pinkwashing definition israel

Jeff Halper is the founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, an organization that fights Israel’s destruction of Palestinian houses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Your browser does not support JavaScript!. Just like the anonymous voice on the support line, the Israelis who tried to “save” and “help” me were forcing me instead into identifying with their normative, homogenizing LGBT scene. The LGBTQ+ movement is about coming together against discrimination, against bigotry and against hate.

panel discussion about the use of gay rights and breast cancer awareness to draw attention away from: toxic chemicals in cosmetics // environmental damage // racial segregation // violation of human rights // rising cancer rates // and more…. Israel’s status as a democracy has come under debate in recent years. It was the internet that pulled me back to reality. At the end of my first year of university, I packed all my stuff and left Tel Aviv without saying my farewells, determined never to look back. Please try again. With regard to pinkwashing, Palestinian queer activism is invested in PinkWatching efforts to debunk Israel’s pinkwashing propaganda. Learning about sexual orientation and gender identity in a foreign language was in itself alienating. Is there more to this story? The most infamous was in 2017, when the Chicago Dyke March ejected three Jewish women for waving a rainbow flag with a Jewish star on it. Ahmed has faced humiliating interrogations at the airport, despite the fact that he holds an Israeli passport.

In the case of Israel, both the state and its supporters argue that Israel must defend itself because it is the only country in the Middle East where gay people have rights.

Palestinian queer and LGBT organizations simply do not figure in the equation of LGBT resource distribution in Israel. Should I encourage him to come out? Pride flags fill the air. © 2020 Vancouver Sun, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. The idea that we should boycott an entire country’s people due to the objectionable policies of their government is unacceptable, misguided and harmful to both myself and LGBTQ+ Israelis, a community in need of and deserving of support. This internal strategy plays out through discriminatory rules and procedures, most notably, the unequal allocation of resources in favor of Israeli schools and LGBTQI organizations at the expense of Palestinian ones – especially in projects involving Palestinian citizens of Israel. Gay, bi and trans Israelis only hinder a free Palestine.

We hear, “You can’t be gay in Palestine!” Yet B’nai Brith Canada has closely aligned itself with homophobic. And until international anti-pinkwashing activists stop espousing the same amount of hate and condescension for LGBT Israelis as Israel’s own parliamentary theocrat and homophobe Betzalel Smotrich does, I’ve told my Israeli friends from the community that, in the meantime, it’s best to drop the word "pinkwashing" from their lexicon altogether on trips abroad. I had never expressed any belonging to that identity or lifestyle, and most importantly, I did not want to adhere to categories that denied me my political struggle. While tourism comprises just four percent of the Israeli gross domestic product, the industry grew seven percent from 2010 to 2011. Let’s look back at the example in the article provided above. Palestinian citizens of the state face a wide variety of discrimination. Quotations . Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited. © 2020 Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research. While we are still fighting for same-sex and civil marriage, adoption rights and parenting legislation that will not discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals, gains such as our community serving openly in the military and in parliament are evidence of a country heading toward progress, not away from it. To avoid being accused of pinkwashing, just use a simple strategy; don’t pinkwash. For these reasons, neither the CJC nor B’nai Brith today have much credibility in talking about gay rights. It wants the government to catch on to what the people of Israel already know: that LGBT people deserve the same rights as everyone else.

He points out that the Israeli LGBT community is complicit in the state’s use of gay rights to deflect attention from the occupation. On one hand, it’s no good for companies to use LGBT issues as a smokescreen for other realities, but on the other, emphasizing inclusivity and equality is never a bad thing! Since Israel began its re-branding campaign, it has been aggressively marketing itself as an oasis of gay tolerance and democracy in the Mideast, surrounded by “backward” countries where gays have no rights. Christian fundamentalist leaders Charles McVety and John Hagee.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Passionate about helping people share their stories of adversity, Jenn is the Founder of the Publish Your Purpose Press and But as both have increasingly made support of apartheid Israel the sole focus of their activity, their politics and their alliances have shifted sharply to the right, on queer rights and many other issues. What do breast cancer, the tar sands, and Israeli apartheid have in common? Al-Qaws does not participate in the annual Pride parade in Tel Aviv. In essence, there are two definitions of pinkwashing. Organizers later explained that their cause was explicitly anti-Zionist, and the women were removed because their flag was “similar to the Israeli flag and the flag’s long history of use in pinkwashing efforts.”. , is the subject of an NFB documentary by the same name. Can Trudeau breathe life into LGBT rights in the Commonwealth?

