Tuesday, November 29, 2011

This is Not Gay News

JPost is reporting of a rise in HIV cases among gay men here:

Among the 420 newly diagnosed cases of HIV in Israel in 2010, 148 of them were homosexual men, according to the Health Ministry, which is worried about the “dramatic increase” in infection among gay men. They constituted half of all men who were newly diagnosed.

The ministry released figures to mark World AIDS Day, December 1.

They were collected by Dr. Zohar Mor, adviser to the head of public health services for tuberculosis and AIDS in the Health Ministry, and the voluntary organization Hoshen. The figures were four times higher than the figures of HIV-infected men in 2000.

I hope this isn't a result of Israel's Hasbara campaign line, the one from an Israeli marketing campaign to create a positive, non-conflict image of democratic Israel, including gay life (which is being fought by Queers Against Apartheid) and the Tel Aviv tourism campaign launched last year to attract gay visitors, especially the parade, which has moved up also to Jerusalem.

And just after the NYTimes "pinkwashing" flareup ("pinkwashing"?  here).

Maybe it's better some gay conferences are cancelled.

^

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Could it because of the tens of thousands of illegal African migrants who smuggled themselves into Israel, which Channel 2 reports: "1 in 3 has AIDS" ?