Pinkwashing Israel

Paper presented by Michael Schembri at the conference: Temperatures Rising! Australian civil society & Palestinian freedom: analyses, resistances, solidarities, activisms.

University of Technology, Sydney 14-15 May 2011

Initiated by the Coalition for Justice & Peace in Palestine (Sydney) and Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, University of Technology (Sydney)

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In recent years Israel has had to go on the defensive. Its invasion of and defeat in Lebanon in 2006, its ongoing siege and bombing of Gaza, its attack on the Freedom Flotilla carrying aid to the people of Gaza – all these and more have increased worldwide support for the Palestinians, thereby also putting more pressure on Western governments who to date have continued to support Israel through thick and thin.  

While refusing to back down on its aggression and on its apartheid policies against the Palestinian people both within its expanding borders and in the rest of the Occupied Territories, it has had to aggressively sell Brand Israel.

Part of this campaign has been its claim to being the only democratic state in the Middle East. And part of this campaign has been to sell itself as the only gay and lesbian friendly state in the Middle East. A bit like Daffyd from Little Britain, who claims he is the only gay in the village.

This is what we refer to as Pinkwashing – Israel promoting its image world wide as a progressive country which has recognised gay rights; using the existence of a gay community in Israel as a selling point, to thereby attract support for itself among gay men and lesbians around the world, particularly in the West.

To prove its progressive credentials as the only safe haven for gay men and lesbians in the Middle East it points to its legislative record:

- Homosexuality in Israel was decriminalised in 1988.

- Anti-discrimination legislation was passed in 1992.

- Gay men and lesbians have the right to serve in the military.

- Common-law marriage is recognised, although official same-sex marriage is only recognised if the marriage was performed elsewhere.

- The age of consent for both heterosexuals and homosexuals is sixteen.

- A legal case has led to the ability by same-sex couples to adopt each other’s biological children and to adopt foster children.

These gains cannot be denied. At this point it might interest you to know – it certain caught my attention - that homosexuality in Palestine was decriminalised in 1956 under the Jordanian mandate.

The Brand Israel campaign seeks, in an explicitly racist manner, to contrast itself with the supposedly barbaric, uncivilised Palestinian Arabs and Arabs in general, all of whom are supposedly inherently and uniformly hostile to gay men , lesbians and transgendered people.

Israel could not try to get away with its pinkwashing if it did not have the support of the mainstream Israeli gay and lesbian communities and organisations. These have struck a Faustian deal with the Zionist State: they have given their allegiance to the Zionist State in return for the State’s progressive policies.

Amongst its activities to sell Israel – and Tel Aviv in particular - as gay and lesbian friendly, the state institutions and the LGBT communities in Israel have been very active indeed. Here are some examples of their activities:

Last February [2011], at the International Tourist Trade Show in Berlin, Israel launched its campaign to promote gay tourism to the city of Tel Aviv. The Israeli exhibition at this Show was entitled Tel Aviv Gay Vibe – Free; Fun; Fabulous. This exhibition was a joint project of Israel’s LGBT Association (Aguda) and Tel Aviv’s Tourism Association. Amongst those who spoke out against this pinkwashing campaign was the group Palestinian Queers for BDS.

The Israeli state helps fund international gay and lesbian film festivals overseas.

Last year [2010] a month-long festival entitled “Out In Israel” was launched in the Bay Area, California in the USA. This celebration of LGBT Israeli culture included a film series, literary readings, musical performances, dance, and panel discussions on LGBT culture in Israel from a Zionist perspective. The Palestinian queer organisations Al-Qaws and Aswat issued a statement of protest, pointing out that Israel’s oppression of Palestinians did not distinguish between straight and gay Palestinians.

Also in 2010 the US Social Forum (the USSF) allowed the Zionist anti-Arab propaganda organisation Stand With Us to participate. Israeli Queers for Palestine spoke out against Stand With Us. Their statement, headed Say NO to Pinkwashing at the USSF!, read:

“To remedy [the growing success of BDS and its increasing marginalisation] [Israel] has launched a massive PR campaign using organisations such as Stand with Us to convince the world that Israel is not a brutal settler-colony state, but rather a free democracy where human rights in general, and LGBT rights in particular, are respected and upheld. Stand with Us deceptively uses the language of LGBT and women’s rights to obscure the fact that institutionalised discrimination is enshrined within the state of Israel.”

A number of Arab queer organisations also spoke out against Pinkwashing at the USSF, They included Al-Qaws and Aswat from Palestine/Israel, Helem from Lebanon, Palestinian Queers fro BDS, and the Moroccan group Kifkif.

