Hundreds of writers, poets, playwrights, screenwriters and members of Israel’s arts and letters community call upon Benjamin Netanyahu and the Knesset – Repeal the Nation-State Law and the amendment to the Surrogacy Law at once!

Hundreds of writers, poets, playwrights, screenwriters and members of Israel’s arts and letters community issued a dramatic call this evening to the Prime minister of Israel, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, to repeal the Nation-State Law and the amendment to the Surrogacy Law, which discriminates against Israel’s LGBTQ community. The public statement was initiated and set in motion by Israeli gay writer Ilan Sheinfeld, a father of twins who were born through surrogacy in India and currently a resident of Tuval in the Galilee.

“The public statement that I formulated knowingly and deliberately links the opposition to the Nation-State Law with the opposition to the Surrogacy Law,” said Ilan Sheinfeld. “As I see it, Israel’s LGBTQ community, in its efforts that transcend borders and sectors of the population, and that continue to receive unprecedented support from all strata of Israel’s public, has kindled a struggle that is far greater than the Surrogacy Law itself. It is the struggle for equal rights and mutual responsibility in Israel. Sharing in that struggle are all of the weak and excluded sectors of Israeli society, including the members of the LGBTQ community and everyone who has been harmed by the Nation-State Law. This was also the rationale behind the phrasing of the public statement, which was shortened on the recommendation of David Grossman and with the assistance of Navit Barel and Eshkol Nevo. I thank all those who assisted me in obtaining signatures for the public statement in the course of this weekend, including Tamar Peleg, Nira Tuval, Adiva Geffen, Yair Ben-Chaim, Eshkol Nevo, Zeruya Shalev, Idit Shchori, Prof. Gad Kaynar-Kissinger, Orna Akad, and many others. Thanks also to Amit Alexander Lev-Brinker and Sharon Neeman for the translation into English, and to Michal Sela and Gal Amir for the translation into Arabic.”

In the public statement, which was issued in Hebrew, English and Arabic to all of the local and foreign media, the signers wrote:

To: Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel

Members of the Knesset

July 27, 2018

Dear Mr. Prime Minister and members of the Knesset:,

Public Statement

We – writers, screenwriters, playwrights, academic  scholars and members of Israel’s  arts and letters community – would like to express to you our utmost shock and dismay, in light of the recent laws passed by the Israeli Knesset under your leadership, first and foremost the Nation-State Law and the Surrogacy Law.

According to a  law recently passed by the Knesset and entitled “Israel: The Nation State of the Jewish People”, Israel is now defined as a nation-state for Jews only. This is a Basic Law, with quasi-constitutional status, that explicitly allows racial and religious discrimination, rescinds the status of Arabic as an official language alongside Hebrew, does not mention democracy as the basis of the regime, and does not mention equality as a core value. As such, this Basic Law is undemocratic and runs counter to the definition of the State of Israel as a democratic state; moreover, it contradicts the Declaration of Independence, based on which Israel was founded. These are two things no Knesset has a right to do.

The Knesset also amended the Surrogacy Law, when it extended the list of people who are eligible to receive the services of a surrogate child-bearer, to include single women who have a medical condition preventing them from having a child, but excluded single men and gay couples.

Those two laws exclude Christian and Muslim Arabs (including Bedouin), Druze and Circassians, and violate the LGBTQ community’s right for parenthood. They are part of a long list of actions by the various governments of the State of Israel that you have headed, from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to this day, and have unjustly penalized the most excluded and disadvantaged sectors in both Jewish and Israeli society, including Reform and Conservative Judaism, the Arab (including Bedouin), Druze and Circassian minorities, the sick and elderly, Holocaust survivors and differently-abled people, single women, Ethiopian Jews and many more.

During your years in office, you and those governments have persistently eroded the foundations of our Jewish-democratic country. You have damaged the relations between Israel and United States Jewry; you have sentenced huge populations to continued poverty and hardship; and you have knowingly and purposely damaged Israel’s education system, public diplomacy, culture and economy, defense and welfare.

By doing so, you have done severe harm to Israeli society. But the most severe damage has affected the values of equality and mutual responsibility, on which Israel’s society is based and from which it draws its strength.

