely gay-open city. (I also learned that it was recently named the No. 1 Gay Tourist Destination in the world.) But the rest of the country isn’t as progressive. In this way, the city isn’t too different from American cities and their surrounding areas. But it’s often described, he noted, as a “bubble” — an image that I’m sure would have appealed to the protesters as a way of describing the LGBT’s focus on their own equality (but the image isn’t accurate or entirely fair to the LGBT community, even though Weizman conceded that they “weren’t doing enough” to help their Palestinian gay brothers (not sisters so much, who I gather are so invisible at this point that there’s not much to be done right now)).

Anat Nir was the most practical, and, in a way, the most compelling (which is saying something given the effectiveness of all the panelists). She clearly understands the need for financial backing in support of social spaces and artistic ventures as ways of pushing things forward. She began by opening a lesbian bar because there was no place for her to go. But then she realized that there was a need for broader social opportunities, and has pushed forward with a gay and lesbian film festival. She has also provided funding for the first year of a safe living space for LGBTQ youth, and has campaigned for medical facilities to serve our population. Then there’s mortgage financing and life insurance issues, which she is currently working on.

——–

Thanks to committed activists like this, a lot’s getting done in Israel, and especially in Tel Aviv. And they’re not leaving out their Arab neighbors. I can’t resist closing with this quote from the Epilogue of one of the best books I’ve ever read, A History of the Jews. I include it here as a counterweight to the sometimes veiled anti-Semitism that too-often colors otherwise accurate criticisms of Israel:

“Human confidence…, if it is strong and tenacious enough, is a force in itself, which pushes on the hinge of events and moves them. The Jews believed they were a special people with such unanimity and passion, and over so long a span, that they became one. They…indeed have a role because they wrote it for themselves.”

 

Were he born 10,000 years ago, John Culhane would not have survived to adulthood; he has no useful, practical skills. He is a law professor who writes about various and sundry topics, including: disaster compensation; tort law; public health law; literature; science; sports; his own personal life (when he can bear the humanity); and, especially, LGBT rights and issues. He teaches at the Widener University School of Law and is a Senior Fellow at the Thomas Jefferson School of Population Health.

He is also a contributor to Slate Magazine, and writes his own eclectic blog. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter if you’re blessed with lots of time.

John Culhane lives in the Powelton Village area of Philadelphia with his partner David and their twin daughters, Courtnee and Alexa. Each month, he awaits the third Saturday evening for the neighborhood Wine Club gathering.

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OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

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Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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