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Israeli LGBTQ soldiers hope the war in Gaza will bolster their fight for equal rights at home
TEL AVIV (JTA) — One month after his fiancee was killed in the Israeli military’s Oct. 7 battle against Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri, Omer Ohana received a small bit of solace: His government passed a bill granting recognition to same-sex partners of fallen soldiers.
“My love! From this day forward I am an IDF widower,” he wrote from the Knesset gallery, where he witnessed the passage of the bill, for which he had campaigned.
“It is a description I would give anything in the world to give up, a title that in my life I never thought I would receive six days before we were supposed to get married, when you left to save lives and rescue families held captive in Be’eri,” wrote Ohana, to his fiance, Sagi Golan. “You fell in battle against cruel terrorists and today, in your honor, we received equality in death. Now we will continue to demand equality also in life.”
That sentiment has become a rallying cry among Israel’s LGBTQ soldiers, many of whom feel the war has placed their status in stark relief: They have been called to risk their lives on the front lines in Gaza but are denied rights afforded to heterosexual couples at home — including the right to wed in Israel. Opposition to same-sex marriage comes in large part from religious political parties, many of whose haredi Orthodox constituents do not serve in the military.
One call for LGBTQ rights in Israel went viral in November, when IDF soldier Yoav Atzmoni posted a photo of himself in uniform in Gaza, holding a Pride flag inscribed with the words “In the name of love” in English, Arabic and Hebrew.
Atzmoni hoped “to show the Israeli community that we are equal in the way we pay our debts, and I hope after the war we receive our rights,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“There are those in the governing coalition whose kids are in yeshiva or in Miami,” he added, referring to the haredi parties as well as Yair Netanyahu, the son of the prime minister, who recently returned from Florida. “While those from the opposition who support LGBTQ civil rights are sending their kids to Gaza.”
Atzmoni also hoped to convey the message that the IDF “is the only army in the Middle East in which we can live outside of the closet.” That’s been the case since 1993, when Israel began allowing openly gay and lesbian soldiers to serve.
Yoav Atzmoni holding a Pride flag in Gaza. (Courtesy of Atzmoni)
Homophobia is still an issue in the IDF — a 2017 survey by an Israeli LGBTQ youth group found that 95% of LGBTQ soldiers it polled had encountered discrimination while serving. But a report by the Aguda, Israel’s leading LGBTQ organization, found that only 1% of the reported incidents of homophobia it tallied in 2021 occurred in the military.
And barriers continue to fall: The first Israeli transgender woman soldier to fight in Gaza was recently interviewed by Channel 13, a major network.
“There is no doubt that the IDF is one of the more progressive organizations in Israel regarding their acceptance of LGBTQ people, but even in progressive places there are still cases of discrimination,” said Hila Peer, the Aguda’s chairwoman. “I do not expect them to be perfect in spite of all the work that has been done to be more inclusive.”
She added that prior to the November passage of the law granting equal rights to LGBTQ military widows, “there was a de facto policy in the army to recognize such partners in practice and I think that this says a lot.”
Polls show that a majority of Israelis favor affording LGBTQ citizens with fully equal treatment, but Israel’s Orthodox political parties, which are allied with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have consistently opposed efforts to expand LGBTQ rights, citing prohibitions on same-sex relations in traditional Jewish law. In an interview in June, months before the current war broke out, haredi lawmaker Yitzhak Pindrus said the LGBTQ community is “the most dangerous thing for the State of Israel, more than ISIS and Hezbollah.”
LGBTQ Israelis have achieved victories in the courts. Like others who are unable to legally wed in Israel, they can get married abroad and have those marriages recognized by the government. Last year, due to another court ruling, same-sex couples and single men became able to have children via surrogacy in Israel — something Ohana and Golan had hoped to do. And last week, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that same-sex adoption must be allowed. But Peer believes it should not be up to the courts to make such changes.
