Stephanie Fox — Jewish Voice for Peace
Palestinian and intersectional struggles
Preface:
Stephanie Fox, the new Executive Director for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), United States (US), will be addressing a meeting at the Alternative Information and Development Centre, 129 Rochester Rd, Observatory, Cape Town, 7705, this evening (on Monday 21 August) at 19: 00. The event will be streamed live on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s facebook page. The title of the event, which is hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Cape Town (PSC CT), is ‘Mobilising Intersectional Movements for Palestine Solidarity’.
In this advertisement I include a background about the realities of gays’ experience in Israel and the occupied territories, in relation to the conflict-ridden system of Israeli apartheid, as well as the divergent Zionist and Palestinian formations’ views on this topic, including some within the local South African Palestine solidarity movement.
JVP was founded in 1996 following the Nethanyahu government’s opening of an archeological tunnel under Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, that led to confrontations in which 65 Palestinians and 14 Israelis were killed. According to the website Peace Insight in 2018 JVP had over 200 000 on-line supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists. According to the JVP website it is a grassroots-driven organisation: it claims that 93 per cent of its revenue is donations from its individual members.
Prior to her visit to Cape Town, South African Jews for Free Palestine and the South African Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) Coalition hosted Stefanie in Johannesburg. She was also due to meet with the Reverend Frank Chikane, the chair of the newly-formed Anti-Apartheid Steering Committee, which is working towards an international conference in 2024 at which it is planned to launch a global anti-apartheid movement against Israel.
Non-state centric interpretation of being Jewish:
JVP unequivocally opposes Zionism because it counters the organisation’s ideals of justice, equality and freedom for all peoples. For JVP Zionism is a settler colonialism movement that established an apartheid state that oppresses the people of Palestine. JVP views Zionism as a false and failed answer to the desperately real question ‘faced by our ancestors of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe’.
JVP’s view about Zionism reflects its ideals for justice, equality and freedom for all peoples. It is committed to support the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation, apartheid, and racism, which is bound up with JVP’s analysis of its intersection with the struggles of black people, survivors of sexual assault, and all others who fight against oppression, whether imperialism, racism, patriarchy, police violence, or other systemic inequities like Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism.
The relationship of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and other struggles over the rights of ethnic and gender identities is strategically important. Both the state of Israel and the BDS movement struggle to appropriate the meaning of ethnic and gender identities and claim consistency of these meanings either with Zionist or Palestine liberation ideologies. However, not all Palestine liberation formations share the BDS view on engaging with intersectional struggles elsewhere as well as within Israel/Palestine.
Building historical blocs though ideological struggles:
In my earlier articles I referred to historical and theoretical arguments for building alliances between classes and marginalised groups, both within nations and internationally, in order collectively to achieve liberation.
Struggles by ethnic minorities, women (inspired by feminist ideology) and gays and lesbians (framed by counter-hegemonic ideas regarding gender identity) emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in the developed capitalist countries in a situation where the working classes of these societies appeared to be co-opted rather than leading social struggles against capitalism.
In an earlier article, ‘We shall not perish …. Israel’s right to exist’ I identified Marxist revolutionary theorist Antonio Gramsci’s observation that hegemonic ideas of state and nation are crucial for the socio-political development of modern societies. Strategically we need to be clear about the rights of all citizens and national and social groupings (and not just of the working classes) in the societies we envision. ‘Hegemonic’ means the dominance of a specific set of ideas (as ‘common sense’) amongst a critical mass of the population (regardless of class background) as to what constitutes a democratic nation state and human and civil rights in the jurisdiction of such a state. Gramsci furthermore pointed out that these ideas became hegemonic through political practices that built historical alliances (‘political blocs’) between various classes and social groupings.
In a follow up article ‘Jewish right not to be invested in Israel’ I described how the French Marxist structuralist, Louis Althusser, unpacked Gramsci’s point through his notions of ideological struggle and ideological state apparatuses: thus organised ideological struggles can lead to dominant ideas about the state and nation, and these struggles perforce involve contesting ideas through public discourses and state policies and strategies. We can comprehend intersectional struggles about social justice for globally marginalised groups — including the people of Palestine — as ideological struggles between an alliance of these groups and the ideological apparatuses of the state of Israel and its western state allies. Importantly, within each of these alliances of social and political forces there are contradictory views: thus within the Palestine solidarity movement traditional and religious ideologies based on a patriarchal theism resist and deny the legitimacy of a public struggle for, and Palestinian solidarity with, the struggles for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual and Queer (LGBTQ) rights.
