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Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University – Aeyal Gross' (Dept of Law)
"Pinkwashing" claims are basis for
Israel-bashing in New York Times
The growing global gay movement against
the Israeli occupation has named these tactics "pinkwashing": a
deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of
Palestinians' human rights behind an image of modernity signified by
Israeli gay life. Aeyal Gross, a professor of law at Tel Aviv
University, argues that "gay
rights have essentially become a public-relations tool," even
though "conservative and especially religious politicians remain
fiercely homophobic."
Pinkwashing not only manipulates the
hard-won gains of Israel's gay community, but it also ignores the
existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations. Homosexuality has
been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s, when
anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were
removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians follow.
More important is the emerging Palestinian gay movement with three
major organizations:
Aswat,
Al Qaws and
Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. These
groups are clear that the oppression of Palestinians crosses the
boundary of sexuality; as Haneen Maikay, the director of Al Qaws,
has said, "When you go through a checkpoint it does not matter what
the sexuality of the soldier is."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html?_r=2#h[]
Israel and 'Pinkwashing'
By SARAH SCHULMAN
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Published: November 22, 2011
"IN dreams begin responsibilities," wrote
Yeats in 1914. These words resonate with lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender people who have witnessed dramatic shifts in our
relationship to power. After generations of sacrifice and
organization, gay people in parts of the world have won protection
from discrimination and relationship recognition. But these changes
have given rise to a nefarious phenomenon: the co-opting of white
gay people by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political forces in
Western Europe and Israel.
In the Netherlands, some Dutch gay people
have been drawn to the messages of Geert Wilders, who inherited many
followers of the assassinated anti-immigration gay leader
Pim Fortuyn, and whose Party for Freedom is now the country's
third largest political party. In Norway, Anders Behring Breivik,
the extremist who massacred 77 people in July, cited Bruce Bawer, a
gay American writer critical of Muslim immigration, as an influence.
The Guardian reported last year that the racist English Defense
League had 115 members in its gay wing. The German Lesbian and Gay
Federation has issued statements citing Muslim immigrants as enemies
of gay people.
These depictions of immigrants — usually
Muslims of Arab, South Asian, Turkish or African origin — as
"homophobic fanatics" opportunistically ignore the existence of
Muslim gays and their allies within their communities. They also
render invisible the role that fundamentalist Christians, the Roman
Catholic Church and Orthodox Jews play in perpetuating fear and even
hatred of gays. And that cynical message has now spread from its
roots in European xenophobia to become a potent tool in the
long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 2005, with help from American marketing
executives, the Israeli government began a marketing campaign,
"Brand Israel," aimed at men ages 18 to 34. The campaign, as
reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, sought to depict Israel as
"relevant and modern." The government later expanded the marketing
plan by harnessing the gay community to reposition its global image.
Last year, the Israeli news site Ynet
reported that the Tel Aviv tourism board had begun a campaign of
around $90 million to brand the city as "an international gay
vacation destination." The promotion, which received support from
the Tourism Ministry and Israel's overseas consulates, includes
depictions of young same-sex couples and financing for pro-Israeli
movie screenings at lesbian and gay film festivals in the United
States. (The government isn't alone; an Israeli pornography producer
even shot a film, "Men of Israel," on the site of a former
Palestinian village.)
This message is being articulated at the
highest levels. In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told
Congress that the Middle East was "a region where women are stoned,
gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted."
The growing global gay movement against
the Israeli occupation has named these tactics "pinkwashing": a
deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of
Palestinians' human rights behind an image of modernity signified by
Israeli gay life. Aeyal Gross, a professor of law at Tel Aviv
University, argues that "gay
rights have essentially become a public-relations tool," even
though "conservative and especially religious politicians remain
fiercely homophobic."
Pinkwashing not only manipulates the
hard-won gains of Israel's gay community, but it also ignores the
existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations. Homosexuality has
been decriminalized in the West Bank since the 1950s, when
anti-sodomy laws imposed under British colonial influence were
removed from the Jordanian penal code, which Palestinians follow.
More important is the emerging Palestinian gay movement with three
major organizations:
Aswat,
Al Qaws and
Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. These
groups are clear that the oppression of Palestinians crosses the
boundary of sexuality; as Haneen Maikay, the director of Al Qaws,
has said, "When you go through a checkpoint it does not matter what
the sexuality of the soldier is."
What makes lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender people and their allies so susceptible to pinkwashing —
and its corollary, the tendency among some white gay people to
privilege their racial and religious identity, a phenomenon the
theorist Jasbir K. Puar has called "homonationalism" — is the
emotional legacy of homophobia. Most gay people have experienced
oppression in profound ways — in the family; in distorted
representations in popular culture; in systematic legal inequality
that has only just begun to relent. Increasing gay rights have
caused some people of good will to mistakenly judge how advanced a
country is by how it responds to homosexuality.
In Israel, gay soldiers and the relative
openness of Tel Aviv are incomplete indicators of human rights —
just as in America, the expansion of gay rights in some states does
not offset human rights violations like mass incarceration. The
long-sought realization of some rights for some gays should not
blind us to the struggles against racism in Europe and the United
States, or to the Palestinians' insistence on a land to call home.
Sarah Schulman is a
professor of humanities at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.
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