Note to readers: All those interested in the LGBT questions around Israel’s image should check out the sit-in at New York’s LGBT Center today at 6. Details at the end of Eleanor’s post.–Editor
On the website for the Israel Gay Youth organisation (IGY), Ana Shilansky recounts her experience as an IGY ambassador in San Francisco in March 2011: “We told them about modern Israel, the Bar-noar murders, LGBT issues in the army, nightlife, the openly gay members of the Knesset, and the progress we have achieved.… The main conclusion I reached on this trip was that we, the gay youth of Israel… can be the ones who bring change, and equality, to Israel and the rest of the world.”
It is a lofty claim. The ‘ambassador’ does not forget to thank the sponsors of her public relations trip, which include the Israeli consulate. The fact that IGY receives Israeli government money and works closely with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is reiterated by three Palestinian Queer organizations in their June 8 call on International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer Youth and Student Organization (IGLYO) Member Organizations to Vote “NO to IGLYO in Israel”. The call adds that Israel’s apartheid policies could affect IGLYO delegates and their ability to attend the 2011 General Assembly to be held in Tel Aviv. Rather grotesquely, in their latest, highly defensive, statement IGLYO has said the General Assembly “will include joining the annual Human Rights Parade in Tel Aviv, held by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), a close friend and partner of IGY and other LGBTQ organizations in Israel. The march will call for an end to the occupation of Palestine and for an end to the Human Rights abuses.”
Leehee Rothschild, a member of the Israeli group BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within, was interviewed by Social TV for an episode on the May 17 International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) 2011, and the visit to Israel of U.S. TV series “Queer as Folk” star, Randy Harrison. Rothschild explains that BOYCOTT! asked Harrison not to cooperate with Israeli governmental institutions if he was to come to Israel: “I very much support people coming here to fight LGBT-phobia, but it can be done without harming other struggles.” Harrison’s visit was managed by a public relations company, which Social TV points out “spared him the darker sides of Israel”, and included a visit to the Israeli Knesset , where he can be seen grinning stiffly next to the Israeli flag and nodding vigorously during a monologue by openly gay Knesset member from Meretz, Nitzan Horowitz. Together with MK Nino Avsedze, Horowitz heads the Knesset lobby for IDAHO. “The LGBT community in Israel is used in many cases as a fig-leaf in order to present Israel as a liberal, democratic country of progress,” warns Rothschild, painting “the stains of blood shed by the Israeli government in pink.”
IGY reports (Hebrew*) that Harrison was impressed by Israel during his stage-managed visit: Following his visit to Yad Vashem and the Knesset, he said: “It’s my first time here, and I really like the place… I am beginning to understand what living here means”, [after just two days]. He added that “The Israelis seem like nice people to me” and “I am impressed with the gay community here”. He also praised the “anti-hate crime law”, and observed that “there is some legal protection of gay people’s rights here, a bit more than in the U.S.”.
In her essay, ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’, Audre Lorde wrote of the U.S. in the 1970s as “a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable” This is even more true of Israel, an occupying power and apartheid state. As queer Syrian blogger, Amina Arraf (said to have been violently abducted by armed men on 6 June), put it in her post Pinkwashing Assad? “We’ve gotten used to being used rhetorically by the advocates of war, occupation, dispossession, and apartheid as ‘evidence’ that the primitive sand-people don’t deserve anything other than killing by the enlightened children of the West.” Harrison has unwittingly become part of a campaign that pinkwashes institutionalized racism in Israel, and has reduced the fight for equality to rights gains for one group only.
*Translation from Hebrew by Ofer N.
Here’s info on the New York Sit-in:
What: Sit-in at the LGBT Community Center to oppose censorship of queer political organizing and Center board’s refusal to meet with community groups on transparency.
Who: NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (whose scheduled meetings were summarily cancelled last week by Center staff); Siege Busters (whose meetings were cancelled by the Center in March 2011); with support from Queers for an Open LGBT Center and other LGBTQ community members.
When: Wednesday, June 8 @ 6pm
Where: NYC LGBT Community Center 208 West 13th Street, between 7th and 8th Aves.