The JVP analysis of intersection refers to the building of historical alliances between the BDS movement and formations representing the marginalised/dominated communities defined by ethnicity, gender, culture, religion etc. as well as other nation states threatened by US imperialism. During 2019 and 2020 the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and widespread protests against police brutality against black US citizens sometimes translated into expressions of solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people, as in the protests and mass mobilisations in Ferguson in the US. This was the consequence of activists on both sides articulating and educating their followers about demands for a just democratic state in Israel/Palestine as well as implementable socio-economic rights for all citizens of the US. Likewise, there could be solidarity between the Palestinian freedom movements and movements for gender identity equality in Israel/Palestine and abroad.
In one of my earlier articles, ‘The dialectics of Israel’s rights’, I recounted how through the Reut Institute in 2017, the state of Israel developed a strategy for broadening its support base amongst the leadership of other marginalised US communities — like black US citizens and the LGBTQ communities. Reut referred to this broadening as ‘intersectional alliances’. At the same time, in line with the strategy of building intersectional alliances Zionist organisations like the Anti-defamation League moved to engage movements like BLM and LGBTQ organisations to influence them to desist from supporting and participating in struggles against US imperialism and Israel. My article also reflected on the contradictory support for and critique of Israel’s claimed right to exist as a Jewish ethno state, by historical leaders of the US civil rights movement (including Martin Luther King Junior). I concluded that both Zionist and some anti-Zionist forces are engaged in an ideological struggle within identity politics, to win the support of ethnic minorities, womens’ organisations and other gender-defined groups challenging the hetero-normative gender identities.
This speaks to the heart of the challenge of mobilising groups such as BLM and formations within the LGBTQ communities/organisations in solidarity with and support for the Palestine liberation struggle, i.e. the theme of the conversation with Stefanie Fox on this Monday evening. But there is also the challenge that within the existing bloc of Palestine liberation movements there are some significant formations that critique the very notion of intersectionality from a strategic political as well as an essentialist cultural and religious standpoint. This presents a practical contradiction to implementing intersectional strategies in the Palestine solidarity movement locally and in Israel/Palestine. Before turning to these contradictions, it is useful to describe the extent of manifestation of LGBTQ in Israel and Palestine.
LGBTQ in Israel/Palestine:
An internet search revealed that while there are state supported Jewish-Israeli gay pride organisations life for gays in Palestinian communities in both Israel and the occupied territories is not expressed as openly.
According to Palestinian writer Linah Alsaafin before the Second Intifada there were no documented or known gay, lesbian or transgender groups in Palestine. In 2001 Palestinian queers from the occupied West Bank convened in the Jerusalem Open House (an Israeli initiative offering space for expression, interaction and means for securing funds and international outreach). In 2002 Aswat — Palestinian Gay Women was founded as part of the Palestinian feminist organisation Kayan (in Haifa). In 2007 Al Qaws was established independently of Jerusalem Open House, campaigning for sexual and gender diversity in Palestinian society. In 2009 Palestinian Queers for Boycott Divestment Sanctions (PQBDS)[1] was formed within Al Qaws.
Mark Gevisser, in his book ‘The Pink Line’, has a chapter about the gay communities in Israel and the occupied territories, largely based on his interviewing six gay activists, both Palestinians as well as Jewish Israelis. Gevisser pointed to the Jewish gays being the beneficiaries of a revolution in sexual mores and being able to express themselves safely through digital platforms as well as in public. Even the Israel Defence Force (IDF) publicly treats gay soldiers equally and protects gay and lesbian-identified soldiers. Recently the Israeli supreme court ruled that same-sex marriages abroad be recognised by the state. In a 2016 poll 75 per cent of Jewish Israelis supported same-sex marriage. The exception to this tolerance are members of Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, who often express violent opposition. And within the IDF significant verbal and physical abuse has been privately reported.
By contrast public expression by gays in Palestinian society is far less tolerated. In particular, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has harassed gays in the West Bank. Gevisser noted that in 2003 Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar defended traditional values by condemning homosexuality as a decadent Western practice. In 2016 the PA banned the activities of Al Qaws. It was also reported that gay Palestinians running away from the West Bank to ‘safety’ in Tel Aviv had been persecuted by the PA, possibly also by Hamas-affiliated groups. Notwithstanding the above, Palestinian gay activists interviewed, while admitting that Arab culture did not tolerate homosexuality, questioned what they saw as distorted reports in Israeli media alleging physical abuse — even murder — of gay Palestinians within West Bank Palestinian society. Gevisser’s interviewees stated that the Palestinian public taboo on the call for the right to express homosexuality also reflected a political imperative not to deflect from the primary Palestinian national liberation struggle. They said this taboo was intensified by the practice (since the 1987 First Intifada) by Israeli police and intelligence of blackmailing Palestinians whose sexual conduct — i.e. extra-marital affairs and homosexual activities — they had uncovered, into becoming informers.
