[NYTr] Jerusalem's only gay bar closes

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Steven L. Robinson - activ-l

Jerusalem Post - November 15, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195036615248&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


Gay 'community' bar closes

By Gil Zohar

In a case of winning the battle but losing the war, Jerusalem's
beleaguered homosexual community won a series of high profile court
victories in recent years permitting its controversial gay pride
celebrations - but this week the capital's only alternative
gender-orientation bar closed, apparently due to financial problems.

Shushan Pub, located on a gritty street of the same name tucked away
behind Kikar Safra and the Jaffa Road post office, was as much a
political statement as it was a business. But co-owner Saar Netanel
notes, "Ideology does not pay the rent."

Operating the bar six nights a week was physically exhausting, he adds.

"It was a kind of home for many people," he says, a unique locale where
where haredim, Palestinians, and religious and secular Jews mixed. "When
they left Shushan, each returned to his own ghetto," he laments. "Even
straight people came. I could see the fear on their faces the first time
they entered."

Netanel, 36, opened the nightclub in 2003, the same year he was elected
to the Jerusalem City Council as the No. 2 candidate on the Meretz
list. He became the first openly gay man to serve as a city councillor
in Israel. (In 1998 Michal Eden became the first lesbian elected to the
Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality.)

In an indication of the animosity the tiny gay and lesbian community
faces in tradition-bound Jerusalem, arsonists attempted to torch
Shushan two years ago. Every year, with the approach of the capital's
gay pride parade, extra police patrols were assigned to guard the bar's
patrons.

Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders - including evangelical Christian
leaders abroad - decried what they called the desecration of the holy
city and urged authorities not to permit the celebration.

Adam Rousseau, 21, who was stabbed by a haredi man during the 2005 gay
parade along Jaffa Road, went to Shushan last weekend for a final
toast. "I met my partner at Shushan," he says. "Shushan is a warm, safe
and friendly haven. The Jerusalem [gay and lesbian] community was
surrounded on all sides by hatred, venom and vitriol, and Shushan was
the only place where the community could find comfort."

Apart from its sense of political mission, Shushan was also an
incubator for Israeli drag artists: Kiara Duple, Talula Bonet, Gallina
Port Des Bra, Diva D and The Four Jerusalem Drag Queens all got their
start there at the Monday night open stage. Some have gone on to
perform in more liberal Tel Aviv.

Netanel says he is aware of negotiations to open a new gay bar in the
city.