Keeping the Peace in the Holy City

The Gay Pride Parade, Part II

The parade was an anticlimax. Other than one counter-demonstrator holding signs wishing the marchers a complete recovery (presumably from their perversion) and pointing out that there was, in fact, “NO PRIDE IN SHAME!!” the religious opponents of the parade were absent. Actually, 'parade' is kind of a misnomer—it was more like a semi-directed rainbow mob. There was no organization—marchers milled around for a full half hour after the event was supposed to start. Finally, the police told them to start moving already, so they demonstrators marched haphazardly down a mile or so of King David Street, finishing finally in front of the King Solomon hotel. That was it.

It was an intensely depressing experience, for a couple of reasons. First, because the parade was super lame. Second, and more importantly, because it was so quiet.

Now, let me clarify that. Despite my desire to see burning cars, I can acknowledge that it's a good thing no one died. I may have been, as several ex-girlfriends will happily confirm, born without a heart, but I can agree that people dying is, generally, a bad thing. Even people getting rocks thrown at them is a bad thing. This said, two questions need to be asked. First: Why, exactly, did no one die? And second: What did it all prove?

Here's why it was quiet. When I was writing my first piece on this yesterday morning, right next to where the parade would finish, the street was already filled with uniformed police, their riot gear laying out on the sidewalk. When I was downtown, far from where the parade would start, at around two, far beforehand, there were dozens more. And when I say police, I don't just mean your normal blue-shirted, cop-on-the-beat variety, although they were there too. There were also heavily armed riot police, in full armor, with shields, billy clubs, and assault rifles. Some rode horses, the better to break up a riot. And riding around on motorcycles were members of Israel's SWAT equivalent, trained to roll off a motorcycle at 60 kph while firing an M4. Which sounds more like a Bad Boys movie than a workable system of law enforcement, but then I kind of suspect there are some things that the Israeli military trains its people do just, you know, because they're cool.

The point, however, is that the Jerusalem municipality took no chances. It deployed 8000 police, MPs, and border guards to lock down the downtown area. (Just to understand the resources this involved, the Israeli Army has, on active duty, something like 10,000 combat infantry). They closed off the streets with roadblocks, parked buses sideways to create choke points, screened every person who walked onto King David street for weapons. Beards, too—I saw a few haredim turned away from the entrance by the police.

You begin to see, I hope, why this is so depressing. Because there are really only two possibilities here, neither good. One, is that all of the manpower, the time, the expense—13 million NIS, or $3.25 million—was, as some Jerusalemites say, a big waste of the city and national government's scant funds. The other is that it wasn't. That the only thing that kept the parade from degenerating into an orgy of violence and blood was 8000 heavily armed cops.

I don't know which is true. I do know this: despite everything, the police arrested more than two dozen haredim who tried to “disrupt the parade,” through means ranging from throwing eggs to—in one case—attempting to smuggle in a bomb. One was arrested for trying to get in “dressed as a homosexual,” to uncertain purpose. I'm not entirely sure what this means, or what he was trying to do, but I'd kind of like to see a picture.

I would like to believe that the fact that it came off quietly was a result of enlightened progressivism on the part of the city's religious. I would like to believe that it shows that Jerusalem is not a city totally gone mad. I would like to believe the parade proved something.

At least, I would like to believe it proved something beyond this: when people in Jerusalem don't like each other, there can still be peace—as long as you have roadblocks, and soldiers, and cops. But at the end of the day, nothing was proven. Not that the city needs to learn a lesson about tolerance, not that the government can stop freaking out over the idea of a gay pride parade here.

I don't want to say that it would be better if the police hadn't been there and the parade come to its natural, bloody conclusion. I don't want to say it would have been better if it had been canceled. But after all the argument, all the demonstrations, all the money spent, the city is the same as if it had never happened. And it's not in any way clear what the hell the point was.