Contradictions within emerging historical blocs:
Building solidarity for Palestinian queer and homosexual rights has come up against practical, political and ideological differences in Israel/Palestine as well as within the Palestine solidarity movement within South Africa.
In historic Palestine there was an early tendency for individuals and organisations to associate with Jewish Israeli LGBTQ formations and initiatives, like Tel Aviv’s pride parade. This reflected the relative safety of openness of sexual orientation and gender identity within the Israel of the Green Line (i.e. the 1949 armistice lines) and the mingling of Jewish Israeli and Palestinian (including from the occupied territories) homosexuals in the permissive cultural environment of Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, Tel Aviv’s pride parade consistently excluded public expression by Palestinians. Gevisser contextualised this exclusion by referring to a racist country celebrating diversity, a practice that allegedly provides living proof that Israel is a democratic outpost in a region of ‘backward’ Middle Eastern states. He said that this openness to diverse sexual orientation and gender identities functioned to launder Israel’s violations of the rights of Palestinians, and called it an ideology of ‘pinkwashing’ events like the Nakba. He referred to the celebrating of explicit gay sexuality in places atop the ruins of Palestinian villages as an example of a pornographic depiction of the history of Palestine.
The emergence of Palestinian queer organisations (referred to earlier) reflects a similar critique and the need to distance themselves from the mainstream LGBTQ within the Green Line. Alsaafin records that Al Qaws adopted the term ‘queer’ to avoid the LGBT identity-based terms, in order to focus on sexual and gender oppressions rather than solely on gay rights and homophobia, and to relate this focus more broadly to the struggle for Palestinian liberation from Israeli colonisation. In line with this Al Qaws refused to work with Israeli LGBT groups[2] and to participate in the annual Tel Aviv gay pride parade. Al Qaws’ PQBDS project explicitly targeted Israel’s pinkwashing and focused on exposing this ideology. In 2020 Gevisser reported that Aswat (the pioneering Palestinian lesbian organisation, based in Haifa) included the term ‘settler colonialism’ into an analysis of the state of Israel, incorporated solidarity with BLM race politics and supported a demand for a single, secular democratic state where all citizens and national groups would be equal. Notwithstanding resistance from the PA and Hamas to the public organisation of Palestinian queers, the Boycott National Committee (BNC) leading the BDS campaign has explicitly endorsed these demands as part and parcel of the Palestinian struggle for a single, secular democratic state.
Differences in South African solidarity movement:
The South African BDS Coalition, which is affiliated to the BNC in Ramallah, explicitly supports intersectional struggles for human rights and justice across the globe.
Africa4Palestine, a human rights organisation founded in 2009 to lend support for the Palestinian people (and their progressive Jewish Israeli allies), and until 2019 the holder of the BDS franchise in South Africa, has made no such commitment.
In a previous article, ‘Constitutional Court’s erroneous signification of antisemitism’ I referred to a research project I have been involved in for almost six years, initiated by PSC Cape Town, in collaboration with Safoudien Bester (of Runners for Palestine), Media Review Network and ZEP Attorneys. Through this inter-organisational work I have become aware of the concerns these colleagues have about what they view as an imposed ideological position of intersectional alliances that they do not subscribe to.[3] This concern was crystallised by one of our team members, Safoudien Bester, in his criticism of what he argued was the requirement by the BNC through the South African BDS Coalition that activists in affiliated Palestine solidarity organisations be required to actively support the struggle for LGBTQ rights as part of the strategy of intersectional alliances. In response Bester sought inputs from well-known Palestinian solidarity activist and South African public intellectual Steven Friedman, and activist scholars and writers Norman Finkelstein, and Ramzy Baroud. The gist of their responses was that within the solidarity movement we impose positions at the risk of splitting our movement.
I have participated in several meetings where it was stated that PSC CT could not — and would not — prescribe to its members that their public support for LGBTQ rights was mandatory. Nevertheless, this perception of an imposed intersectional strategy position has persisted. Arguably this is because the BNC tries to maintain a central control on how to ensure that BDS-affiliated campaigns do not stray from a broadly progressive, intersectional and non-violent strategy for change, provoking Bester to call for organisational disassociation from public affirmation of LGBTQ struggles and demands, because these are seen as diluting the focus of the struggle for Palestinian national liberation.
