#BDS: Pinkwashing & Israeli occupation – not so complicated #LGBT

“The concept of ‘pinkwashing’ emerged as a hot topic throughout the week,” Kevin Naff wrote of his participation as part of “a delegation of nine LGBT leaders from the United States” to Israel in November (“Israel as ‘gay heaven’? It’s complicated,” Times of Israel, Nov. 10). The delegation tour was sponsored by Project Interchange, a program of the American Jewish Committee, which is aggressive in its defense of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Naff quotes a speaker who addressed the group, Gal Uchovsky, as telling the delegates “that we had arrived in ‘gay heaven’” and that Israel is “the best LGBT country in the world” whose “LGBT residents face no serious problems that he could identify.” My Israeli friends would certainly contest Uchovsky’s absurd claim that LGBT Israelis “face no serious problems.” Fortuntely, Naff was able to recognize Uchovsky’s propaganda for what it was.

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#BDS: BDS roundup: The BDS movement, 7 years on, "stronger, more effective and more diverse than ever"

"This week on the BDS roundup: Highlighting the spectacular growth and victories of the 7-year-old BDS movement; Palestinian civil society commends author Alice Walker for her refusal to have her book published by an Israeli publisher; Palestine solidarity activists protest pinkwashing at San Francisco LGBT International Film Festival; and boycott activists take to the roof of G4S headquarters to demand an end to cooperation with the Israeli government."


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#BDS: #LGBT and Human Rights Advocates Speak Out Against Israeli Pinkwashing

"As Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month gets underway in the UK, human rights advocates are adding their voices to the global responses to Israel's attempt to 'pinkwash' its oppressive nature by portraying itself as progressive and liberal with regard to gay rights. In a letter to the press today, veterans of the Gay Liberation Front, Stop Clause 28, Outrage!, other campaigns and their allies express concern over the hi-jacking of LGBT rights as a propaganda smokescreen to divert attention from Israel's persecution of the Palestinians.

Pointing out that the gay rights movement originated at the time of civil rights, anti-apartheid and Women's Liberation movements, and drew inspiration from people striving for freedom from colonialism, they say it would be 'ironic if, in an attempt to gain a veneer of respectability by promoting itself as a liberal, tolerant haven for gay people and a prime gay holiday destination, a regime routinely violating human rights, practising institutional racism and dispossessing an indigenous population' tried to co-opt their hard-won progress."

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#BDS: Equality’s Racism: Using #LGBT Rights to Veil Apartheid

"Imagine the magazine Good Housekeeping awarding the Texas Department of Corrections its seal of approval for the cleanliness of its death row — pristine conditions, though the seating’s a bit clunky!

There is something obscene about an organization devoted to equality planning to feature at its national summit a theocratic police state whose existence is founded on the expulsion and ongoing repression of its indigenous population.

Equality Forum, a nonprofit organization whose mission “is to advance national and international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights through education,” is hosting Israel’s ambassador to the United States as their keynote speaker and featuring Israeli artists at their May conference in Philadelphia. Its celebration of Israel’s purported LGBT civil rights is truly an elaborate expression of totally missing the point."

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#BDS: Open Letter to LGBTIQ Communities and Allies on the Israeli Occupation of Palestine

"We are a diverse group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and trans activists, academics, artists, and cultural workers from the United States who participated in a solidarity tour in the West Bank of Palestine and Israel from January 7-13, 2012.

What we witnessed was devastating and created a sense of urgency around doing our part to end this occupation and share our experience across a broad cross-section of the LGBTIQ community. We saw with our own eyes the walls—literally and metaphorically—separating villages, families and land. From this, we gained a profound appreciation for how deeply embedded and far reaching this occupation is through every aspect of Palestinian daily life."

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#BDS: Major BDS victory as int’l queer youth group withdraws meeting from #Israel

"IGLYO, the International Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Youth and Student Organization, recently announced its decision to withdraw its General Assemblyfrom Israel, citing “much debate on the proposed location of the GA by IGLYO Member Organisations and also by LGBTQ and human rights allies.”

Their announcement followed direct action by Palestinian Queer groups and solidarity activists who launched the “IGLYO Out of Israel!” campaign in early June. In an online statement on 29 July, Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (PQBDS) wrote, “We take this opportunity to salute IGLYO Member and Associate Organizations who took a principled and moral stand in support of our rights and heeded our calls.”

