RSS
Being Jewish and Gay Today Is an Act of Resistance
Jews of Pride members are seen marching in the Pride parade 2025, part of LGBTQ+ community’s Midsumma Festival. Photo: Alexander Bogatyrev / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect.
I’m a lesbian. I’m alternative. I’m an Israeli-born Jew, and I’m a nurse with more heart than people expect. I adore human beings, with all their qualities and flaws.
Why do these things feel like contradictions in 2025?
Contrary to what the popular narrative has been, especially here in Canada, I don’t want innocent lives taken on any side of the current Israeli-Hamas conflict, and certainly not in the Israeli-Iran conflict. I could never wish suffering upon anybody.
More so, by nature, I’m a healer, which is what drew me to healthcare. Is this, paired with my identities as queer and Israeli-Jewish, such a phenomenon, or are people more closed-minded than they claim to be?
To be queer and Jewish in the year 2025 is to be fluent in complexity. Perhaps where it is most evident is during Pride Month. We should all be celebrating, right? For me, Pride Month has always been a way to celebrate who I am, and to celebrate the freedoms I have here in Canada and in Israel.
Every single Pride celebration around me is associated with anti-Israel movements, and more particularly, all the queer spaces I was once a part of in Montreal have forced me to leave my Jewishness at the door. To have a social life in these spaces means leaving my Jewish Israeli identity behind. That’s the constant heartbreak that I, and people who have the same duality as me, endure.
Thoughts have cycled through my brain over the past almost two years: People say love is love, but would you still preach it, if I told you I was born in Israel? Does my Jewish Israeli-ness take away my validity as a queer person? How can the spaces, the communities that are supposed to be so open minded, promote such hateful speeches? And why do Jewish people in queer spaces have to carry the weight of a country they don’t even live in?
Despite the lack of acceptance, the hate speech and hateful demonstrations in the name of “human rights” in queer and progressive spaces, I show up. I live, I breathe and I love all this community — still.
Despite the cycle of thoughts and questions — rooted in very real experiences I have had — I remain. When met with hatred, I am capable of showing love, perhaps the best demonstration of empathy and resilience.
Resilience is a word, a feeling that carries a lot of meaning for me. It’s waking up everyday knowing that you are hated for who you are, even when you have nothing to do with the war against Hamas, and still keeping your head up. It’s dancing at queer bars, even when it’s littered with people adorned with Hamas red upside-down triangles and keffiyehs, and self-serving claims that “This is an anti-Zionist space.” It’s keeping my heart and my soul open to everyone, even when I’ve been met with hatred repeatedly.
I know my resilience is not my own, because people like Jonathan Elkhoury are proof. As a gay Christian Lebanese man whose family fled Lebanon and found asylum in Israel, he has faced rejection from Arab communities for being gay, from queer communities for being Israeli, and from some in the Jewish community for being Arab. And he still stands tall and proud and is using his voice in online spaces, as a proud advocate for Israel. His story resonates with what many of us Jewish people feel, that we’re complicated, we don’t fit into categories.
Or Emily Damari, a former Israeli hostage released earlier this year, who hid her queer identity from her Hamas captors in order to survive. She lost two of her fingers during the Hamas attack and did not receive proper medical treatment while being held. Her injured hand gesture that she so proudly held on her release became a symbol of resilience appearing on t-shirts and posters in combating antisemitism movements. Another queer Israeli Jewish woman standing proud and solid in her identity.
We often see Jewish resilience being positioned as something that has been in us for generations. The difference between now and then is that resilience now is not, and cannot be, running away or keeping yourself hidden. Resilience can now be dancing at Pride, walking into a queer space and being kind to everyone despite the overt hatred for Jews. Resilience can be simply choosing to exist openly as a queer person, a Jewish person, with no caveats.
I genuinely don’t hold any hate towards anybody. I’ve cried for innocent lives on both sides. I only ask to be gay in peace, without having to leave my identity behind the door for safety measures. I want to walk through Pride celebrations with my Lesbian pride flag, loud and proud, without being confronted with thinly-veiled antisemitism disguised as hatred for Israel.
I want to fall in love without having to hide who I am. I know I will. That’s what Jewish resilience looks like to me.
The author is a nursing student living in Canada.