My sense is that this is a view that is more widespread than those of us supporting intersectional alliances would care to admit. Instead, to mitigate the risk of weakening our forces through splitting, we have to argue for building intersectional alliances in a process of engagement and win our opponents over to our position.
Conclusion:
After 170 years the Communist Manifesto claim that the working classes would be the gravediggers of capitalism, has proven to be incorrect. This reflects the falseness of a deeper assumption, namely that social consciousness is determined by objective class position. Instead, the strategic view has emerged that a multi-class alliance of all dominated, exploited and oppressed classes and social groupings needs to be constructed, that will project a progressive vision of a society and a world free of poverty, want, oppression and war. Within this context the Palestinian struggle could draw inspiration and also additional material and ideological support, as witnessed by the global BDS movement as well as the ongoing armed defence against siege (in Gaza) and forced population relocations (from East Jerusalem and elsewhere on the West Bank).
Stephanie Fox will speak about how the struggle for Palestinian liberation intersects with the struggles of other marginalised social groupings around the world. Of particular interest are the struggles of women and LGBTQ communities. Within Palestinian society within historic Palestine, movements for gender equity and sexual orientation rights have emerged, albeit on a small scale and often publicly elided by a dominant besieged native culture that eyes with suspicion any behaviour within its own ranks reflecting what they regard as a decadent western liberal influence. Yet the Palestinian gay and lesbian organisations that have emerged have defined their practices in congruence with the national liberation struggle against Israeli colonialism and apartheid. And the BDS movement in Palestine acknowledges and supports intersectional struggles and solidarity alliances.
Intersectional alliances are put forward as being critical for the advancement of the Palestinian struggle. Critics of this notion claim that to enter into these alliances would dilute the focus of the Palestinian struggle and undermine its effectiveness in the medium to long-term. However, to claim that the exigencies of the national struggle trumps workers’, blacks’, womens’, gays’, and lesbians’ (etc.) issues and demands is to fall into the trap of ‘development stages’ thinking. Contemporary South Africa is a good example of the socio-economic dead ends that the Palestinian struggle risks in the event that the leadership of certain formations succeed in imposing a stages of development matrix on the political practices, strategies and tactics of solidarity organisations both within Israel/Palestine and globally.
At the same time it is important to keep in mind that the other (Zionist) side is also focused on intersectional alliances, in order to dilute the focus on Israeli apartheid and US imperialism. Intersectionality is a view held by neo-liberal elites with their own agenda, which includes globalisation of open markets and free investment funding flows.[4] In various countries across the globe these elites have funded groups to implement campaigns aimed at greater rights for minorities and the implementation of LGBTQ rights. Often these campaigns have happened congruent with regime change operations of western and US intelligence services, leading in some cases to secession from national states (like Yugoslavia and Sudan) and in others to civil war (as in the case of Ukraine currently).[5]
Thus implementing progressive intersectional alliances, that will advance Palestinian unity around their national liberation struggle, is a complex challenge, with discourses touching on ideologically sensitive issues. I think it is imperative to develop a culture of debate around these issues.
Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 21 August 2023.
[1] Both the website and Facebook page of PQBDS reflect a distinct tailing off of activities over the past 10 years….
[2] Gevisser noted that Aguda is Israel’s umbrella LGBTQ organisation, which had an Arab Affairs section. He interviewed Khader Abu Seif, the then head of this section, who was reviled by Al Qaws as a collaborator. Al Qaws opposed normalisation relationships with Israeli institutions.
[3] In addition to their concern about what they experience as the imposition of a strategic view, I detect that the ideology of these colleagues is an essentialist theistic meaning about human nature underlying binary (male/female) gender identities.
[4] The often hidden global policy practices of western political and economic elites is the subject of a corpus of scholarly work including C Wright Mills’ classic, ‘The Power Elite’, Nicos Poulantzas’ ‘Political Power and Social Classes’, Sheldon Wolin’s ‘Democracy Incorporated’ and more recently Peter Phillips’ ‘Giants — the Global Power Elite’, the last of which explores the dimensions of the north American and western European-based transnational capitalist class and its power to funnel financial investments globally, and by implication to turn these off from certain locations. This elite class wields power untransparently through multilateral organisations like the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group, behind the backs of the electorates in what are formally declared democracies.
[5] For more on this see Max Blumenthal interview with Christopher Mott, titled ‘The woke imperium: the confluence between neo-conservatism and social justice’.
