Activists cover chief rabbi’s office with rainbows after anti-LGBT comments
Activists decorated an anti-LGBT Rabbi’s bureau with rainbow flags in protest of anti-LGBT comments he made earlier this week.
Left-wing part Meretz arranged the protest, which also saw chalk drawings of rainbows on the floor outside of the Rabbi’s office.
The image was shared online, alongside a message the activists wished to relay to the rabbi: “May you have a week of love, pride and full acceptance of the other.”
The group were protesting against Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar who told an Israeli newspaper earlier this week that the “abomination” of homosexuality is punishable by execution under Jewish law.
Amor said it was “clear that it [homosexuality] is abomination. The Torah punishes it with death. This is in the first line of serious sins”,
The Rabbi also reportedly said homosexuality was something individuals could choose to resist because it is “lust.”
Since making the claims, political and community leaders have called for him to be removed from his role as the current leader of the Sephardic Jewish community in Jerusalem.
The Prime Minister of Israel has also received complaint letters from MP’s about comments made by the rabbi, which aren’t the first to be anti-LGBT.
He has called Jerusalem’s gay Pride parade “an embarrassing phenomenon” and a “desecration of God’s name in Jerusalem.”
Rabbi Amar also bashed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stating that his support for Pride parade made him unfit for the roll.
Rabbi Amar did denounced the murder of Israeli teen Shira Banki at the city’s gay pride parade in 2015, describing it as “terrible act of blood-letting.”
Israel has the most progressive attitudes towards LGBT issues in the Middle East as same-sex marriages are recognised, despite not not being performed in the country.
