Israeli “Pinkwashing”
By: Kaleb Felix Costa e Rosa
Tel Aviv is known as the “gay capital of the Middle East” and has become a hotspot for LGBT tourists from all over the world. It has the biggest Pride parade and attracts millions of people every year. Tel Aviv was also voted the “world’s best gay city” of the year by a gaycities.com survey, in 2011.
“It’s in the Middle East where it’s not so easy to be gay and it’s like a paradise in an area where you will not obviously find an open city like Tel Aviv,” said Adir Steiner who coordinates gay pride events for the city.
Obviously, it is due cause to celebrate the fact that in a region as oppressive of the Middle East there is a city like Tel Aviv, right? Yes, for most people. However, that is not true for some LGBT activists that believe a tactic that gets called “pinkwashing” is going on there. But what is “pinkwashing”? It is a variety of cynical marketing and political strategies aiming at promoting a product or an entity through an appeal to queer-friendliness. How and why do people believe is is happening in Israel?
‘Palestinians Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (PQBDS) and ‘Al-Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society’, (AlQuaws) are two important groups of activists that fight against Israel “pinkwashing”. In their blogs, there is a lot of information that explains that idea and how they believe Israel is using “pinkwashing” to legitimate its apartheid. They claim that Israel actively uses the image and the status of a gay-friendly nation to distract the media and the world’s attention from the ongoing occupation and its discrimination against its own Palestinians citizens.
A example used to explain how it happens is the official Israeli PR campaign started in 2005: Brand Israel. The campaign goals of Brand Israel was to rebrand Israel as a culturally vibrant, modern, cool country and a safe haven for gay and lesbian people. What the Palestinian and LGBT activists claim, however, is that the main purpose of that campaign was never really to protect the LGBT community but, in reality, to create propaganda to cover up and distract from the brutal apartheid regime. “Israel is a gay-friendly country when it serves its interests”, says Nada Elia, a Palestinian BDS activist.
Jasbir K. Puar, a U.S.-based queer theorist and author of ‘Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times’, uses the term homonationalism to describe “the use of ‘acceptance’ and ‘tolerance’ for gay and lesbian subjects as the barometer by which the legitimacy of, and capacity for national sovereignty is evaluated”.
Israel has been working on that narrative of a modern country based on progressive lesbian and gay rights, thus on the expenses of rights from other populations. The government is attempting to re-brand themselves as progressive, while continuing to violate international law and infringe on the human rights of Palestinians. Tel Aviv is shown to the world as the best destiny for gay tourists, meanwhile the Palestinians, even the homosexuals, are in the West Bank and in Gaza Strip living in danger on an apartheid regime.
Jasbir K. Puar says “Pinkwashing is thus not about sexual identity at all in this regard, but rather a powerful manifestation of the regulation of identity in an increasing homonationalist world — a world that evaluates nationhood on the basis of the treatment of its homosexuals — that works to justify the Occupation”.
“Pinkwashing” obscures Israeli human rights violation and denies the possibility that someone could be both Palestinian and queer at the same time. One thing is certain; all Palestinians — queer and straight, trans and cis — suffer daily from Israel occupation.
