Israeli right-winger plans a ‘Gay Pride’ event in an Arab town

By Barry Duke • 4 years ago

Aug
2019

Noam Federman, who refers to gay people as 'terrorists', want to highlight Islamic homophobia

Image via YouTube

NOAM Federman, above, an Orthodox Jewish man convicted last year of throwing rocks at Palestinians, is organising a ‘Gay Pride’ parade in the northern Arab town of Tamra in a bid to expose Muslim intolerance towards members of the LGBT community.

The town, which has a population of around 33,000, became the focus of news reports last month after a trangender teen was allegedly stabbed by his brother outside a Tel Aviv shelter for LGBT youth.

The stabbing prompted the first-ever protest by LGBT Palestinians. Around 200 turned out to demonstrate against anti-gay violence.

Following the stabbing, many in the gay community – referred to as “terrorists” by Federman – blamed Israeli rabbis and even the Education Minister, Rabbi Rafi Peretz, whose controversial statements in favour of conversion therapy caused outrage.

In an exclusive interview with Breaking Israel News, Federman – a former activist for the Kach Party which was banned for inciting racism – said his goal is to expose the homophobia in the Arab street that lead to the violent attack in Tel Aviv.

Following the stabbing attack by the victim’s brother from Tamra, the LGBT terrorists blamed all of the rabbis. For some reason, Tamra and the Arab sector was never inserted into the equation. So to help them overcome that psychological hurdle, I’m organizing a pride parade in Tamra. I’m sure they’ll all come out en masse.

Federman scheduled the march for Monday, August 19. The procession will go through the center of Tamra.

Federman admitted that he doesn’t know if any actual members of the gay community will join him but did add that he will invite all of the LGBT organisations to “take part in this historic moment” – the first pride parade in an Arab town.

Given Federman’s track record, his “Pride Parade” is extremely unlikely to be joined by anyone but a rag-tag of loony right-wing extremists.

• This report was cross-posted from the Freethinker.

The Author

Barry Duke

Veteran journalist Barry Duke, born in South Africa in 1947, settled in the UK in 1973, where he became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement and gay rights organisations. A militant atheist, he joined the National Secular Society (NSS) and was a co-founder in 1979 of the Gay Humanist Group which changed its name to the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association in 1987. In 2017 he was handed a Lifetime Achievement award by the NSS for his "spirited opposition to religious intolerance and irrationality" in his roles as a free speech advocate and his work as editor of the Freethinker and the Pink Triangle Trust website. In 2022, when the Freethinker suddenly went "woke", he was summarily sacked for being too aggressively atheistic. In 2017 he was married to his partner of 25 years, Marcus Robinson, in Gibraltar. The couple live in Benidorm, Spain.