Late in 2010 MTV’s LGBT Network, Logo, published the results of two internet polls in which it nominated, among other cities, the city of Tel Aviv for gay ‘sexiest city’ and ‘year breakthrough.’ The Tel Aviv-based group Israelis Queers for Palestine issued a statement denouncing the nomination.

In 2009 the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association held a conference in Tel Aviv. As with the Berlin show a year later, this conference was organized in cooperation with the Israeli LGBT organisation Aguda. Protests against this conference were called for from all over the world; Sydney gay and lesbian activists were among those who sent their protests.

In 2006 World Pride was held in Jerusalem. Anti-Zionist gay men and lesbians world-wide were furious, pointing out the irony that the slogan for World Pride was “Love Without Borders” while the Separation Wall that Israel is building on Palestinian land, and given that no Palestinian who does not have Israeli citizenship would have been allowed into the country to attend World Pride.

Gay and lesbian activists from Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide added their protest in a letter to the Sydney Star Observer.

This June the Tel Aviv Municipality intends to have a stand at Europe’s gay pride parade and festival in Berlin. Proof of the efficacy of the anti-Israeli Apartheid campaign there will be no Israeli symbols or markers, not even the Israeli flag. Instead the emphasis will be on Tel Aviv as a global city – pluralistic and liberal.

Selling Israel is one side of the Pinkwashing coin. The other is to use gay and lesbian rights to attack critics of Israeli Apartheid. Again this is taking place in a number of countries around the world.

Selling Israel is one side of the Pinkwashing coin. The other is to use gay and lesbian rights to attack the critics of Apartheid Israel.

One of the most recent examples of this took place in Sydney. On the weekend of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, in the lead up to the NSW state elections, posters were stuck to poles on Oxford Street. On of these asked:

“Do the NSW Greens oppose gay rights? By boycotting Israel, the NSW Greens are boycotting the only country in the middle east where homosexuality is not a capital offence, or even a crime. Choose Freedom. Don’t Vote Green on March 26.”

Also in March of this year gay and lesbian anti-Israeli Apartheid activists were targeted in New York. A “Party to End Apartheid”, organized by a group called Siege Busters, was scheduled to be held in New York’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Trans Community Center. It was to be part of a nation-wide series of events under the banner of Israel Awareness Week and was meant to be a fundraiser to raise money for another flotilla to Gaza.

Michael Lucas, a leading American producer of gay porn movies, a rabid anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist and a strong supporter of Israel, called on donors to the centre to boycott if the centre did not cancel the party.

In response the LGBT Center stated cancelled the event and banned the group from ever using the centre. This decision was strongly criticised by a number of organisations, including the Palestinian queer organisations Al Qaws and Aswat, the queer academic Judith Butler, the Siegebusters Working Group, the organisation Existence is Resistance, and Sherry Wolf on behalf of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

A final example, this time in Toronto, Canada. Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, formed to work in solidarity with gay men, lesbians and trannies in Palestine as well as with the Palestinian resistance movements around the world, planned to participate in Toronto’s 2010 Pride Parade. Reacting to Zionist pressure, the City of Toronto staff warned Pride Toronto to ban the group or face the loss of its city funding. Thanks to a vigorous protests from the gay and lesbian community Pride Toronto refused ban the group.

At this point it is important to expose the truth behind the claim that Israel is a safe haven for gay men, lesbians and trannies.

To start with it is apt to point out that progressive legislation in and of itself does not mean that hatred of gay men and lesbians has been done away with. Nothing illustrated this better than the murder of two people and the injuring of many more when someone entered a youth group meting at a LGBT community centre in Tel Aviv.

More telling was the fact that the ceremony held to protest and commemorate the murders, Palestinian speakers were deliberately excluded, while Benjamin Netanyahu – hardly a champion of gay rights, spoke at the event. Israeli flags abounded. Needless to say, no one from the Zionist side made any link between this attack and the militarisation of Israel due to its ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people and the expanding occupation of Palestine.

As protesters against the 2006 World Pride in Jerusalem pointed out, Israeli oppression of Palestinians does not distinguish between Palestinian gays and straights. Palestinians who do not hold citizenship in Israel are not allowed into Israel. A tiny handful are, indeed, taken in, but only if they are willing to be paraded as victims of Palestinian society.

For those who are citizens of Israel the situation is not that much better. Racism abounds, not least within the Israeli gay and lesbian communities. The few Palestinian gay men who live in Tel Aviv and who wish to enter a gay club will try to make themselves look less Arab, will speak Hebrew, and still they are often refused entry.

