Israeli journalist Yair Cherki comes out as gay: ‘I love men and I love God’

High-profile Israeli journalist Yair Cherki has come out as gay, stating: “I love men and I love God.”

The Channel 12 News reporter made the revelation in a Facebook post on Tuesday [15 February 2023].

Channel 12 is the nation’s most-watched news network.

“I love men and God, and this isn’t contradictory” says Yair Cherki as he comes out

“I tremble as I write these words,” Cherki said in the statement [as translated by The Times of Israel].

“I love men and God, and this isn’t contradictory,” he furthermore added.

“I am 30 years old, and I write not because I have the strength to write, but because I have no strength to be silent,” he then went on. “[But I also write] for my son who has not yet come into this world.”

Elsewhere in the statement, he said: “This is neither a trend nor a political statement: It is simply who I am.

“I don’t know if I would call it an identity. Just another element of who I am and who I have been since the day I came into my own.”

According to The Times, Cherki grew up in national religious community in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighbourhood.

His father, Ori, is a community rabbi as well as a lecturer for the prominent Machon Meir yeshiva.