We demand that you immediately repeal the Nation-State Law, which has created a rift between Israeli society and United States Jewry; discriminates against Arabs (including Bedouin), Druze and Circassians; and damages the coexistence of Israel’s Jewish majority with its minorities. Moreover, we demand your immediate response to the call for equality on behalf of the members of the LGBTQ community. It is unthinkable for the State of Israel to stand between a person and that person’s natural desire to become a parent and to establish a family.

Felonies and misdemeanors properly defined as such by law fall under the jurisdiction of a court. On the other hand, sins that are infamously written into the law itself by the elected lawmakers – sins that undermine the core of the Jewish people’s existence and its homeland – must be judged by intellectuals and by the court of history.

Please stop your government and coalition members from scourging minorities that create the colorful mosaic that is Israeli society and help to guarantee its existence. Do it now!

In witness whereof we have affixed our signatures (in alphabetical order):

Akad	Orna
Alkalay-Gut	Prof. Karen
Arad	Roy Chicky
Ariel	Dr. Nana
Assouline	Tamir
Atzmon	Yaniv
Azoulay-Hasfari	Hanna
Baikin-O’hayon	Tom
Bar	Alon
Barel	Navit
Barir	Idan
Baskin	Sivan
Baumgarten	Daniel
Ben-Chaim	Yair
Ben-Dor	Yocheved
Ben-Dov	Prof. Nitza
Ben-Moshe	Yakir
Ben-Yair	Sigal
Bernheimer	Avner
Brown-Elkeles	Tami
Castel-Bloom	Orly
Chen	Roy
Citron	Prof. Atay
Cohen	Eliaz
Cohen-Assif	Shlomit
Daskal	Riki
Dayan	Yael
Dovrat	Yair
Eitan	Zohar
Elharar	Regev
Elior	Prof. Rachel
Eliya-Cohen	Iris
Eliyahu	Eli
Feigenbaum	Mitchell
G. Haim	Esti
G. Peleg	Dana
Galil	Lilach
Galili	Mordechai
Gaon Rosenblum	Orna
Geffen	Adiva
Geldman	Mordechai
Ginosar	Varda
Gluzman	Prof. Michael
Goldring	Noga
Granot	Lior
Grossman	David
Grossman	Hagit
Haski	Shlomi
Hass	Amira
Hatzor	Ilan
Herzog	Omri
Hess	Dr. Tamar
Hilu	Alon
Hirschfeld	Prof. Ariel
Holzberg	Avshalom
Horowitz	Revital
Itamar	Yoav
Kahansky Eshel	Inbal
Karp Rozenfeld	Tamar
Kartun-Blum	Prof. Ruth
Katz	Yoav
Katzir	Judith
Kaynar Kissinger	Prof. Gad
Keret	Etgar
Kimchi	Avichai
Kun	Uriel
Lazar	Hadara
Lerner	Motti
Lev Adler	Anat
Liebrecht	Savyon
Medini	Yael
Meiri	Dr. Gilad
Meshulam Levy	Meirav
Milk	Loren
Milstein	Avishai
Mishol	Agi
Mishori	Dr. Efrat
Mittelpunkt	Hillel
Moskovitz-Weiss	Ela
Nagid	Dr. Chayim
Naveh	Prof. Hannah
Netzer	Ruth
Nir	Zvika
Nissim	Meital
Nitzán	Tal
Oz	Amos
Oz	Daniel
Oz	Gallia
Oz-Salzberger	Prof. Fania
Peled	Oded
Peretz-Schwartz	Galit
Perry	Prof. Menachem
Pessach	Chaim
Rattok	Prof. Lily
Ratzabi	Prof. Shalom
Regner	Agi
Rogel	Mayan
Ron	Prof. Moshe
Ronen	Dr. Diti
Rotbart	Oz
Schwartz	Prof. Yigal
Shachar	Yudit
Shalita	Rachel
Sharoor	Tzipi
Shchori	Daphna
Shchori	Idit
Sheinfeld	Ilan
Shemesh	Edna
Shir	Smadar
Shmueloff	Matti
Shpin-Gross	Varda
Someck	Ronny
Sucari	Yossi
Tevet Dayan	Maya
Tomer	Eli
Tuval	Nira
Tzelgov	Eran
Vig	Shoshana
Waxman	Yossi
Weichert	Prof. Rafi
Weisman	Dorit
Weiss	Prof. Meira
Weiss	Tali
Wolkstein	Dr. Oded
Yavin	Jonathan
Yehoshua	A.B.
Yeshurun	Halit
Yonatan	Ziv
Zeffren	Ilana
Zilberman	Dr. Dorit

