From Pinkwashing to Pinkwatching: Palestinian Queer Resistance
An interview with Haneen Maikey from Pinkwatching Israel
Haneen Maikey has been involved in queer organizing in Palestine for the last 15 years, mainly as part of al-Qaws for sexual diversity in Palestinian society, which is a national, grassroots LGBT organization working to promote sexual and gender diversity through different, locally-inspired strategies. Since 2009, Haneen has been involved, through various platforms like Palestinian Queers for BDS and Pinkwatching Israel, in the efforts to counter what activists call pinkwashing strategies and campaigns led by the Israeli government. Pinkwatching Israel is a platform created by queer Palestinians and queer Arabs and BDS activists as a hub for local and international activists against the efforts of pinkwashing.
In this interview, I spoke to Haneen Maikey about what pinkwashing is all about and why it is important to counter it. We also spoke about Pinkwatching Israel’s campaign, asking LGBT filmmakers to boycott the Tel Aviv International Film Festival, which took place in Tel Aviv from June 1–10, 2017.
Q: First of all, what is pinkwashing?
Haneen Maikey: Pinkwashing is a large strategy led, organized, and funded by the Israeli government, through the Foreign Affairs ministry, Tourism ministry and a lot of other entities like PR companies in North America and Israeli LGBT groups. The idea is to use gay rights to rebrand Israel as fun, fabulous, modern and democratic, to make it seem like Israel is this country that is tolerant and gay-friendly because it has relatively gay-friendly laws that protect gay people, that cares for LGBT issues and celebrates gay rights. Pinkwashing is speaking to LGBT communities in North America and Europe to tell them: “We are gay-friendly and because of this, you need to support us” while indirectly asking them to ignore Israel’s war crimes, international law violations and Occupation of Palestine for the last 70 years. It is a strategy to divert from the image of Israel as a place of war, occupation and colonization to replace it with a more modern and friendly image that speaks to people with more “liberal” politics. And it is a way to make zionism more appealing to LGBT communities mainly in North America and Europe but we are also noticing that it is spreading to countries in Latin America and other countries in the global South, as well as among LGBT Arab communities.
Q: Why is it important to counter it?
Haneen Maikey: As Palestinians, we cannot accept any effort to or being complicit with the effort to, normalize Israel. Israel has been controlling and occupying our people for the last 70 years and that should be the image that everyone sheds the light on and fights against and resists, to make it stop. So any effort to make Israel look normal is colonial violence against the colonized. Also, another layer is, pinkwashing is not only a propaganda tool, it is in fact a racist propaganda tool. Colonial politics are inherent to pinkwashing. It’s not only saying that Tel Aviv is the ‘Gay Mecca’ or Israel is the only country in the Middle East that respects gay rights but it is also saying that Arabs, Muslims and, Palestinians specifically, are ‘backwards’, ’killing the gays’ as if modernity is inherent to the colonial project called Israel and backwardness is inherent to Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs. So we are saying that not only should we be countering Israel’s project of occupation and Apartheid but we should also counter it because it is based on a racist, colonial logic. So, we are saying that if this racist, colonial logic makes a lot of sense to LGBT communities in North America and Europe, it says a lot about them and their willingness to overlook facts. And, pinkwashing as a propaganda tool is unfortunately smart. It speaks the language that others want to hear. It integrates islamophobia and anti-Arab concepts and this false binary of modern vs. backward that has been promoted in LGBT communities and then pinkwashing comes and popularizes these notions. If you follow this logic, Israel is being promoted as this amazing place with white, sandy beaches and hot guys while completely ignoring that these same hot guys that LGBT people come to Israel and dance with in Tel Aviv parties are the same hot guys who are soldiers and killing kids in different neighbourhoods in Palestine. That’s the really horrifying logic behind pinkwashing.
Also, pinkwashing is an insidious colonial violence on queer bodies in Palestine because it works to strengthen myths about Palestine. It is telling a lot of queer Palestinians who are struggling with a lot of oppression and homophobia, as any queer person is, that they could be saved by their colonizer. Pinkwashing sells to Palestinian queers this fantasy that their colonizer has their freedom while holding their freedom; making young queers dream about Tel Aviv and dream about moving to Israel, while in fact they can’t cross over because it is illegal for Palestinians living in 67’ borders and Gaza to be inside Israel, and that is a direct violence on queer Palestinians. The other thing pinkwashing does is push LGBT Palestinians to hate their families and society and alienates them by peddling this false notion that their families and their society have no hope of recovering from this “disease” called homophobia. This impedes the efforts of progressive forces in Palestine that work to change attitudes and work with families.
Q: Can you explain what the boycott campaign against The Tel Aviv Film Festival is about?
Haneen Maikey: Boycott Tel Aviv International Film Festival is a sub-campaign that is part of a larger campaign we launched a year ago against Tel Aviv Pride and specifically against gay tourism, mainly around Tel Aviv Pride.
