From Miri
Most
recently Tel Aviv has been voted the world's gayest travel destination.
This achievement is the result of a campaign
launched by the Tel Aviv tourism board and supported by the Israeli
Ministry of Tourism to promote the White City as an international
gay vacation destination. Activists from the LGBTQ scene,
including Israeli ones, consider this campaign an attempt to
whitewash, or as they term it “pinkwash”, the public image of
Israel and to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians'
human rights and instead to promote it as the only democratic and
eventually gay friendly state of the Middle East.
Also on the ground, the
Tel Aviv municipality, together with the Ministry of Tourism put a
lot of effort into presenting a rosy and carefree image to the city's
visitors. One vehicle for this are organised walking tours. A lot of
those tours naturally focus on the beautiful or fun parts of the
city, such as night life or architecture, especially the vast amount
of unique Bauhaus buildings that gave the city its nickname - the
White City. A visit to the White City is however incomplete without a Jaffa tour.


The busy neighbourhood of Manshiyye, for example, once constituted Jaffa's northern border. Today's Manshiyye is mainly comprised of a small park, adjoined by parking lots and a bus stop, as well as of the Charles Clore Park whose grass covered dunes conceal the rubble that remained from the demolition of the neighbourhood and which were pushed to the sea sight. The Hassan Beq mosque and one other building which was turned into the Etzel Museum to commemorate those who captured Manshiyye, are the only indicators for the area's Arab past.
There are always at least
two sides to every story. The fact that the more dominant one is, by
its nature, more easily accessible to a greater audience, does not
mean that it lies closer to the truth.
Comments
Tell your friends. Help spread the word . . . .
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Please confine your comments to appropriate feedback to the post you are commenting on.