A Letter to Mr. Ali Khamenei

41 years ago, in November 1977, the Egyptian President Sadat’s visited Israel. According to Wikipedia, It was a historic event that brought about a turning point in Israeli-Egyptian relations and opened a new era in the history of the Middle East. Sadat spoke in the Knesset plenum and met with all the Knesset factions. Through Sadat’s visit, Sadat embarked on a process of peace with Israel, culminating in the signing of the Camp David Accords, which paved the way for the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Sadat, together with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, his partner in the process, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I remember this event clearly. I was 17 years old then. My high school principal, Uri Ornan, gathered us and asked us what is our opinion on this event. Should we bless it or condemn it in our high school newspaper. Like many other Israelis, we were suspicious, concerning Sadat’s motives for his dramatic move. Nevertheless, we blessed it. And we were right to do so because the peace with Egypt is solid. It is a cold stare of peace. Israelis are still not welcomed in Egypt. But the cooperation between the two countries is beneficial for both parties.

Iran and Israel are now in a state of war. We do not want this war. We seek peace. however, we have to confront Iran because of its consolidation in Syria, and Iran’s nuclear weapons plan.

You, Mr.Khamenei, are a great opponent of Israel. On 15 December 2000, you called Israel a “cancerous tumor of a state” that “should be removed from the region”. You keep on with your morbid and murderous rhetorics, claiming that there is no cure for Israel but its annihilation. Several official Iranian generals and leaders follow you.

I know that you love to read, that you love literature, that you have a special admiration for words. This is the reason I am writing you this letter. Being a writer myself, a Hebrew writer, I understand the power of words. Words can build and words can ruin. Words can make nations happy or miserable. Words can offend or heal.

The war between Israel and Iran has launched months ago and became visible this week. Both states are going to lose a lot during this war. Your economy collapse and your power over the Irani nation is lessening. The US cancellation of the nuclear treaty and the renewal of sanctions against your regime will make things only worse. Iranian people will lose their jobs and their most basic economic and personal security. Israel will have to go under a terrible time but will sustain.

Why don’t you launch a surprising peace trip to Israel? I assure you, that the Israeli government and the Israeli nation will be happy to host you here. Once you will be here, and see with your own eyes the modernity and prosperity of Israel, you will understand that you can not beat us, but you can surely gain a lot for your people by signing peace with us. Imagine the economic shift Israel and its allies might bring to Iran, how much of your nation’s capital will be free for the welfare of your nation, instead of financing terror and war worldwide. Can you see how warm relations between our countries might bring an amazing cooperation of high tech technology and agriculture, culture and science and many more fields?

We, Israelis, do not want to fight you. We will if we will have to. however, war is not our intent. We love peace, and we want to sustain it. I am a single gay father of twin boys. They are six years old now. Believe me, Mr. Khamenei, I wish they will not be soldiers at all. I want them to live peacefully, and I am sure your people want the same.

Drop your rhetoric, stop the war, come to Israel, and save your regime, and your people, from an unnecessary bloodshed, Amen.

Jerusalem – the eternal capital of the people of Israel!

An open letter to the Government of Israel
Jerusalem – the eternal capital of the people of Israel!

In anticipation of the declaration by the President of the United States of Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish people, which is expected this evening, I would like to propose to the Government of Israel to commemorate the historic event properly.
The coffins of the soldiers, who will be killed as of tonight should be adorned with a picture of the Old City, the Western Wall and the Tower of David. For this purpose, you can use the beautiful print of Jerusalem, which recently appeared on the dress of the culture minister, and order copies of it for the covering of the coffins.
The coffins should be numbered not according to the personal numbers of the fallen, but according to the numbers of the various investigation files of the prime minister: 1000,2000,3000 etc. Do not worry, there are more than enough cases to supply enough coffins.

