(Last Year’s Parade)

According to the Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem’s controversial gay pride parade, which has repeatedly riled religious and traditional city residents, is scheduled to take place in the city next week, with haredi opponents deciding to avoid public protests in an effort to minimize the publicity of the event, organizers and opponents of the event said Tuesday. The annual event, which has been the source of bitter debate and violence in the past, is slated to take place through the streets of central Jerusalem next Thursday.

The march, which is organized by Jerusalem’s small Gay and Lesbian Center, has repeatedly received the strong backing of Israel’s High Court of Justice over the vehement opposition of the haredi and religious public as well as Christian and Muslim religious leaders who view such a parade as an abomination and an anathema to core Biblical values.

Supporters of the parade counter that freedom of speech enables them to hold the event in Jerusalem, as a symbol of tolerance and pluralism, even if theirs is the view of the minority of residents in the city. ”The march is a test-case for democracy and for the ability to accept the other,” said Yonatan Gher, executive director of Jerusalem’s Open House which is organizing the event.

Gher said that organizers were encountering “very good cooperation” from both the city and police this year to the “different atmosphere” among the opponents of the march, adding that the final approval of the parade’s route was expected in the coming days.

In an effort to minimize publicity of the event, the vehemently anti-Zionist Eda Haredit has decided to refrain from demonstrating against the parade, a move which is expected to greatly reduce friction over the march. ”We prefer to concentrate on sanctifying God’s name, not attacking those who desecrate it,” said an official in the organization.

The Eda Haredit, which brings together some of the most zealously conservative, anti-Zionist groups in Judaism, refuses to accept money from the state of Israel, which, they believe, represents a rebellion against God’s wish that the Jewish people remain without sovereignty until the coming of the Messiah.

The city’s Gay and Lesbian Center, which is heavily funded by American Jewish federations, has held five previous gay parades in the city. A 2005 gay parade in Jerusalem ended in violence when a haredi man stabbed three participants.