Activism

LGBT activists protest NYC ‘Celebrate Israel’ parade

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From a NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid! press release:

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QAIA protesters at the Israel Day Parade.

LGBT activists protested at New York City’s “Celebrate Israel” parade today, objecting to Israel’s apartheid laws denying Palestinian human rights and its use of gay rights messaging to portray Israel as open and democratic. Signs reading “Support Palestinian Queers” and “Israel: Stop Pinkwashing Apartheid” dotted the sidelines of the Fifth Avenue parade. Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) organized the protest.

“Israel is trying to repair its horrible human rights profile by painting itself as a gay mecca,” said Brad Taylor of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. “But having some gay clubs in Tel Aviv doesn’t make Israel a democracy. Israel builds separate roads for Jews and Arabs, separate schools, separate neighborhoods. Your rights to work, travel, marry, etc. — they all depend on whether or not you’re Palestinian. It’s apartheid, whether you’re gay or straight.”

“The Israeli government’s ‘Brand Israel’ PR campaign tries to sell a twisted message: Israel supports gay rights, so you must support Israel — you can’t oppose Israeli violence against Palestinians. What a disgusting abuse of the LGBT community! So much of the LGBT community is absolutely outraged at the Israeli government,” said Emmaia Gelman of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

The protesters also planned to challenge NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn as she marched in the parade, calling on her to take action to stop Muslim-baiting at NYC’s LGBT Community Center and in NYC’s Gay Pride parade. The community center ejected and banned groups meeting in support of Palestinian LGBT organizations last year, at the demand of pro-Israel individuals. Shortly afterward, pro-Israel marchers in NYC’s 2011 Gay Pride parade beset and assaulted a Palestine human rights contingent.

“Speaker Quinn is constantly telling us how important Israel is to her. But she hasn’t uttered a word about the Arab-baiting and Muslim-baiting that pro-Israel groups are fomenting in the LGBTQ community — her own backyard. The LGBT community is in an uproar about this discrimination, and she’s giving it the all-clear,” said Leslie Cagan of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

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The Celebrate Israel parade committee should be recognized for finally allowing LGBT groups to participate openly for the first time since the parade started in 1993. All these years, Clinton, Bloomberg, Schumer, Spitzer and others were marching in a parade that explicitly forbid the participation of LGBT groups.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120603/upper-east-side/celebrate-israel-parade-allows-openly-lgbt-marchers-for-first-time
http://www.timesofisrael.com/thousands-march-in-new-yorks-celebrate-israel-parade/

All these years of pinkwashing for Israel and these Zionists were engaging in anti-LGBT discrimination in the US.

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“Celebrate Israel parade committee should be recognized for finally allowing LGBT groups to participate openly.. ”

If they participate to that, then those racial supremacist murderer Zionist homosexuals aren’t worth more than their hetero counterparts (who now need the homosexual fascists for whitewashing.) Nothing to celebrate. It’s like the right for homosexual murderers to become war criminals and criminals against peace, for which Obama is being celebrated.

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And 135 Jewish Queer Youth marched in it.

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RE: “The [LBGT] community center ejected and banned groups meeting in support of Palestinian LGBT organizations last year, at the demand of pro-Israel individuals.” ~ NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid! press release

SEE: : Nakba porn kingpin Michael Lucas bullies LGBT center against Anti-Apartheid Party, by Max Blumental, Mondoweiss, 2/24/11

(excerpt) Wealthy gay porn producer Michael Lucas has successfully pressured New York City’s LGBT Center to renege on its agreement to host a “Party to End Apartheid” on Israeli Apartheid Week. Lucas threatened to boycott the center and pressure its donors to pull their money out. He called the event an “anti-Semitic” affair held by a “hate group.” It seems that money talks, because I doubt that a progressive institution like the LGBT Center would have otherwise responded to an open bigot like Lucas who has used ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages as sets for sex scenes.
Lucas, who leads gay tours to Israel to promote the country’s supposedly tolerant gay culture, has celebrated fellow porn producer Charles Merrill’s public burning of a Qu’ran, calling it an act of “artistic bravery.” Last year, he joined the Islamophobic bandwagon in calling the Cordoba Initiative’s plan to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero part of a covert plot to install Shariah law in the United States — he described the proposed center as a “monument to Muslim terrorism.” A laundry list of racist statements by Lucas would be so long it is impossible to compile (for more, see here); it is enough to note that his political views are defined by crude resentment of Muslims, the fetishization of an Israel that does not exist, and little else.
What is more remarkable about Lucas is the way in which he has fused extreme Zionism with homoeroticism in his films. His most widely promoted film, “Men of Israel,” contains a sex scene inside a Palestinian village that was ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias in 1947-48. Lucas describes the scene here (NSFW), deceptively stating that the village was “deserted centuries ago”:

…we went to an abandoned village just north of Jerusalem. It was a beautiful ancient township that had been deserted centuries ago…however, that did not stop our guys from mounting each other and trying to repopulate it. Biology may not be the lesson of the day but these men shot their seeds all over the village. . .

ENTIRE ARTICLE – https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/02/nakba-porn-kingpin-michael-lucas-bullies-lgbt-center-against-anti-apartheid-party.html

P.S. PETITION: “Save New York’s LGBT Center! Don’t Let Wealthy Bigots Shut Down Free Speech ”
TO READ/SIGN THE PETITION – http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savenyclgbtcenter/

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All I know is some of the worst homophobic filth comes from women in the neo-conservative/nationalist/white supremacist (anti-Arab) quadrant of American conservatism. (e.g., Debbie Schlussel.)

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