by Noga Tarnopolsky

Julia Zaher wanted only to be a good citizen and a good businesswoman, running her prize-winning Nazareth tahini factory. But controversy got in the way.

Last month, in honor of Pride, Zaher decided to provide a critical service to Israel’s large Arab minority—20 percent of the country’s population—by funding a dedicated Arabic-language hotline for LGBTQ youth at the Aguda, Israel’s national LGBT Association.

The Aguda announced it to the public on July 1, in a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic post expressing gratitude “for the assistance of Al-Arz tahini, a company working together with us to create a more accepting and a safer environment.”

But very quickly, Zaher’s simple act of goodwill went awry. Offended by what they viewed as Al-Arz mainstreaming gay rights into Arab society, a number of conservative Muslim clerics in the Galilee, where the company is based, called for a boycott. Following suit, shopkeepers in Israeli-Arab towns started posting Facebook videos showing them denouncing “homosexual rights” and angrily dumping entire shelves of the distinctive red, green and white containers of tahini into the trash.

In a radio interview, former parliamentarian Talab al-Sana, who is Bedouin, lent his support to the boycott, saying “This [homosexuality] is not acceptable in Arab society, or from a religious point of view. Giving legitimacy to this phenomenon is forbidden.”

But surreptitiously, a revolt was underway—a backlash to the boycott that revealed a vibrant, far-from-homogeneous culture that refused to be cowed by preachy orthodoxy, and also exposed a major disconnection between Arab citizens and those who claim to be their religious leaders.

Aida Touma-Sliman, who serves for the majority-Arab Joint List party in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, posted a counter-video passionately calling on “everyone to buy Al-Arz tahini and oppose the boycott.” Read more via Daily Beast