“The adoption law could have been fixed legislatively, as the only problem was with the language of the law, [which said] ‘a man and his wife,’” she said. “The government did not agree to amend the law so we had to appeal to the High Court and wait for it to fix the law, which happened last week, but these are processes that take many years.”
In the context of that debate, Asaf, a reservist who serves in a unit focused on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, felt gratified to see Atzmoni wave the pride flag in the context of an Israeli war.
“It was very exciting and heartwarming I have to say,” said Asaf, who gave only his first name, citing military regulations. During Israel’s last ground invasion of Gaza, in 2014, he said, “it was not as visible… He sent the message that I am fighting in Gaza, and I am gay, and I can wave the Pride flag like the flag of Israel.”
Israel has boasted of its LGBTQ soldiers, with an official social media account sharing a photo of a gay soldier getting engaged last month. But critics of Israel have said that the country’s trumpeting of its LGBTQ freedoms amounts to “pinkwashing,” a tactic to distract from the country’s human rights record and mistreatment of Palestinians.
While Israeli Jews broadly support the war effort, some members of Israel’s LGBTQ community echoed that critique, and said they did not appreciate seeing the Pride flag on the battlefield.
“In the name of love we shell, dehydrate and starve the people of Gaza; in the name of love one and half million people are uprooted… In the name of love more than 10,000 civilians, among them thousands of children, are dying,” Israeli trans activist Tamar Ben David wrote in a Facebook post that received a stream of comments that were also critical of Atzmoni’s photo.
Other LGBTQ Israelis say that they haven’t focused on their battle for civil rights during wartime. On Israel’s northern border, where Israel is bracing itself for a wider conflict with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, Carmel, an IDF medic, says he is “very much in my service.”
“Here in the north, there are a lot of explosions, anti-tank missiles, and combat from the air,” he said. “We are trying to take care of ourselves and guard the kibbutz that was evacuated, and protect the country.”
Before the war broke out, LGBTQ rights were at the heart of fierce debate over the government’s campaign to weaken Israel’s courts. Asaf, the IDF soldier, fears that once the war ends, anti-LGBTQ attitudes will again prevail among the country’s leadership.
“Slowly we are seeing changes happen, even in the state, as people understand we are one community, but I am not optimistic because I see what is happening in the government, with people who do not support the community,” he said. “I want to believe that one day it will happen because it is the right thing to do, and it is a shame that some changes had to occur as a result of tragedy and war.”
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The post Israeli LGBTQ soldiers hope the war in Gaza will bolster their fight for equal rights at home appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New Research Links South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel to Growing Ties With Iran
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Chatsworth, South Africa, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rogan Ward
Newly released research links South Africa’s expanding ties with Iran to its contentious genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), raising questions about the motives behind Pretoria’s legal battle.
Last month, the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI) unveiled a report exploring the South African government’s relationship with Iran and the ways in which this partnership has shaped the country’s foreign policy.
The report — “Ties to Tehran: South Africa’s Democracy and Its Relationship With Iran: — argues that deepening ties with Tehran has led South Africa to compromise its democratic foundations and constitutional principles, aligning itself with a regime internationally condemned for terrorism, repression, and human rights abuses.
While Iran maintains support for South Africa’s coalition government in part due to a shared revolutionary, liberation ideology, Pretoria has frequently defended Tehran at the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by voting against sanctions or choosing to abstain, the report says.
In doing so, the study claims that the South African government has both undermined its democratic values and bolstered Iran’s regional ambitions by defending its nuclear program and downplaying its human rights abuses.
Adam Charnas, an analyst at the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), condemned the government’s long-standing ties with Iran and other regimes with questionable human rights records, calling them deeply troubling.
“This relationship was notably underscored when, shortly after Oct. 7, then-Minister of International Relations, Naledi Pandor, visited Iran for a two-week period to meet with [then-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi],” Charnas told The Algemeiner.
“South Africa’s foreign policy appears to be more concerned with enhancing relations with rogue states,” he continued. “This narrow and party-led strategy jeopardizes its relationship with key trading partners rather than with addressing domestic challenges or advancing the welfare of its citizens.”
