Why LGBT activists should oppose Israeli pinkwashing

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"Against the pinkwashing of Israel"
"Why supporting Palestinians is a queer and feminist issue."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 30313.html

Haha actually Islam is severely homophobic while Israel are considered the liberals which is partly why Muslims do not like Israel. Too "western" you see. So if you are LGBT you are on the wrong side with Gaza. That is some backward homophobia at it's finest.

I don't know what kind of beef you have with Jews but if you are gay, try to avoid living in any middle eastern country but Israel.

That is one of the dumbest articles I've read in a long time.

If you are queer in Israel or US you aren't compelled to side with the campaign.

Last time there was opposition in Gaza they took them to the top of a building an pushed them to their deaths, that is besides what treatment LGBT face.

Being a contrarian doesn't make a true nonconformist, nor is it a rational argument for support of freedom.

It is actually not a queer an feminist issue at all, the premise of the argument is false. It might be an issue of conscious.

If you were arguing purely from a queer of feminist position, then you would have to go with residing is place where at least there are some rights afforded to you.

This idea that Israel has a carte blanche to behave how it sees fit because it is supposedly some sort of oasis of tolerance (which as the article points out is not completely accurate) is precisely the problematic attitude that the article is addressing.




I don't have any "beef with Jews" and had you bothered to read the article, you will notice it was written by a Jew, a lesbian jew to boot.

You aren't but it is wrong for one side to hijack LGBT advocacy in order to legitimise other nefarious activities.


Well no you wouldnt, because LGBT activities have fought for years to remove the dimension of race division in their own countries, and here is Israel again, trying to divide the LGBT community by dividing gay Jews from gay arabs. As the article says, gay palestinians living in Israel routinely have their sexuality used against them, for example by exploitative employers who would threaten them with expulsion back to the OPT.

christ, it's like you're reading the news from another planet, you've that much understanding.

I don't even know where to start with all the many ways you're laughably wrong here.

Well come back when you've got something to offer other than hollow ad hominem.

http://www.jpost.com/LifeStyle/Tel-Aviv ... y-for-2011

Irrelevant, and feeds directly into the subject matter that the article journalist was referring to.

Gays made be welcome in Tel Aviv, providing they aren't challenging well established Israeli prejudices against Palestinians being worthy of equal treatment.


PRO TIP: If you're responding to a thread criticising pinkwashing, the informed rebuttal is not to post instances of more pinkwashing. Mr El-Ad can say what he likes, 'hoping' does not make this case any less so.

Some think "pinkwashing" is an invalid concept coined to invalidate inconvenient facts, and divert attention away from comparative contextual analysis of rights.

Gay Palestinian men flee to Israel because they are not safe in the West Bank and Gaza. They also have no place else to go. ?Israel is close and far at the same time,? says Haneen Maikey, a gay rights activist with Jerusalem Open House, one of the principal gay rights organizations in Israel. If the sexuality of a gay man in Palestine is exposed, his family might torture or kill him and the police will turn a blind eye.

http://forward.com/articles/1125/for-ga ... -is-mecca/
http://www.law.tau.ac.il/heb/_Uploads/d ... etoRun.pdf

There is something disconcerting about relying on the pleasant treatment of one group to validate the persecution of another. Saying that Israeli persecution of the Palestinians is somehow 'cancelled out' because of their track record on LGBT rights is like saying the guilt of the nazis is diminished because of the role they played in assisting Chinese refugees from Japanese occupied Nanking.

True.


Israel is not persecuting Palestinians. Since your appeal is aimed at LGBT rights activists, a comparative analyzis between how members of said community are being treated in Israel and Gaza seems like an appropriate benchmark.

what the point boils down to is that all countries SHOULD be affording equal LGBT rights anyway, without trying to score political points against other countries and score brownie points.

This practice only serves to harm LGBT advocacy in countries where homosexuals may not necessarilly be being killed or imprisoned, but in countries where other gains are still to be made to bring them up to par with heterosexuals. No developed country other than Israel has to bark so loudly about this matter. It is not the 'pink promised land' and this practice of hinting that is will not help gays in other middle east countries and needs to end.

That it is not, is your subjective analysis not an absolutist truth. As you would expect when comparing any rich country against a poor country, the juxtaposing living conditions and state of LGBT advocacy between Israel and gaza are indictive of the level of socio-economic development, not the supposed 'fact' that Palestinians are inherently more 'evil'.

Not at all. I think they should use examples like this more frequently to illustrate regional differences between civilization and barbarism. Women's rights is another relevant subject.



Wealth presupposes other types of rights not being recognized, partly due to their Western origins.

Given the context, presumably you are using 'barbarism' as a synonym for 'Islam'.

There is no such reliable juxtaposition of which you speak. Barbarism does not go hand in hand with Islam any more than democracy goes hand in hand with the neo-liberal judeo-christianity of which you probably revere. Are Turkey, North Cyprus, Morocco, or Tunisia barbaric countries?

Barbarism manifests right through America's foreign policy in countries like Pakistan, with wanton killings of civillians by unmanned drones.
Barbarism manifests right through Israel's policy in Gaza, through its mendacious spin while shelling civillian infrastructure and killing in cold blood of unarmed civillians.

In the last fifty years, America and its puppets in Europe and elsewhere have invaded a slew of sovereign countries for no reason other than a economically driven agenda under the false auspice of imported democracy. Iran has invaded none.


Homosexuality became legal in China during the 1980's, with the onset of its increasing wealth so there are precedences outside the west where my point holds true.

Homosexuality has been legal in Turkey since the 19th century (a developed, pre dominately muslim country).

Last edited by thomas81 on 09 Aug 2014, 9:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.