“You cannot have queer liberation while apartheid, patriarchy, capitalism and other oppressions exist. It’s important to target the connections of these oppressive forces.”

– Ghaith Hilal, AlQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society

[Content Warning:  Descriptions of sexual assault, torture and homophobia.]

On November 6th, 2023, the official state of Israel Twitter account reposted one of the most heinous “comedy sketches” I’ve seen in my life. 

"I'm not antisemitic, I'm racist fluid." – random @Columbia student

Watch @Eretz_Nehederet's latest take on what's happening on some college campuses. pic.twitter.com/jYEFKxmKwM

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) November 6, 2023

 

The sketch, by Israel’s “#1 comedy show”, features two actors with colorfully dyed hair, waving a rainbow flag, whose first line is “where everyone is welcome. LGBTQH. H? Hamas.” The sketch goes on to continuously mock queer people, with one character stating they major in “queer postcolonial astrology” and are “racist fluid”. Later, the characters bring on what is assumed to be a Hamas fighter, who tells them he wishes to “throw [them] from the roof, you homosexual dirt.” If you can attempt to ignore the rampant islamophobia, it seems to be that the point of the video is to illustrate what is perceived as a dissonance in queer people’s support of Palestine given their view that Arab society is inherently homophobic. 

 

This video was particularly striking to me, and marks what I believe as a turn in Israeli rhetoric towards queer people. While previously, Israel seemed to have an explicit approach of what is deemed “pinkwashing,” Israel seems to have now rejected this strategy in favor of mocking and alienating the very people it used to attempt to appeal to. 

 

What is Pinkwashing?

Pinkwashing refers to when a state or organization appeals to LGBTQ+ rights in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices. The term is an adaptation of the term “whitewashing,” the act of covering up vices or crimes by presenting biased positive information to affect one’s

reputation. You may have heard the term “greenwashing,” as well, which describes when an organization makes misleading statements about environmental benefits of a product or practice.

 

 

When referring to Israel’s pinkwashing, we are referring to a specific strategic project as a part of the Brand Israel campaign. Started in 2005 by the Israeli foreign ministry, prime minister, and finance ministry, with consultation with U.S. marketing experts, Brand Israel attempted to change the view of Israel as a militaristic, ethno-religious state, to one that was more “progressive” and “modern”. The promotion of LGBTQ+ rights was a part of this. Israel sought to distract from their egregious violations of the human rights of Palestinians, by promoting the select human rights for their own people. 

Examples of Israeli Pinkwashing include the marketing of Tel Aviv as a gay tourist destination. We see this in TLVFest, an International LGBT Film Festival in Tel Aviv, and Tel Aviv Pride, which are both sponsored by government agencies, and attract thousands of western tourists each year. This occurs without mentioning the Palestinian villages that had to be erased for Tel Aviv’s creation, and the dispossession necessary for these events to continue. Furthermore, Israel continuously promotes the open and accepting policies of their military, the Israeli Defense Force, a way of promoting militaristic ethno-nationalist values under the auspices of progressive liberalism. 

LBGTQ+ Realities in Israel 

But is Israel really the “gay haven” it claims to be?

Aeyal Gross, Professor of Law at Tel-Aviv University, explains that “Gay rights have essentially become a public-relations tool” while “conservative and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic.” A 2009 poll by Haaretz showed, “nearly half of Israelis consider homosexuality to be a perversion.” A 2022 study found there was an 11% rise in reports of harassment against members of the LGBTQ+ community, when compared to 2021, showing the ever increasing rise of explicit homophobia in the country. This may be attributed to the recent power in public office gained by homophobes. Avi Maoz, who resigned from office in 2022 but is now slated to return as a ​​deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, is an outspoken homophobe who is the chairman of Noam, a far-right religious zionist party. While they do not have an official party platform, Noam’s website includes arguments such as support for conversion therapy and an objection against women serving in the IDF. During his time as deputy minister, Maoz tried to change the labels “parent 1” and “parent 2” on ministry forms to “father” and “mother”. The realities of such people being in office, and the violence that ensues on LGBTQ+ folks, however, is swept under the rug in favor of a branding project to protect Israel’s reputation. Notably, same sex couples still cannot legally marry in Israel. 

Israel also weaponizes homophobia in its oppression of Palestinians. In a report by a former Israeli intelligence corps member, stated that they would intentionally manipulate the private lives of Palestinians for state repression interests, in that the IDF “actually learned to memorise and filter different words for ‘gay’, in Arabic.” There are additionally reports by Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails of weaponized sexual assault, homophobia and transphobia. A 16 year old reported that a police officer told him, ““I will fuck you and you will sing on my dick.” A 23 year old reported that an Israeli secret service officer told him, “you terrorist, I’ll fuck you like a homosexual!” and harassed by an interrogator stating, “Are you a homosexual? You look like a woman. Have you ever fucked a woman?” Another detainee was threatened with having their brother undergo a non-consensual sex change, stating, “They put me in an investigation room with a glass partition and on the other side I saw my brother, dressed as a woman, immodest, in a mini-skirt. […] They said that they […] had arranged for him a sex-change surgery in Jerusalem.” The use of such tactics are abhorrent, and clearly not conducive to the liberated LGBTQ+ haven Israel attempts to paint itself as. 

Hearing Queer Palestinians 

I believe AlQaws, an advocacy group for sexual and gender diversity in Palestinian society, best concludes this in saying, 

“Israeli settler colonialism, and tactics such as “pinkwashing” weaponize our queer experiences to place us in opposition to our own society and communities. Pinkwashing is a form of colonial violence. It promotes harmful narratives and policies that alienate queer Palestinians from our own communities. Our answer to pinkwashing is to say that liberation is indivisible, and that there will be a place for all of us at the rendezvous of victory.”

There is an Instagram account, called “Queering the Map”, that states it is “a community-generated counter mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space.” In recent days, we’ve seen the uplifting of queer palestinian stories by this account. You can see a few of their archives below.

I mourn for the queer lives being lost by the current indiscriminate bombing of Israel on the Gaza strip. As we see a turn in messaging by the Israeli state towards blatant homophobia, in efforts to advance their colonial project, I am saddened for the queer Israelis who may feel alienated by the state that used to, strategically albeit, embrace them. I hope that we, as queer people, can recognize that our liberation is interconnected, and work towards a future where all may be free from the colonial, queerphobic violence that seeks to repress us.