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#BDS, #LGBT, and Why You Should Care about Pinkwashing

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"“Pinkwash” is the term we, LGBT (Bisexual, Transgender, Lesbian and Gay) activists, use in order to describe the way in which the Israeli government makes cynical use of both the Palestinian and Israeli queer communities in order to market Israel to the international public as a “liberal” “progressive” “gay haven,” while demonizing Arabic Middle Eastern cultures and presenting them – and Palestine in particular – as inherently homophobic (an Islamophobic notion whose goal is to further justify Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the occupied territories and against Palestinian citizens of Israel). The Israeli government, through the Ministry of Tourism and with kind help from the Tel Aviv municipality, makes use of the relative tolerance and meager rights given to Jewish gays and lesbians (but not bisexuals and transgenders), as a way of diverting attention from the many Israeli war crimes performed in Gaza, the occupied Palestinian territories and inside Israel itself."

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#BDS: Queers Against #Israel drops a banner during Toronto Pride

“We’re drawing attention to Israel’s use of LGBT rights as a propaganda tool to justify apartheid policies and the occupation of Palestinian territories,” said QuAIA spokesperson and longtime gay rights activist Tim McCaskell. “We’re saying to queer people, respect yourselves and others. Don’t be used. Don’t pinkwash apartheid. Boycott gay tourism to Israel until it ends its apartheid policies.”

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#BDS: Peter Tatchell: Holding #LGBT conference in #Israel will inflame homophobia

"Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell says that holding the International LGBTQ Youth and Student Organisation general assembly in Israel will inflame homophobia, cause divisions and stop delegates from the Muslim world attending.


The decision of the International LGBTQ Youth and Student Organisation (IGLYO) to hold its General Assembly (GA) in Israel this December is divisive, exclusionist, mistaken and regrettable."

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#BDS: Growing LGBTQ solidarity with Palestine

"Over the last few years, as the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel (BDS) has gathered steam in the U.S. and throughout the world, the apartheid state of Israel has turned to various tactics in an attempt to counter the growing solidarity with the Palestinian people. One such strategy is to portray Israel as the only place in the Middle East that is friendly to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people.

The tactic, dubbed “pinkwashing” by progressive pro-Palestinian LGBTQ forces, relies on a broad-brushed slander of the entire Arab and Muslim world, which is presented as “backward.” It is further based on the egregious lie that the Israeli settler state treats LGBTQ Palestinians equally to LGBTQ Israelis. Pinkwashing not only serves to legitimize the Israeli state but also reinforces U.S. imperialist propaganda, which claims that the U.S. wages war in an effort to “liberate” LGBTQ peoples and women in the Middle East and throughout the world — even as LGBTQ peoples face police brutality, added economic hardship and denial of social services here in the U.S."

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#BDS: GayMiddleEast.com’s #Zionism

"Gay Middle East have always had shady politics. That the largest Middle East LGBT (well, G mostly) “grassroots news” website is run by British Israeli Zionist Dan Littauer is already cause for concern. The fact that GME regularly collaborates with neo-colonialist Islamophobes such as Peter Tatchell (the guy with a penchant for threatening lawsuits against those who don’t think he is god’s gift to oppressed gay people) doesn’t help his credentials much. Bizarrely, he is also the human rights and press officer for the Association of British Muslims. Barring the logic of such a position, Littauer is also quite friendly with Islamophobic pornographer Michael Lucas, whose recent campaign against Siegebusters, a NY-based anti-apartheid group, successfully got them banned from meeting at the NY LGBT center. Lucas, by the way, is making a name for himself uttering such gems as “Muslims have not contributed to civilization in any way”. He is also famous for making gay porn film “Men of Israel”, which had its setting on the ruins of homes Palestinians displaced in 1948."


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#BDS: IGLYO abandons Arab queer youth, signs up for Israel’s pinkwashing campaign

"Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (Toronto) joins with those expressing disappointment in the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization. To accept Israeli government money to hold its General Assembly in Israel despite the international call for boycott until Israel complies with international law, is a betrayal of the IGLYO mandate. This is especially disturbing given that the decision was made after appeals by Palestinian queer organizations to respect the boycott. They have made it clear that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is a major barrier to their work. The IGLYO has not only chosen a site inaccessible to them, but it has sent a message to queers throughout the Arab world that they are not part of our movement. In doing so, IGLYO increases their vulnerability, undermines their work and isolates them from the wider queer solidarity movement."


