I AM GAY. I AM JEWISH. AND I AM ASHAMED OF YOU!

An Open Letter to the Global LGBT Community

By Nadav Peretz

I am gay.

I am Jewish.

I am Israeli.

And I will not erase any part of myself to make you feel more comfortable.

For years, I believed the LGBT community understood better than most what persecution, exclusion and dehumanization look like. I believed that people who had fought so hard to be seen would never look away when another minority was attacked.

That is why your response since October 7 has been so painful.

At the darkest moment the Jewish people had experienced in generations, while Israelis were still identifying the murdered and families were waiting for their kidnapped loved ones to return, too many of you did not stand beside us.

Some remained silent. Some immediately added a “but.” Some tore down posters of kidnapped civilians. Some questioned survivors. Some excluded Jews and Israelis from LGBT spaces.

Others marched beside people glorifying Hamas, an Islamist terrorist organization that would destroy every freedom the LGBT movement has fought to achieve.

Do you understand the staggering absurdity of this?

Gay men and lesbians are marching in support of movements whose ideology regards their very existence as an abomination.

Across much of the Middle East, same sex relationships remain criminalized. In several countries, they can potentially be punished by death. LGBT people are imprisoned, tortured, blackmailed, attacked by their families and sometimes murdered.

Yet in the simplistic universe created by parts of the progressive movement, Israel became the ultimate villain, while violently homophobic regimes and terrorist organizations were reinvented as forces of liberation.

This is not progressivism.

A movement without knowledge, honesty or critical thinking is not progressive. It is a movement of slogans, conformity and stupidity.

You have reduced one of the most complicated conflicts in human history to a childish story about white oppressors and brown victims.

You call Israelis “white colonizers,” even though most Israeli Jews descend from families rooted in the Middle East and North Africa, and all Jewish communities share their origins in the ancient Jewish people of this land.

Visit the Western Wall. Walk through Masada. See the ancient synagogues and Jewish mosaics of the Galilee. Walk through Jerusalem and confront the inscriptions, coins and ruins documenting thousands of years of Jewish life.

Israel is not a European colony.

Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.

That does not mean Israel is perfect. It is not. I criticize my government openly, as do millions of Israelis.

You can support Palestinian rights, criticize Israeli policies and care about Palestinian suffering without glorifying Hamas, denying Jewish history or treating every Israeli as a criminal.

Nor am I claiming that every Muslim or every Palestinian hates LGBT people. That would be false and wrong. My anger is directed at extremist ideologies, oppressive regimes and the supposedly progressive activists who sanitize them.

But Israel remains a free society in which LGBT people live openly, vote, protest, serve in public office, raise families and celebrate Pride.

I know this from personal experience.

I have been an openly gay man for more than twenty years. But accepting myself was not easy.

Before coming out, while living in the United States, I sent myself to conversion therapy in Jersey City.

Nobody forced me to go.

I went because I was terrified of who I was and desperately wanted to change myself. For almost a year, I kept returning, hoping someone could make me into a different person.

I know what shame feels like.

I know what it means to be frightened of your own identity.

Then I returned to Israel and finally found the courage to come out.

And something extraordinary happened.

I discovered acceptance.

Even people I had assumed would reject me, including traditional, religious and conservative Israelis, received me with enormous love. My family loved me. My friends loved me. My colleagues accepted me.

When I served in the Israeli army, I was already out of the closet. I did not have to conceal who I was. I was accepted, respected and embraced.

At that very time, the United States was still enforcing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” forcing gay and lesbian service members to hide their identities or risk being discharged.

Think about that.

While gay Americans were still being told not to speak openly about who they were, I was already serving openly as a gay man in the Israeli army.

Today, gay, lesbian and transgender Israelis serve openly in the IDF alongside everyone else.

Israel did not teach me to be ashamed of myself.

Israel became the place where I finally learned that I did not need to be ashamed.

And then comes the accusation I hear constantly:

“Pinkwashing.”

Israel, they claim, talks about LGBT freedom only to distract the world from the Palestinians.

Let me tell you how deeply insulting that accusation is.

My acceptance is not a public relations campaign.

My army service is not a public relations campaign.

My life is not “pinkwashing.”

Tel Aviv is one of the most LGBT friendly cities in the world. For the past two years, I had the privilege of working with the city’s mayor, a leader who has consistently and proudly supported the LGBT community.

Just a short walk from my home stands the Tel Aviv LGBT Community Center, an extraordinary institution providing cultural, social and support programs for the diverse communities that make up Israeli society.

My younger brother is straight, and he is the CEO of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance.

The Open House helps religious and ultra Orthodox Jews struggling to reconcile their identity and faith. It supports Arab LGBT people from Jerusalem and Palestinians from across the West Bank who may face rejection, violence and genuine danger. It provides safe spaces, therapy, practical assistance and a community to people who desperately need one.

