“The mere fact of my coming here means addressing my deepest fears,” one of the haredi men said. “We’re very homophobic,” another haredi man, who is reportedly prominent in the haredi community, said. “The haredi…community fears homosexuals and all those related concepts. As long as it’s in Tel Aviv that’s one thing, but when they come to Jerusalem it’s terrible.”
A small group of haredi men and one haredi woman – none of whom are identified by name or by sect affiliation because they asked for absolute anonymity – went to Tel Aviv's gay youth center to talk, Ha'aretz reported.
The haredim openly admitted their community is extremely homophobic but tried to couch violent attacks against gays as the work of extremists who do not have the support of the haredi majority and claimed haredim as a whole should not be judged badly for this because every community has its extremists.
But healthy communities who have extremists within them who commit violent acts or who incite violence condemn those extremists. And more importantly, those healthy communities reach out to the Others those extremists demonize and target.
The few haredi rabbinic leaders who condemn attacks like the one that took place at the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade did so after the fact, meaning in the ten years from the 2005 attack on that parade (by the same haredi terrorist, no less) they did not reach out to the gay community. Not only that, they did not stop their homophobic incitement. So the excuse that "every community has its extremists" rings hollow, as does the fact that the haredim who went to to the gay center to talk would not allow their names to be published.
“The mere fact of my coming here means addressing my deepest fears,” one of the haredi men said.
“I too belong to a minority group that suffers from ignorance and demonization,” another haredi man said. “Real pluralism means listening to everyone. I can’t embrace a position that contradicts the Torah, in which I believe, but it’s always healthy to sit and talk.”
Perhaps that demonization comes from the haredi community's failure to accept non-haredim for who and what they are, and from the haredi community's almost nonstop demands that non-haredim overlook the haredi community's failures while paying a large amount of tax money because of them., money that pays for stipends for haredi yeshiva students and welfare for the tens of thousands of adult haredi men who refuse to work.
In other words, the bigotry is by no means equal and they should not be equated.
“We’re very homophobic,” another haredi man, who is reportedly prominent in the haredi community, said. “The haredi…community fears homosexuals and all those related concepts. As long as it’s in Tel Aviv that’s one thing, but when they come to Jerusalem it’s terrible.”
And haredim wonder why so many Israelis hate them.