The Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court ruled that a council is not obligated to rent a hall to an association for holding an anti-LGBT conference.
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The association, Even Israel for Jewish Education, filed a petition with the court after renting a hall from Hod Hasharon Council on September 18, 2023, for the purpose of holding the event on October 12, 2023, but a day later it reversed and canceled the hall rental.
The petitioner defines itself as an association that works to promote an agenda critical of what it perceives as progressive values. At the same time, it works to influence the discourse in Israeli society regarding the LGBT movement, and among other things, organizes conferences on the subject, whose main audience is yeshiva students and teachers in religious education.
Rabbi Yigal Levinstein. "The Roots of LGBT Thinking Movement", photo: from the YouTube account of Jewish Core
The council canceled the invitation to the hall after claiming that it had been exposed to the expected content of the conference and that it was expected to serve as a central platform for harsh and offensive statements against the LGBT community, which contradict the values of the council and its residents, which advocate equality and tolerance towards the other.
The Council referred to the fact that the conference is expected to hear Rabbi Yigal Levinstein's remarks on "the roots of LGBT thinking in the LGBT movement" and Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira's remarks. The two became famous for some of the harshest statements ever made against the LGBT community: Rabbi Levinstein's remarks in the "speech of perverts," the nickname "beasts" and the call to "exterminate" homosexuality; And Rabbi Shapira's statement that LGBT is a "spreading disease."
On the other hand, the association argued discrimination because the law does not permit the council, as a service provider, to discriminate against it because of its views, and that canceling the conference on time would harm it, since it was set for the last day of the vacation of yeshiva students, who are the target audience of the conference.
However, the court ruled that the damage that may be caused to the council if the order is granted, as well as the damage that may be caused to public sentiment in general and to those of members of the LGBT community in particular, is greater than the damage that may be caused to the association as a result of not issuing the order. In its decision, the court took into account the argument that at the time of the contract between the parties, the association did not disclose and even conceal information from the council, both regarding the content of the conference and the fact that in recent months, two entities refrained from renting halls to the applicant for similar conferences in Ariel and Pisgat Ze'ev.
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