The LGBT film festival is a project that has been around for 12 years and in the last couple of years, they have also linked themselves to Gay Pride and the Israeli government. First of all, the campaign is encouraging or asking the average LGBT tourist to stop being complicit with Gay Pride and refuse to come to Israel until Palestine is liberated, using the call of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The decision to focus on the Tel Aviv International Film Festival is because participation in the festival contributes to a continued normalization of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Despite the difficulties to boycott cultural events that promote LGBT visibility, it is important not to let this make us forget about other violations.
And, the film festival is not only linked to Tel Aviv Pride, it is also funded by the Israeli government. The organizers of the festival use this claim that you cannot have an international film festival without state funding, which is not true. We have two groups in Palestine, Aswat and the Haïfa independent film festival organized by Palestinians, that are clear proof that you can hold an international film festival but not have state funding.
Of course, the Tel Aviv film festival is trying to bill itself as apolitical, promoting Tel Aviv as a normal, regular city and not part of an occupier power. It is promoting Tel Aviv municipality, which is a racist municipality, as a normal municipality but it has basically been built on a lot of Palestinian villages and it is marginalizing Yaffa neighbourhood (which is now part of Tel Aviv municipality). So, there is this apolitical framing on the one hand and a celebration of gay rights visibility on the other hand, and this just cannot be a normal thing for us as Palestinians. We have been calling on the international LGBT community and LGBT filmmakers specifically to withdraw from and boycott the Tel Aviv film festival and stand firm against the use of LGBT rights and participating in this International Tel Aviv Fest of pinkwashing. We are happy to see that because of the campaign, filmmakers, screenwriters, and actors have heard and answered positively to our call for boycott. South African filmmaker John Trengove; filmmaker and organizer Catherine Gund and her co-director Daresha Kyi as well as their entire production team; screenwriter, comedian and actor Fawzia Mirza; swiss actor Jasna Fritzi Bauer; jury panelist Nadia Abraham and writer, director and actor Helene Hegemann have all pulled out of the festival. Gund and Kyi have understood and publicly stated that Tel Aviv Festival is being supported by government entities in Israel that are deeply complicit and in violations of international law which include ongoing wars, repression of Palestinians and occupation of Palestinian lands. All those who have refused to participate in the festival are setting an example for others to follow and that gives me hope.
Update: According to the BDS movement website, “In total, fourteen filmmakers and other artists canceled their participation or declared their support for boycotting the festival because it is sponsored by the Israeli government.
Q: What do you mean when you say on the Pinkwatching Israel website that we should not be lending “cultural legitimacy to Israel”?
Haneen Maikey: There is an idea around Tel Aviv Pride and the Tel Aviv Film Festival that they are these naïve events while we know from deep research around gay tourism and Tel Aviv Pride that that is not the case because Israel is trying to attract tourism, is funding journalist delegations to Tel Aviv Pride, and they are trying to open spaces for people to bring their films here. If you go to quotes from different Israeli LGBT leaders and organizers and Tel Aviv municipality, their goal is to bring people to Israel and let them “fall in love” with this amazing place and go back and and be “ambassadors” who are committed to talk about how Israel is amazing. This is exactly how Birthright is doing it as well. They bring these jewish North Americans to Israel and make them “fall in love” so they become this young jewish generation of ambassadors of Israel. So, not only is it abusing culture and art but it’s also turning people into political targets despite the naive look of these events. When those who identify as LGBT go to Israel to dance or celebrate LGBT visibility through cinema, in the end, they are being counted as a potential ambassador of Israel. And, an ambassador for Israel means protecting and defending an occupier and a colonizer on the account of Palestinian people’s rights. Using culture, sports or gay rights or any other notions to go against Palestinian rights and stand blindly in front of the reality is what we want to see stopped. When you do anti-pinkwashing activism, it is really tricky to say that queers have a specific moral set of values or filmmakers should be more aware because they specifically have high morals when it comes to these issues. That’s not the case; it’s about how we as queers are reminding other queers that if they think they are supporting gay rights, they are not. If we want to tackle pinkwashing, we need to be critical about liberal LGBT issues and single-issue politics and how these assumptions about who is homophobic and who is not are constructed.
We as BDS activists are saying that you cannot be here and act as if everything is normal in an abnormal place and screen your LGBT movie. We are asking filmmakers to withdraw their films, boycott Tel Aviv Festival, be critical of state-funded events and hold Israeli LGBTs accountable for their complicity with occupation and colonialism. And the BDS demands are really specific. We cannot normalize Israel until it ends its occupation, gives Palestinian citizens who are holding Israeli citizenship full equality and dismantles the apartheid wall.
A lot of filmmakers say “we have close links to this festival” or “we have friends in the LGBT community in Israel”, and all of these “happy pink family” kind of connections and I think if you really want to be friends with people, you should be holding them accountable and asking them also not to be complicit with occupation.
