Gay Israeli soldiers are asked and do tell
Twenty-one people filled the Almaden Room in the Student Union on Thursday to listen to a talk about gay rights in Israel.
"We're a pro-advocacy group for Israel on campus, and we want to teach the campus community that there's more to Israel than just the conflict," said Michelle Salinsky, a senior political science major and president of Spartans For Israel.
The groups Spartans For Israel and Queers Thoughtfully Interrupting Prejudice worked together with Hillel of Silicon Valley to bring Moshe Alfisher's story to SJSU, according to the Hillel of Silicon Valley Web site.
"Israel is sometimes perceived as a very Orthodox, or old-style country in terms of gay rights," said Nadav Shem-Torv, an Israel fellow from Hillel of Silicon Valley. "We just thought it can be a great story to bring."
Alfisher said he is a gay Israeli man who also served in the Israeli army.
He said he has been working as the Israel program director at Hillel in the Jewish Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz for two years.
He gave a PowerPoint presentation that was separated into two parts.
The first part explained the history of gay rights in Israel, a state established in 1948.
The first gay rights organization, Society for the Protection of Personal Rights, was established there in 1975, but it was still hard for some gays to "come out," Alfisher said.
In 1992, Israeli governing body Knesset made it illegal to prohibit employment based on sexual orientation, and the Israeli army rescinded its regulations against discriminating against gays in 1993, he said.
The first victory for couple's rights happened in 1994, Alfisher said.
The Israeli Supreme Court ordered El Al Israeli Airlines to give free flights to partners of gay flight attendants, which is the same treatment the airline had been giving heterosexual couples, he said.
Same-sex marriages from other countries are recognized even though gay couples cannot marry in the country, he said.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that gay couples could formally adopt each other's children, Alfisher said.
"There's some rights in Israel that they (the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community) enjoy that you can't get here," said Michelle Salinsky. "They accept someone's civil marriages, and they get the same rights as married couples do."
The second part of the presentation focused on Alfisher's experiences as a gay man in Israel.
"My family is modern Orthodox," he said. "It means that they're living a normal, modern life, but they keep the Jewish halakhah (Jewish law). They kept Shabbats (Jewish Sabbath day of rest), they kept kosher (Jewish diet), and for them also, same-sex relationships are against their beliefs."
Alfisher, who attended private schools while growing up, said he always knew there was something different about him.
He knew he didn't like girls, he told the audience.
He said that after graduating from a university with a computer science degree, he entered the Israeli army for his mandatory three years of service.
He said it was in the army where he became more comfortable with being gay.
"In my unit, which was one of the best computer science units in the army, many officers and soldiers were open about being gay and they were treated like everyone else," he said.
Alfisher told the audience that he "came out" while in the army, and his commander knew he was gay before his family did.
"It was a total shock for them," he said about his family. "They were OK with me as a person, but they kept asking me, 'Are you sure you're gay? Is there something you can do to change that?' Once they realized, 'Okay, this is it,' our relationship (has been) normal."
Spartan Daily
Dominique Dumadaug
Issue date: 10/26/09 Section: News