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#BDS: IGLYO- أخرجوا من إسرائيل!

دعوة من ناشطين مثليين/ات فلسطينيين/ات من "القوس" و"أصوات" وكويريين فلسطينيين لأجل دعم حملة مقاطعة إسرائيل موجهة إلى "الجمعية العالمية للمثليين والمثليات الشباب" لعقد مؤتمرها خارج إسرائيل

في أعقاب نية المنظمة الدولية للشباب مثليي ومثليات الجنس (IGLYO) عقد مؤتمر جمعيتها العامة للعام 2011، في كانون
 الأول القادم، في تل أبيب، إسرائيل، أصدرت جهات مثلية فلسطينية بيانًا يدعو إلى رفض هذا المؤتمر وعدم عقده في إسرائيل .

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#BDS: #Lebanon's Helem Letter to IGLYO

"Dear Board of IGLYO,

It is with deep regret that we learned of your decision to hold you annual General Assembly in Israel after receiving money to do so by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. As an associate member of IGLYO, Helem urges you to reconsider this decision and heed the call sent by our sisters and brothers at Al-Qaws, Aswat, and Palestinian Queers for BDS to relocate your upcoming GA. If IGLYO maintains this decision, Helem will have to revoke its associate membership from the organization.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is a peaceful, non-violent tactic to pressure Israel to end its 63 year illegal occupation of Palestinian land, modeled after the successful strategy that ended apartheid in South Africa. BDS is not about punishing individual Israelis, but about securing the most basic and fundamental rights of Palestinians: the right to be free from violence, discrimination, and military occupation. Your insistence that dialogue holds a solution to this impasse false. The free exchange of ideas is indeed important, even when we disagree. However, dialogue does not replace mobilization for social change. Indeed, it is nothing without it, and it is often used as an excuse for inaction. Dialogue alone will not change relations of domination grounded in coercion."

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#BDS: Tell IGLYO to Get Out of #Israel

"Dear LGBTQ organization/group/activist,

We Palestinian queer activists from alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian society, Aswat — Palestinian Gay Women, and PQBDS (Palestinian Queers for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions), are writing to you to express our disappointment with the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization’s [IGLYO] decision to hold its General Assembly for 2011, this December, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Even after we contacted IGLYO expressing our deep concerns about the problematic political implications of holding the conference in Israel,  they published an ‘Open Letter – 2011 GA‘ emphasizing that they are unwilling to reconsider, and even more, defending their decision and misleading LGTBQ member organizations into normalizing and providing a cover to the Israeli apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people — IGLYO didn’t only decide to hold their General Assembly conference in Tel Aviv, but they also accepted Israeli government money, participating in a world wide campaign to re-brand Israel and pinkwash it’s crimes. We are therefore calling upon you to help us communicate to IGLYO why their action is unjust and unbecoming of an organization devoted to furthering the rights of queer people and human rights in general."

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#BDS: Frameline Film Festival Pinkwashing Israeli Apartheid

"For the second year in a row, and after a short break, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, the largest queer cultural event in the world, shamefully continues taking funding from the Israeli Consulate, violating the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) guidelines[1].

Frameline, the presenter of the festival, has ignored the calls issued by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT) in 2007, which has been joined by many other queer groups and well-known filmmakers.

By continuing to accept money from the Israeli consulate, Frameline is participating in the re-brand Israel campaign, and is helping it pinkwash its negative image, its grave violations of international law, human rights, and crimes against the Palestinian people. By accepting the Consulate’s money, Frameline is actively helping to create a false positive image of Israel as a queer-friendly “democracy,” turning people’s attention from occupation and apartheid."

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#BDS: alQaws and Aswat Statement to the LGBT Center in NY

"We, Palestinian queer activists from alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society and Aswat Palestinian Gay Women, are writing to you to express our shock and dismay at your recent decision to cancel the "Party to End Apartheid" event and ban activists working for human rights in Israel/Palestine from the LGBT Center.

We have recently concluded a first of a kind  tour to the US, where we shared our personal, social and political struggle as Palestinian Queers living in Israel and Palestine with diverse audiences and activists in 6 cities, including New York city During those open discussions, we met with human rights activists, lawyers working at the forefront of LGBT rights campaigns, and LGBT people of color who organize on a grassroots level, and were greeted warmly and enthusiastically at every venue at which we spoke. The support and acknowledgment we encountered were both overwhelming and inspiring.