On the graves of civilians who will be killed in terrorist attacks as a result of this historic declaration, it is appropriate to erect tombstones in the shape of the city of Jerusalem or any of its historical buildings. I recommend that you will preorder smaller models of the city so that relatives of the victims could choose from them. For men, it is possible to erect a tombstone in the form of the Tower of David, to women Rachel’s Tomb and for toddlers a solid stone that will remind mourners of the cracks of hope at the Western Wall.

And most importantly, let us not forget – on each fresh mound, flags of Israel and the United States should be combined since one sacrificed soul saves an entire world, that is the presidency of Donald Trump and the tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu.

With the blessing of Am Yisrael Hai,

Ahithophel from Gat.

Jerusalem, and The Alliance of the Defeated

Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America, is a Jerk. But a dangerous one. He knows he is going down shortly, due to the investigation concerning the involvement of Russia in the elections, and he probably feels that he must show his might in a global scale. If he could not begin a war in Korea, he can incite one The Middle East.

Benjamin Netanyahu is crashing. He knows that he lost his mandate, and will go down soon. Both leaders concocted a catastrophe – the declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the removal of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

No one needs an American declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. Such a declaration is an insult to history and to the collective memory of the Jewish nation. It is null, and it also a lie. Jerusalem today includes Arab villages which have no affinity to the Jewish part of the city. Those villages were annexed to the Jewish part of the city as a consequence of the occupation, and must be returned to the Palestinians.

Such a declaration has only one aim – to set fire in the Middle East in general and in Israel in particular, to abolish any peace process and to arouse the Muslim world against Israel and the US, so that both allies will be able to hold their positions.

This will be in vein. Both Trump and Netanyahu will shortly step down off office. But we, Israelis, will pay for their irresponsible manipulation of the Muslim world. While we still deal with the Obama’s heritage of The Arab Spring, we will have now to deal with Trump’s insane acts.

I urge each one of my friends and family members to stay home and keep safe. In such a state only heaven knows what will happen here in the following days.

Netanyahu Must Step Off Office

During the weekend, The Israeli prime minister attacked the Israeli police, concerning the investigation held against him being suspect of corruption. This morning the prime minister’s summoned a special meeting of the military and diplomatic cabinet. This is not a mere coincidence. There is a strong connection between the two. Netanyahu acts like a hunted animal. And it such a state of mind he can be extremely dangerous to his people and to himself.
Netanyahu must step off office immediately. If he is not able of doing so, his coalition should show him the way out. If not, a catastrophe might roll over Israel.
Netanyahu should know one thing – he has lost his mandate to go into war, any war, in this state of affairs. No one will believe him if he says that an initiated war is crucial to the safety of Israel. If he will dare to drag Israel into an unnecessary military adventure, in order to save his skin from jail, he will find that at least half of the Israeli public will refuse to participate in such a war.
The state of global threats now is severe. Until now Israel was smart and acted secretly to ensure its interest in the region. No one, especially a lame duck such as Benjamin Netanyahu is not allowed to challenge this rather stable state of affairs.

*

I wrote this early in the morning. During the day, another campaign was launched by Netanyahu – to shut down the public broadcasting channels. This is the third time he is dealing with that, making one step to and one step from shutting it down. In his eagerness to ensure positive media coverage to his doomed regime, he does anything he can to weaken the Israeli media in general, and the public broadcasting system in particular. The accumulation of all his deeds – his attacks on the police, the legal system, the media, the left parties and any institute that endangers his service as the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu risks the collapse of the Israeli state and society as well.
Netanyahu is not the best protector of the Israeli nation, nor its savior, he is the destructor of Israel, and thus he must step off or be turned down in any legitimate way.

The Global Hunt Season Begun

The terrible notion that apparently I will soon have to delete my profiles form all the gay dating sites hit me this morning, one day after the massacre in Orlando.  At first, I was filled with horror.  How could it be that I, one of the first Israeli men to come out of the closet back in the 1980’s, I, who always published my face and name in any dating site, ever think of hiding.  And what will I do without the ability to meet gay men from all over the world anywhere, anytime?

 But then I remembered a nightmare I had twice during the past year.  In it, ISIS took over Israel.  One of the first things they did was to go from house to house, picking up gay people according to a prepared list.  First they kidnap the leaders of the LBGT community, then gay fathers and their children.