Its deceptive claims also fill pages in media outlets.

Tel Aviv may be a gay heaven for Jewish Israeli citizens, or even for the hundreds of visitors who engage in gay tourism. Meanwhile, one of the two co-presidents of the Canadian Jewish Congress until June 2009, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, sat on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the U.S.-based National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). I went home, feeling disgusted at the thought of being “renamed” by colonial oppressors to better fit their definition of the lesbian category of identity, and not offend their racial sensibilities. I had never experienced such rejection, and the thought of this exclusion made me sick of the Israeli LGBT scene.

Pinkwashing is a deliberate strategy used by Israel’s government, agencies, and the Israeli LGBT community to exploit Israel's relatively progressive stance on gay rights, and to deflect international attention from its gross violations of human rights and international law.

It attempts to draw them away from their families and friends, and into the orbit of self-proclaimed LGBT paradise Tel Aviv.

Ahmed, a 29-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel who spoke with. At the same time, I’m disappointed that even as an openly queer individual I can’t fully celebrate with the international LGBTQ+ community while many of its members fervently fight against me and my country, Israel. It’s time for an intervention, ‘The Boys in the Band’ has delighted and horrified audiences for 50 years, Chilling disappearances that still haunt 10 years later. After much debate, I called the line and the voice on the other end urged me to move to Tel Aviv. ever. When people feel as if they, their lives and the issues important to them, are being exploited as a quick means to get a buck, they’ll feel used, unvalued, expendable. When Raz asked the man why he wanted to know, the landlord admitted that he was only willing to rent the place out to Jewish heterosexuals who had done their mandatory army duty. Support for the LGBT community is not conditional, and nobody is obligated to patronize a business that doesn’t seem or feel trustworthy.

Ghadir is the co-director of Aswat – Palestinian Gay Women. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. This view reared its head in dozens of op-eds, thinkpieces and social media posts during Israel’s hosting of and continuous participation in Eurovision, an event with a massive gay fanbase.

Pinkwashing is invested in maintaining backward, racist depictions of Palestinians in order to better justify oppression and unequal treatment of them, and its internal vicious cycle tokenizes “gay” Palestinians, who become not Palestinian enough in their own communities. It was already oppressively hot by late morning, but at the stand for IGY, the LGBT youth movement where I volunteer as a guide for new immigrants, the mood was electric. This is the true definition of pinkwashing. He is one of the privileged few to receive the occasional permit to travel to Tel Aviv. The police officers who protected the parade did so only after JOH submitted a number of petitions to the Supreme Court.

Read more about the tactics of pinkwashing in: Israeli queer activists protest Israel’s propaganda use of gay, point out pro-Israel lobby’s ties to gay-haters, Here in Canada, some of the most vocal defenders of apartheid Israel, like B’nai, and the Canadian Jewish Congress, are keen to use gay rights to make this argument.

But, internationally and within Israel, the use of the word apartheid to describe Israel’s policies toward Palestinians is gaining currency. According to Dr. Stephen Scheinberg, former chair of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights, the organization actively decided not to support extending protection from hate speech to gays and lesbians in order not to offend its evangelical Christian allies. We hear, “You can’t be gay in Palestine!” Yet B’nai, Canada has closely aligned itself with homophobic.

Activists who genuinely care about LGBTQ+ rights would be better served embracing these efforts than detracting from them.

both the state and its supporters argue that Israel must defend itself because it is the only country in the Middle East where gay people have rights. One landlord asked Raz outright if he had a girlfriend. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. It is also an internal political strategy to contain radical Palestinian dissent and keep Palestinians at a constant disadvantage.