MEARI’s report also questions whether South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ, the UN’s top court, was genuinely rooted in constitutional principles — or driven by outside political pressure.
According to the study, South Africa’s open hostility toward Israel and its biased approach in filing the case — failing to acknowledge Hamas’s role in launching the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel — undermines the government’s credibility.
At the time of the ICJ filing, senior South African officials were holding high-level meetings in Tehran.
The study explains that shortly afterward, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), struggling with financial difficulties, unexpectedly paid off a multi-million-rand debt, fueling speculation about possible covert support from Iran.
“The evidence for such a claim is entirely circumstantial, but bears relating. In early December 2023, the ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, faced imminent liquidation. It allegedly owed R102 million to a service provider, which it could not pay,” the report says.
In prior years, the ANC has on several occasions been unable to pay staff salaries. But just days after the South African government filed its case against Israel at the ICJ, which MEARI drescribes as “an undertaking involving a phalanx of lawyers of international stature that could cost as much as R1.5 billion [about $84.35 million] in taxpayer money,” the ANC announced that it had reached an out-of-court settlement with its creditor to settle its debt and turned its finances around.
However, since the party’s finances were not available to the public, a fact-check by a leading South African newspaper could not find evidence to prove that the ANC had received funding from any particular source, Iran or otherwise.
Although the ANC claimed it complies with South African law requiring the of donor funding exceeding R100,000, the law is “weakly enforced,” MEARI notes.
“It could be pure coincidence that Hamas thanked South Africa for bringing a genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, and that this case aligns perfectly with the ‘mutual bilateral interests’ of South Africa and Iran,” the report says, with a not-so-subtle bit of sarcasm. “It could be pure coincidence that within days of taking this grave step, South Africa’s the ruling party, the ANC, managed to pull back from the brink of bankruptcy by settling a substantial debt out of court after having ignored multiple court orders and left staff unpaid.”
Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Both Iran and Hamas have publicly praised the South African government’s legal action.
For its part, Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s Jewish community has lambasted the case as “grandstanding” rather than actual concern for those killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.
Last year, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide.
However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations, nor did it call for Israel to halt its military campaign. Instead, the ICJ issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide.
The ruling also called for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 rampage.
“It could be that South Africa simply did not have the resources to respond in international courts to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the war crimes committed by the latter in the pursuit of that war of aggression,” the MEARI report says. “It could be that it didn’t feel there was sufficient historical solidarity to oblige it to speak out about genocides of Uyghurs in China, or Rohingya in Myanmar, but Israel just went a step too far.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s military campaign, which seeks to free the hostages kidnapped by the terrorists and dismantle Hamas’s military and administrative control in Gaza.
Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Iran’s terrorist proxy by hosting two Hamas officials at a state-backed conference expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in December 2023.
In one instance, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
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German Media Investigation Reveals Gaza Photographer Staged Images of Despair, Prompting Agencies to Cut Ties
Palestinians carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, July 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Two leading German newspapers have released a joint investigation accusing Gaza-based photojournalists of staging images of hungry and despairing civilians, sparking fresh controversy over how the Israel-Hamas war is portrayed in international media coverage.
The report, published by BILD and Süddeutsche Zeitung, followed a recent controversy over a widely circulated image of a Gazan youth portrayed as starving — a photo later revealed to depict a boy with a genetic disorder, prompting outlets such as The New York Times to issue clarifications.
The German investigation focused on Palestinian photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, a freelancer for the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, who allegedly staged images to dramatize civilian suffering and depict it as the result of Israeli actions.
Fteiha’s work has been published by major international outlets including CNN, Reuters, and the BBC, despite what the report described as openly biased photojournalism.
According to the German outlets, Fteiha has openly expressed anti-Israel views on social media, sharing inflammatory and antisemitic content.
The report further noted that, by working for a state-run Turkish news outlet whose government maintains longstanding ties to Hamas and a well-known hostile stance toward Israel, his work functions more as propaganda than as objective journalism.
