Noa Golani
Israel
In July of this year, the Israeli government responded to the High Court of Justice about the petition of a certain LGBT organization regarding discrimination against LBGT families in matters of adoption. The government’s answer was that the government of Israel does not consider LBGT couples to be worthy of being parents, and that a child adopted by LGBT parents will experience negative psychological consequences. In response to this decision, we decided as a community to take to the streets in protest.
Over the course of the protest, some our community members decided to march (in Israel, protests often take the form of marches, and the police generally allow this to happen). In the case of our protest, the streets in the area were supposed to be blocked for the demonstration, and therefore we didn’t think that it would be a problem for us to march in these streets. To our dismay, the police decided to forbid us from moving even a millimeter. Towards the end of the protest, the number of people who wanted to start marching grew, and in response, the police decided to start making arrests in order to calm to the atmosphere and prevent the protest from growing too rowdy. Unfortunately, I had the bad luck of being in close proximity to several of the police officers. What made them decide to arrest me despite the fact that I was not doing anything at that moment was the fact that I had been shouting before. Ten seconds after the officers said “arrest them”, five officers jumped on me and dragged me to the police car. I don’t have any way to explain the feeling of this situation other than to say that it was an experience of complete isolation. The feeling that no one you know knows what happened to you. The feeling that you don’t understand what is happening to you. I sat in the police car for several hours, I don’t know exactly how many. During this time, I didn’t have any idea what would happen to me, or what was going on around me. Other than my attempts to signal to people I recognized outside the police car, I had no contact with the outside world. At some point the police brought more of my friends who had also been arrested into the car, and the situation started to improve. From there they took us into the police station and into custody.
At the station, they decided to strip search each of us individually, a process that was unnecessary in this case as it is usually reserved for arrests where there is suspicion of violence or drugs. Even more out of protocol was the fact that they fully strip searched the women, whereas they allowed the men who had been arrested to keep their underwear on. My friends who have been arrested in previous protests have told me that they have never been strip searched or heard of arrested protesters being strip searched, a fact which makes this decision even more extraordinary. The process of being strip searched was extremely humiliating, and the fact that it was unnecessary made it even more so. Despite being extremely negative (and unnecessary in light of the fact that none of us had a police file opened on us), this experience made me stronger and more determined to fight for my rights, letting nothing stand in my way. And by the way, a few months after the protest and due to our sustained efforts, the government changed their answer in such a way that should prevent the discrimination of LGBT families.