They gather us all in cages made of wood and metal nets, placed in an open square.  Then they take each of us in turn, and force our children to cut off our heads or watch us being beheaded by others.  All this because having children through surrogacy is the ultimate “sin” in the eyes of radical Islam.

I have refrained from publishing this nightmare in order not to give anyone such horrid ideas.

However, when I did tell it to a few people, one senior military man told me that his great fear is Iran.  You do not have to fear ISIS, he said.  The State of Israel is fortified enough to withstand the threat of an ISIS invasion.

But the massacre in Orlando, like other terrorist attacks recently perpetrated by ISIS and its followers, proved that Western thinking about terrorism is totally wrong.  The West still treats terrorism as consisting of hierarchical groups.  But, today’s terrorism is decentralized, united by shared beliefs in radical Islam and the murderous actions of individuals.

Yesterday’s massacre in Orlando, like terrorist attacks that preceded it, clarifies in a more murderous way than previous attacks, the nature of the threat the West confronts. We cannot confront terrorist organizations by assuming that attacks on their leaders will prevent future terrorist activities.  We are facing a terror of individuals, united temporarily into clusters of activists, by virtue of their faith and murderous ideas.  Sometimes they practice in special training facilities organized by terrorist organizations, sometimes they form cells of activities.  But today it is merely a single zealous person, who embarks on a killing spree.  Then, either at the beginning of the attack, as it happened yesterday, or afterwards, he claims that he committed the act in connection to ISIS or another Islamic terror organization.

Modern terrorism is built like the Internet.  It is conducted in Darknet, the underground network of the Internet, used by terrorists, hackers and other criminals.  It can therefore use the Internet, cellular networks and dating applications, such as those that any gay person might have on his smart phone, to launch a hunt for individuals.

The only practical advice I have to give you and for myself is to delete your profiles from all dating sites.  Indeed, it will reduce your changes of meeting someone for relationships or casual sex, but it may save your life.

Another option is to go into the closet again.  To disable location services for your smart phone, use them only for a moment, when you need to find someone near you; take your names and faces off the internet and make do with body image only, with a nickname, or log on with a blank page and send your picture and your information only to those you want.  Otherwise, who knows where your information will turn up and what use will be made of it.

I know that what I write here sounds bad.  It might even sound like excessive anxiety, a wild premonition that could never happen in the West, in an organized society where LGBT individuals have won equal rights.

But all those, like me, who cruise gay dating sites, know how many Arab and Muslim men from the Mediterranean there are who are trying to establish contact with Israelis.   And we know how many fake profiles appear on those sites.  When you reply to those profiles, you get a bland script, the sole purpose of which is to implant a virus in your phone, to access your financial or person details for use in the future.

When approached by Arab men from the Middle East on dating apps, I always tell them that as long as there is no peace in our region, we cannot see one another, and that there is therefore no point in our chatting.  Then I block them completely.  I do this out of caution. I never know if it is a spy or a hacker who wishes to contact the Israelis in an effort to reach, electronically, Israeli institutions, or worse, a terrorist with murderous intent – as happened once when a young woman used a dating site to seduce a young Israeli to his death.

Yes, I was in the past with Arab men.  I even managed shorter relationships with two of them.  But as soon as one of them, as artist, began telling me things against the State of Israel, I cut off all contact.  I also decided not to deal further with them, although they are sexy, manly and circumcised studs.  You never know where it will lead, so I would rather be careful.

What I am writing is serious.  It might sound as if it motivated by racism or self- homophobia.  Unfortunately, it is not so.  My words are motivated by existential anxiety.

The human race and the LGBT community world-wide are standing at the brink of a dark period in which others may try to imitate the success of the massacre in Orlando.  They may try to attack places of mass entertainment of the LGBT community or may embark on individual hunt, using dating applications to pursue us one after another.

The Orlando massacre may return the LGBT community worldwide to its former state – a return to the closet, to the underground, to the anxiety, panic and disintegration into isolated individual, each seeking to save his life even at the cost of pleasure and the joy of love.

This dark vision will become a reality unless the Western governments start their own hunt of individuals suspected of belonging to radical Islam or supporting its ideas.  And, the distance between hunting individuals and the expulsion of all Muslims from Western countries is not great.

Humanity is heading into darkness.  And technology that enabled progress can also be a tool of destruction