We wish that you could have attended one of our panels. Perhaps, instead of acquiescing to the demands of a neoconservative gay pornographer, you would have the courage and insight – like so many members of the LGBT community in the US – to conclude that the struggle for human rights in Israel/Palestine is a queer struggle.




Certainly, this connection is clear to us. As organizations that work with and for LGBTQ Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank, we are forced to deal with the server consequences of the Israeli occupation and its apartheid system on a daily bases. Israel' apartheid wall, army checkpoints and frequently imposed curfews on entire populations oblige us to deal with legal issues and face many challenges, including mobility. In addition, some of our members live in the US and have been relying on the Center for vital services and activities. They draw much inspiration from the Center’s history and the LGBTQ struggle in the US."

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#BDS: IAW in NYC Coordinating Committee statement on the cancellation of our “Party to End Apartheid” by the LGBT Community Center

"As organizers of New York City’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), we are dismayed to learn that New York’s LGBT Center has canceled the scheduled March 5 “Party to End Apartheid” that was to take place there.  We are equally dismayed that the Center also has banned one of the organizers of this event, and a member of our coalition, the Siegebusters Working Group, from holding its regular meeting at the Center. Israeli Apartheid Week, now entering its seventh year internationally and its fifth year in New York City, is a series of events designed to educate people about Israel’s apartheid nature and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns in concordance with the just demands of Palestinian civil society.

In 2008, The LGBT Center hosted an Israeli Apartheid Week event discussing the boycott campaign against Israeli billionaire, diamond manufacturer, and settlement builder Lev Leviev.  This year’s IAW in New York includes conversations about BDS as a tactic, discussions of recent protests and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, a book release party for NY spoken word artist Remi Kanazi, and a discussion with queer theorist Judith Butler and filmmaker John Greyson. These events will be taking place in many venues across the city, including university campuses and churches.

On Tuesday, February 22, 2011, gay adult film producer and right-wing columnist Michael Lucas issued a press release threatening to boycott the LGBT Center for allowing local IAW organizers to meet and plan an event there.  Lucas denounced IAW as a “hate group” and called us “anti-Semitic.”  This is an ill-informed mischaracterization. IAW is not actually a group, but it is a part of the global BDS movement, which strongly opposes all forms of racism, including racism against Jews.

As anti-racists, IAW organizers – who are Palestinian, Jewish, queer, straight, and much more – denounce Lucas’ false accusations and are shocked that the Center has caved in to his threats.  The Center’s brief statement, issued without any input from the event organizers mere hours after Lucas made his threats public, declared that the Center is a “safe haven for LGBT groups and individuals.”  Yet the cancellation of this event and the banning of the organizing group from the Center send a clear message to LGBT people that we are not welcome if we are Arab or Muslim, or if we advocate human rights for Palestinians."

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#BDS: Palestinian Queers for BDS: It Is Your Business

#BDS: An open letter to Queer academics, artists, and activists

"Dear queers, academics, artists and activists,

Some of you might be planning a visit to Israel to participate, and maybe even support, queer, cultural or academic events. Some of you might be visiting for religious or personal reasons, or perhaps simply out of curiosity. While an invitation to Israel might seem flattering and exciting, we hope that – before taking a stand and booking that flight – you read the following open letter, written by Palestinian queers, activists, academics and artists, to queers, activists, academics and artists around the world.

We are determined to inform every person wishing to travel to Israel on the political and social realities of life in Israel/Palestine. “Occupation,” “Palestinians,” “Gaza,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “boycott,” and “refugees” are not terms you would come across in flyers, itineraries, and travel brochures promoting Israel; yet, these words define the daily lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. As Palestinians and as queers, these words have shaped our history and continue to determine our future.

Some of you might feel that boycotting Israel would be too one-sided for such a complex conflict. You might think that it is too controversial. Some of you are probably wondering whether this boycott movement is actually effective. To start the conversation, we put together background information on BDS and Israel/Palestine; and we also encourage you to get in touch and explore with us any questions or issues you might have with BDS. Our aim is for every person to have a historically-informed understanding of Israel/Palestine, and for every queer, academic, artist, and activist to support the Palestinian civil society’s call for BDS."

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