Itai Pinkas
Encyclopedia
Itai J. Pinkas is a leader of the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

, lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

, bisexual and transsexual community (LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

). Pinkas served as chair of the national LGBT association in Israel. He is a member of the Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

-Jaffa City Council and advises the mayor on LGBT affairs.

Biography

Pinkas grew up in Herzliya
Herzliya
Herzliya is a city in the central coast of Israel, at the western part of the Tel Aviv District. It has a population of 87,000 residents. Named after Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, Herzliya covers an area of 26 km²...

 and is a reserve army officer in the IDF holding the rank of captain. He has an LL.B in law from the Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...

 Law School, as well as an MBA from the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center
Interdisciplinary Center
The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya is a private Israeli college located in Herzliya, Israel.The languages of instruction in the Interdisciplinary Center are Hebrew and English.-History:...

, specializing in public policy. From 2000 to 2002, Pinkas served as chair of the national LGBT association. In 2005, Pinkas married his partner Yoav Arad as part of a public campaign to compel the state of Israel to recognize same-sex marriages. Their marriage was performed in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, the only country at that time which granted same-sex marriages to foreign citizens. Their request to have the marriage registered by the Interior Ministry was denied. However, in the end of 2006, the Supreme Court of Israel
Supreme Court of Israel
The Supreme Court is at the head of the court system and highest judicial instance in Israel. The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem.The area of its jurisdiction is all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. A ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every court, other than the Supreme...

 ruled the couple was, entitled to register their marriage in the Population Registry.

Public and political activism

Under Pinkas' leadership, the LGBT association experienced the most rapid period of growth in its history: three new LGBT chapters were established in Beersheba
Beersheba
Beersheba is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the seventh-largest city in Israel with a population of 194,300....

, Kiryat Shmona
Kiryat Shmona
Kiryat Shmona is a city located in the North District of Israel on the western slopes of the Hula Valley on the Lebanese border. The city was named for the eight people, including Joseph Trumpeldor, who died in 1920 defending Tel Hai....

 and Eilat, while media visibility and community involvement increased. He played an integral role in acquiring the newspaper HaZman HaVarod (The Pink Times) for the association. Financially, Pinkas set up an internal system to recruit funding including an authorization for tax-free donations from both Israel and the United States.

In 2003, Pinkas was elected to the Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Council where he secured an allocation of the municipal budget to establish a cultural center for the LGBT community. The center, located in Meir Garden was officially launched as part of the 2008 Tel Aviv pride festival. Pinkas initiated the commission of the first Israeli monument to honor the tens of thousands of homosexual Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

 victims. The memorial in Tel Aviv will be situated in Gan Meir next to LGBT municipal center.

In 2006, Pinkas left Meretz for the Labor Party. "We are joining the Labor Party because of its social agenda. Labor's advancements in social and educational issues have proven that this is our natural place. Meretz is talking only about the Geneva Initiative" .

Awards

As chairman of the board for the Dan Region Association of Towns for Environmental Issues & Sewage, Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

 magazine TheMarker named Pinkas one of the “100 most influential people in Israel” in its September 2006 issue. Under the category “Those Who Influence the Environment,” TheMarker explained: "For more than two years, Pinkas has been head of one of the prominent public infrastructure bodies in Israel. In this period he has promoted many projects that had been stalled for years: beginning to build the continental Sludge Treatment Factory of the Dan Region Association of Towns for Environmental Issues & Sewage and halting its emission into the Mediterranean Sea; progress toward establishing an Israel Sewage Expressway, progress on a sewage pipeline, upgrading the sewage infrastructures throughout The Gush Dan
Gush Dan
The Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area , or Gush Dan , is a metropolitan area including areas from both the Tel Aviv and the Central Districts of Israel. The area is closely linked to the city of Tel Aviv through social, economic, and cultural ties. It is located along the Israeli Mediterranean coastline...

 region, and adding new local authorities as clients to the company as Yehud
Yehud
Yehud is a city in the Center District in Israel that is part of the joint municipality of Yehud-Monosson. In 2007, Yehud's population was approximately 25,600 .- History :...

, Beit Dagan
Beit Dagan
-Transportation:Beit Dagan's main transportation hub is the Beit Dagan Junction , between highway 44 and road 412, serving as a bus terminal for lines to Rishon LeZion, Tzrifin, Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva, Rehovot, etc....

, Lod
Lod
Lod is a city located on the Sharon Plain southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2010, it had a population of 70,000, roughly 75 percent Jewish and 25 percent Arab.The name is derived from the Biblical city of Lod...

etc."

In June 2008, Pinkas was awarded the "Green Globe" for his environmental work.
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