Israel’s candidate of change

WHEN Barack Obama made history in Nov 2008, Nitzan Horowitz, then covering the campaign for Israel’s Channel 10, had a front-row seat.

If Horowitz has his way, he too will make history this October: the left-wing Knesset member is vying to become the first gay mayor of Tel Aviv — indeed, the first openly gay mayor of any big city in the Middle East.

“I’ve been active in the gay community for many years, but I want to be the mayor of everyone — gay and straight, Jewish and Arab, secular and religious,” Horowitz, 48, tells me at his office in the Knesset. Like most Knesset members, Horowitz is dressed casually, wearing a powder blue button-down and jeans. On his desk sits a framed picture of him with his partner of 11 years, Ido, at Yellowstone National Park; on the wall hang photos of him with George W. Bush, Hamid Karzai, and other world leaders he met during his journalism career; and next to a portrait of his favorite prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, is a “Change we can believe in” licence plate with Obama’s picture.