On Tuesday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry praised the German investigation, saying it “reveals how Hamas uses ‘Pallywood,’ staged or selectively framed media, to manipulate global opinion.”
“With Hamas controlling nearly all media in Gaza, these photographers aren’t reporting, they’re producing propaganda,” the statement said.
“This investigation underscores how Pallywood has gone mainstream with staged images and ideological bias shaping international coverage, while the suffering of Israeli hostages and Hamas atrocities are pushed out of frame,” it continued.
Beware of fake news.
A joint investigation by @SZ and @BILD reveals how Hamas uses “Pallywood”, staged or selectively framed media, to manipulate global opinion.At the center is Anas Zayed Fteiha, a Palestinian photographer for Anadolu and an open Israel- and Jew-hater, whose… pic.twitter.com/MrBfvylwCi
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) August 5, 2025
“Pallywood” is a term used to describe the alleged practice by Palestinians of staging fake injuries, deaths, or scenes of devastation to elicit international sympathy and fuel hostility toward Israel.
According to the investigation, Fteiha selectively shares images that reinforce an anti-Israel narrative. For example, one of his widely circulated photos depicts desperate Gazan women and children holding pots and pans outside a food distribution site.
However, other photos taken at the same scene — showing mostly adult men calmly waiting in line and receiving aid — were not distributed by Fteiha and have gone largely unnoticed.
Gerhard Paul, emeritus professor of history and a leading expert on visual propaganda, told Süddeutsche Zeitung that these types of images serve a specific function by shaping narratives and influencing public opinion.
“They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Many people don’t even remember these pictures,” Paul said. “Hamas is a master at staging images.”
He also explained that journalists and photographers in Gaza face significant risks and, because of their close proximity to Hamas terrorists, are unable to operate independently.
According to the German newspapers, part of the problem is that Israel restricts access to the Gaza Strip for independent journalists, allowing Hamas-controlled propaganda to dominate the coverage.
Shortly after the investigation was published, the German Press Agency and Agence France-Presse announced they would no longer work with Fteiha and would apply more rigorous scrutiny to photos from other photographers.
For its part, Reuters said Fteiha’s photos “meet the standards of accuracy, independence, and impartiality.”
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Florida State University Grad Student Charged With Battery After Harassment of Jewish Peer Caught on Video
Female student at Florida State University, believed to be graduate student Eden Deckerhoff, who allegedly assaulted male Jewish classmate at gym on campus. Photo: Screenshot/StopAntisemitism
Local law enforcement officials have charged a Florida State University (FSU) graduate student who allegedly assaulted a Jewish classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center last Thursday with misdemeanor battery, according to a report by The Tallahassee Democrat.
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” Eden Deckerhoff said before shoving the Jewish man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Deckerhoff, a student at the FSU College of Social Work, allegedly accosted the victim after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). FSU reportedly employs her mother, Rosalyn Deckerhoff, as a teaching professor in its College of Social Work.
After footage of the incident went viral on social media, the university promptly suspended Deckerhoff and issued a statement condemning antisemitism.
“While this process is underway, the student shown prominently in the video has been prohibited from returning to campus. Our commitment to swiftly and effectively responding to incidents of hate is unwavering. We appreciate the prompt report of this incident, which allowed us to address this instance of antisemitism without delay,” the university said.
It continued, “Florida State University strongly condemns antisemitism in all forms and follows Florida law, which protects Jewish students and employees from discrimination motivated by antisemitism, harassment, intimidation, and violence.”
According to the Democrat, Deckerhoff has denied assaulting the student, telling investigators, “No I did not show him at all; I never put my hands on him.” However, law enforcement described the incident in court documents as seen in the viral footage, acknowledging that Deckerhoff “appears to touch [the man’s] left shoulder.” Despite her denial, the Democrat added, she has offered to apologize.
The Jewish FSU student is not the first victim of violence or harassment motivated by anti-Zionism. In some cases, such incidents have been ftal.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.