The post Being Jewish and Gay Today Is an Act of Resistance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Germany’s Halt to Arms Exports to Israel Is Response to Gaza Expansion Plans, Chancellor Says
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends a cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen
Germany’s decision to curb arms exports to Israel comes in response to Israel’s plan to expand its operations in the Gaza Strip, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Sunday in an interview with public broadcaster ARD.
“We cannot deliver weapons into a conflict that is now being pursued exclusively by military means,” Merz said. “We want to help diplomatically, and we are doing so.”
The worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel’s plans to expand military control over the enclave have pushed Germany to take this historically fraught step.
The chancellor said in the interview that the expansion of Israel’s operations in Gaza could claim hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and would require the evacuation of the entire city of Gaza.
“Where are these people supposed to go?” Merz said. “We can’t do that, we won’t do that, and I will not do that.”
Nevertheless, the principles of Germany’s Israel policy remain unchanged, the chancellor said.
“Germany has stood firmly by Israel’s side for 80 years. That will not change,” Merz said.
Germany is Israel’s second-biggest weapons supplier after the US and has long been one of its staunchest supporters, principally because of its historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy known as the “Staatsraison.”
RSS
Newsom Calls Trump’s $1 Billion UCLA Settlement Offer Extortion, Says California Won’t Bow
California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference, accompanied by members of the Texas Democratic legislators, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California, U.S., August 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Saturday that a $1 billion settlement offer by President Donald Trump’s administration for UCLA amounted to political extortion to which the state will not bow.
The University of California says it is reviewing a $1 billion settlement offer by the Trump administration for UCLA after the government froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding over pro-Palestinian protests.
UCLA, which is part of the University of California system, said this week the government froze $584 million in funding. Trump has threatened to cut federal funds for universities over anti-Israel student protests.
“Donald Trump has weaponized the DOJ (Department of Justice) to kneecap America’s #1 public university system — freezing medical & science funding until @UCLA pays his $1 billion ransom,” the office of Newsom, a Democrat, said in a post.
“California won’t bow to Trump’s disgusting political extortion,” it added.
“This isn’t about protecting Jewish students – it’s a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president.”
The government alleges universities, including UCLA, allowed antisemitism during the protests and in doing so violated Jewish and Israeli students’ civil rights. The White House had no immediate comment beyond the offer.
Experts have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Republican president’s threats. The University of California says paying such a large settlement would “completely devastate” the institution.
Large demonstrations took place at UCLA last year. Last week, UCLA agreed to pay over $6 million to settle a lawsuit by some students and a professor who alleged antisemitism. It was also sued this year over a 2024 violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters.
RSS
Trump Nominates State Dept Spokeswoman Bruce as US Deputy Representative to UN
FILE PHOTO: U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce speaks during her first press briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was nominating State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce as the next US deputy representative to the United Nations.
Bruce has been the State Department spokesperson since Trump took office in January.
In a post on social media in which Trump announced her nomination, the president said she did a “fantastic job” as State Department spokesperson. Bruce will need to be confirmed for the role by the US Senate, where Trump’s Republican Party holds a majority.
During press briefings, she has defended the Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions ranging from an immigration crackdown and visa revocations to US responses to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza, including a widely condemned armed private aid operation in the Palestinian territory.
Bruce was previously a political contributor and commentator on Fox News for over 20 years.
She has also authored books like “Fear Itself: Exposing the Left’s Mind-Killing Agenda” that criticized liberals and left-leaning viewpoints.
In a post after Trump’s announcement, Bruce thanked him and suggested that the role was a “few weeks” away. Neither Trump nor Bruce mentioned an exact timeline in their online posts.
“Now I’m blessed that in the next few weeks my commitment to advancing America First leadership and values continues on the global stage in this new post,” Bruce wrote on X.
Trump has picked former White House national security adviser Mike Waltz to be his U.N. envoy. Waltz’s Senate confirmation for that role, wherein he will be Bruce’s boss, is still due.
Waltz was Trump’s national security adviser until he was ousted on May 1 after he was caught up in a March scandal involving a Signal chat among top Trump national security aides on military strikes in Yemen. Trump then nominated Waltz as his U.N. ambassador.