If, on the other hand, one is gay or Palestinian in the West Bank one is submitted to the same oppression as all other Palestinians: checkpoints, harassments, home demolishments, pot shots from Israel settlers and so on.

And if one is in Gaza, one is subjected to the siege, to bombings and raids.

No, Israeli oppression does not distinguish between straight and gay Palestinians.

Zionism, through oppression and occupation, plays a direct role in encouraging homophobia among Palestinians. Here is what Samira Saraya – a Palestinian lesbian activist and founding member of Aswat – has to say:

‘Like every society, the Palestinian society is dynamic. The reality of occupation, oppression, financial hardships, etc., have a lot to do with the movement of the Palestinian society “backward” toward conservative, religious, and paranoid ways of being. This of course is not helpful for us LGBTQ. A society that experiences war on a daily basis and that fights for its survival cannot move ahead. It is by definition a “sick society” that needs to have freedom and autonomy from which it can begin to heal.’

Rima, a Palestinian feminist activist working with Aswat, adds:

‘My people have suffered and are still suffering from traumas of land expropriation, house demolishing, occupation, discrimination and threats of citizenship dismissal. For these reasons and others, the Palestinian society is very zealous about its traditions and culture. The majority of society rejects behaviours and changes that “threaten” its heterosexuality and patriarchy since it is perceived as a threat to the continuity of the uniqueness of our culture. They romanticise the past and sometime I feel they want to freeze everything that was in the past and reject any change.’

There is yet another factor that causes among Palestinians generally a suspicion of Palestinian homosexuals. There are many instances where Israeli police have blackmailed Palestinian homosexuals by threatening to out them to their families and their communities. The result of course, is that it is commonplace for Palestinian homosexuals to be suspected of being spies by their people.

Coming out is not necessarily possible or desirable. Palestinian queer activists are very clear that they will not slavishly imitate the Western model of activism. Their approach is that Palestinian queers are out through the public existence and the public presence of their organisations, which currently are Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society and Aswat – Palestinian Gay Women.

The checkpoints controlling the movement of Palestinians also inhibit the movement of Palestinian gay and lesbian activists from moving inside their own country. The checkpoints thereby impede the growth of the Palestinian gay and lesbian movement. It is not for nothing that Jason Ritchie, an anthropologist who worked closely with Al-Qaws and its director and co-founder Haneen Maikey, states that in the case of Palestinian gay men and lesbians one should talk refer not to the closet but to the checkpoint, which is the real and symbolic check on the development of their sexual identity, political activity and freedom.

Palestinian gay men and lesbians refuse to play the role of victim assigned to them by the Zionist gay and lesbian communities. They have been fighting back. In doing so they are asserting themselves as both gay or lesbian or queer or transgendered, and as Palestinians. They will not be forced to make a choice. Here is a quote from the oraganisation Palestinian Queers for BDS:

“As Palestinian queers, our struggle is not only against social injustice and our rights as a queer minority in Palestinian society, but rather, our main struggle is one against Israel’s colonization, occupation and apartheid; a system that has oppressed us for the past 63 years. Violations of human rights and international law, suppression of basic rights and civil liberty, and discrimination are deeply rooted in Israel’s policies towards Palestinians, straight and gay alike.”

That is, the struggle for sexual and gender diversity is inseparable from the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

By demanding and struggling for their rights as gay men and lesbians while at the same time asserting their opposition to Israeli occupation and apartheid they assert their right to existence within Palestinian society and at the same time they claim their place within the Palestinian struggle for national liberation.

In this they are following in the footsteps of that other great struggle against apartheid – the struggle against Apartheid South Africa. Resistance fighters who were also gay, such as Simon Nkoli, won the respect of their heterosexual co-fighters, and from there moved to a recognition within the ANC and eventually in the country’s very constitution.

The strong presence of gay and lesbian activists in the international solidarity movement was another factor. We should also remember that that international boycott campaign included a boycott of gay contacts as well as sporting, tourist, trade, religious, scientific and academic contacts.

And that is where we come into the picture. The international movement of solidarity with Palestine - and that includes gay, lesbian and queer solidarity - must remain uncompromising in its opposition to Apartheid Israel. At the same time we must give our full solidarity to our Palestinian gay, lesbian and transgender brothers and sisters in their struggles within Palestinian society as may be requested by them. It is through this double act of solidarity that we can help Palestinians realise both national and gay/lesbian liberation.

Video: How Now BDS? Media, Politics and Queer Activism: A conversation with John Greyson and Judith Butler, moderated by Jasbir Puar