Recently, I took part in the World LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) Youth Leaders Summit in Tel Aviv. Wahoo! Yes, my friends, the very same controversial and not-so-controversial summit you just may have read about on the news and/or Facebook. The event was hosted by IGY (Israel Gay Youth). There were over forty participants from around the world, including the USA, Chile, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Mongolia, India, Singapore and Mayalsia, just to name a few. There were also a handful of Israelis and an Iranian queer refugee who now lives in Canada. I came as a volunteer at Hoshen (Education & Change: The Educational Center of the LGBT Community in Israel) and as a general young queer leader/activist. Yay activists!

It was pretty cool. OK, that was an understatement. It was one of the most fascinating and amazing weeks of my life. Take forty young LGBTQ leaders from around the world, each from different backgrounds and each active in different projects, bring them together for a week of learning, sharing, educating, meeting, visiting and collaborating. Throw in a little bit of human rights and controversy, and the magic is just bound to happen. Perhaps also a little faith, trust and fairy dust? Not to mention a year of heart-drenched planning on the part of IGY and other LGBTQ activists in Israel. In a word: fabulous.

Of course, we had our summit seminars and workshops. I even got to share my very own “LGBT Youth Literature Project,” an online library for sharing LGBT literature for children and young adults – now to be even more international and multilingual! But that’s just the beginning! On Monday we met with Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, proud supporter of the LGBTQ community in Tel Aviv and the new Municipal LGBTQ Community Center, and there was much talk of Tel Aviv, the “Pink City.” Did I mention that Tel Aviv is trying to promote itself as a top LGBTQ tourist destination and an international city? We queers are so cosmopolitan! And popular! Well, I suppose the efforts are somewhat mutually beneficial. Our community gets support, Tel Aviv looks good, more queers come to Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv looks good … you get the picture.

And, after our lovely meeting with the mayor, a group of us were cordially invited to an “unofficial” “alternative event” hosted by local left-wing radical Queer activists (among them a number of notable transgender and Palestinian activists) who had chosen to boycott the summit. We listened to alternative narratives and discussed the controversial (and rather a la mode) topic of Israeli pinkwashing. Is Israel using the LGBTQ community as a “model minority” to tout its human rights, in an effort to turn eyes away from its human rights abuses and questionable behavior in other spheres (e.g. Arab/Palestinian, women, religious)? Were we, as summit participants, being used as ambassadors of pinkwashing, or rather even, little lab mice of pinkwashing for Israel and the Israeli media to show the world? I’m gonna let these questions hang for a minute, and come back to them in just a bit. (I know, suspense.) In the meantime, I’ll share just a few more highlights of the summit:

On Wednesday we visited Jerusalem, where we had one of the most unique tours I have ever done in the holy city. In about one hour, we covered holy sites of Jerusalem’s three main religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism. (Anyone ever wonder, by the way, why they tend not to take you to Christian and Muslim sites when you’re on a “Jewish” tour? Just saying…) We also went to the Knesset, where we met with Knesset members from the Kadima, Labor and Meretz parties, as well as members of the Knesset Committee against Homophobia and Transphobia and other advocates of human rights and women’s rights. The message was clear: we cannot speak of LGBTQ rights without speaking of human rights and vice versa. That message resounded in a different way when we visited Yad Vashem. I have been to Yad Vashem many times, but being there with a group of 40 international queer activists – most of whom were not Jewish and/or had never been to a Holocaust museum before – was an entirely different experience. (Has anyone ever wondered, by the way, about the very little mention at Yad Vashem given to LGBTs and the other minorities persecuted in the Holocaust? Just saying…)

Thursday was International Human Rights Day. We had a special human rights event with various European ambassadors. They like the human rights. They like the gays. Again the message was clear: LGBTQ activists must be a part of the broader struggle for human rights, and human rights activists must include LGBTQ rights. We are all human after all. Oh how we tend to forget that…

So were we all part of a big pinkwashing project by the Government of Israel? Perhaps. Is Israel wrong to take pride in its recent track record on LGBTQ rights? Maybe. Are LGBTQ rights in Israel perfect? No. But can we use Israel’s declared pride in LGBTQ rights to push toward a broader discourse of human rights, and stand up for basic human rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for all residents of Eretz Israel and Palestine? Oh yes! Do we each have an obligation as Jews and/or as LGBTs to fight for the rights of all human beings and all those oppressed everywhere, including in our midst? You betcha! That’s the thing with human rights. Once you start, you just can’t stop. So you can hold on to your little bottle of pinkwash, ‘cause I got a whole bucket of rainbow and I’m gonna paint the world!

Elliot Glassenberg is currently participating in BINA Tikkun Olam in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, one of Masa Israel’s 200 programs.

I’ve been taking care of myself for 71 days – cleaning up after myself, doing my own shopping, making my own food, doing my own laundry – and somehow, I’m still alive (I think everyone back home is kind of shocked that I’ve lasted this long).

It has now been over two months since I left home to live at midrasha half a world away from my family. Living away from home for the first time has its share of difficulties and I had a whole list of concerns when I first came to live at midrasha. Coming from a big family, though, one issue I never expected to crop up was figuring out how to live with other people.

I share an apartment with four other girls, three of whom are Israeli, two of whom do not speak a word of English. This significantly complicates our living situation; although I spoke adequate Hebrew coming into this program, my vocabulary was high school level academic vocabulary – not the kind that it is necessary to have at one’s disposal when communicating about taking out the garbage, or washing the floors.

Another complication that we have run into in our shared living experience is the issue of consideration towards others’ schedules. Three of my apartment-mates are slightly older, and have been living away from home for a number of years already. As a result, they have already formed habits and have their own schedules. It has been extremely difficult to learn to live with other people who have very different sleeping habits. One of my apartment-mates does not believe in going to sleep before three in the morning, which would be fine, aside from the fact that classes start at 8:00 a.m., meaning that we are supposed to be waking up around 7:00 a.m.

This situation is further complicated by the fact that I am a full three years younger than she is, so when we try to discuss ways to improve the situation, the conversation often ends with her bedroom door slamming in my face.

I am the eldest child in a family of eight children; coming to Israel, I never expected to have issues living with other people. Living at midrasha has taught me that there are many different types of people, and you can’t always reason with them. The hardest part of the experience, for me, has been the change in dynamic of going from oldest child to youngest child. When I bring up issues in the apartment, I feel that a lot of the time, the response is along the lines of, “Oh, that’s cute. But no.”

Bottom line: It’s very hard to be taken seriously when everyone sees you as the baby.

Although many parts of this experience have been frustrating – and tiring! – I would not change it for anything in the world. Although we have our issues, the girls that I live with are my family for the next eight months and I think we all realize that everything can’t always run smoothly.

In order to resolve some of the issues with our living arrangement, we have decided to have a family dinner once a week. We cook together and we have an open forum about the various difficulties that have come up. Our first dinner was last night; it’s too soon to see if our discussions are actually helping, but talking about the issues and actually being listened to really helped my frustration level and, with any luck, all of us will start to get more sleep soon.

My apartment-mates are all going to town tonight and hopefully they will get back at a reasonable hour. Yesterday, I set six alarms and… that didn’t work out so well. Here’s to hoping that the seven I’ve set for tomorrow will do the job.

Eliana Glogauer is currently studying on one of Masa Israel’s 200 programs.