I also have friends who work with organizations helping LGBT Palestinians fleeing threats and violence in the West Bank. Israeli institutions and civil society organizations help provide protection, shelter and, in certain cases, temporary permission to live and work here.

These people are not fleeing Tel Aviv for Ramallah.

They are fleeing Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin in search of safety in Israel.

That reality does not erase Palestinian suffering or excuse every Israeli policy. But if your worldview cannot contain two truths at the same time, it is not based on justice.

It is propaganda built from slogans.

My brother’s work is not “pinkwashing.”

The LGBT Palestinians receiving help here are not “pinkwashing.”

The gay soldiers serving openly, the families raising children, the Pride celebrations and the community centers are not props.

These are our lives.

For more than a decade, I ran one of Israel’s leading LGBT travel companies. I personally brought many thousands of gay travelers from around the world to Israel.

They did not discover the terrifying apartheid state described on social media.

They discovered Tel Aviv, where gay parties are filled with Jews, Arabs, Druze, Israelis and visitors from around the world dancing together.

They discovered Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, the Dead Sea and the Galilee. They met Israelis of every color, religion and origin.

They saw a complicated country, certainly, but also a vibrant, diverse and extraordinarily human one.

My own life looks nothing like the fantasy you have created about us.

I have Arab friends. I have Arab neighbors.

When an Iranian missile struck my street in Tel Aviv this past March, during the latest war with Iran, we were forced to evacuate our homes.

One of my Arab neighbors was evacuated with me to the same hotel.

We were not performing coexistence for a camera.

We were Jewish and Arab neighbors facing the same Iranian missile, displaced from the same street and waiting together to return home.

This is Israel.

Not your hashtags.

Not your campus slogans.

Not the lies repeated from Sydney to Paris, New York and London by people who have never visited us, never opened a serious book about this region and never spoken to those who actually live here.

The ignorance is overwhelming.

The arrogance is even worse.

Meanwhile, an LGBT cruise carrying approximately 2,000 passengers was recently denied entry first by Turkey and then by Egypt. Turkey reportedly cited “moral values” and public discomfort.

That should have been a wake up call.

The governments and ideological movements you romanticize do not share your values.

They may happily use your voices and slogans when they are directed against Israel. But do not confuse political convenience with acceptance.

The Islamist worldview you are helping to sanitize has no place for your freedom, your relationships, your Pride flag or your way of life.

Before you wave another flag for a movement that despises LGBT people, ask yourself:

Could you walk openly through Tehran, Sana’a or Gaza City holding your partner’s hand and carrying a Pride flag?

Could you organize a Pride parade?

Could you demand equality and return safely to your home?

Now ask yourself those same questions about Tel Aviv.

The answer exposes the breathtaking hypocrisy of the movement you have joined.

Perhaps the deepest wound is that Jewish people stood beside the LGBT community for decades. Jewish activists such as Harvey Milk and countless others fought for dignity, visibility and equal rights.

But when Jews faced massacre, sexual violence, kidnapping and an explosion of antisemitism, too many of you abandoned us.

You demanded compassion for every vulnerable minority but denied it to Jews.

You told the world to believe survivors, then questioned Israeli survivors.

You spoke endlessly about safe spaces, then made Jewish and Israeli LGBT people feel unsafe unless we denounced our country and erased our Zionism at the door.

I will not do that.

I know you are not all the same. Many members of the LGBT community have stood beside us courageously, and I will never forget them.

But I will also never forget those who turned their backs.

I do not know how many years it will take me to forgive the silence, hypocrisy and betrayal.

I am deeply ashamed of what parts of our community have become.

I hope you wake up before it is too late.

Before shouting “genocide,” “apartheid” or “colonialism” again, come and see this country.

Meet the people who live here.

Visit the Jerusalem Open House.

Speak to Israeli Jews and Arabs.

Walk through Tel Aviv and see a reality far more complicated, beautiful and human than the ideology you were handed.

You do not get to erase my lived experience because it complicates your worldview.

You do not get to call my life “pinkwashing.”

This is not propaganda.

This is my family.

This is my community.

This is my country.

This is my life.

And finally, to every gay or lesbian Jew reading this anywhere in the world who feels isolated, rejected or alone:

You are not alone.

There is an enormous embrace waiting for you here in Israel. I am here, and so are countless people and organizations ready to support you, help you and remind you that you never need to apologize for who you are.

If you were excluded from an LGBT event because you are Jewish, because you love Israel or because you refused to denounce your own people, that is their loss. It is not your shame.

One day, many of those who abandoned us will owe us an apology.

Until then, stand tall. Be strong. Be proud. Never allow anyone to force you to choose between being LGBT and being Jewish.

You deserve to be proud of every part of who you are.

I am gay.

I am Jewish.

I am Israeli.

I am a Zionist.

These identities do not contradict one another. They are all part of me and I will never apologize for any of them.

The LGBT community once taught the world that nobody should be forced back into a closet.

Do not ask Jews to enter one.