Recently, community groups called on New York City Councilmembers to skip an all-expenses-paid, eight-day junket to Israel. Much like the South Africa boycott, Palestinians have called on the international community to end “business as usual” that normalizes apartheid. The Councilmembers, many of whom are in the Progressive or LGBT Caucuses, are planning to violate the boycott when they travel in February.
Challenged on Israel’s racism, Councilmembers’ excuses quickly turned to gay rights. Bronx rep Ritchie Torres emailed Gay City News saying: “Which country in the Middle East is most protective of LGBT rights? In which country would I –– as an American, much less a gay one –– feel most at home? The answer to both questions is undoubtedly Israel.”
Torres is gay, but the words weren’t his: they were practically verbatim from an Israel lobby group. In fact, it’s mostly right-wing (not LGBT) organizations writing the “gay rights” lines in support of Israel. By contrast, Palestinian LGBT groups say that Israel’s daily violence makes all Palestinians so unsafe that LGBT rights are not a matter for separate discussion. Arab LGBT voices assert that Israel preys on them even as it claims to support them. New York LGBT organizations have made clear that queer justice and racial justice are inseparable, from Israel/Palestine to our own streets.
Torres’ insistence on separating them is telling. At home, he stands with #BlackLivesMatter and he’s a champion of racial justice challenging the NYPD. In Israel, he’s American and gay. There, he stands with the Jewish Community Relations Council (staunch defenders of Muslim surveillance and “brothers and sisters in blue”) – and a State of Israel where rights are allocated, and lives valued, according to race. The JCRC are defenders of a state that segregates housing, buses, citizenship, and indeed gay rights. Still more perverse: Israel’s iron-fisted policing, field-tested on Palestinians and Israeli dissenters, have shaped the NYPD’s approach to New Yorkers as a “human terrain” of threat levels.
To improve Israel’s image, lobbyists now tout Israel’s LGBT “tolerance” as often as they conjure anti-Semitism. In New York, the JCRC uses gay rights rhetoric, and political leverage over LGBT elected officials, to clamp down on LGBT criticism of Israel. In 2011, Palestine rights groups were meeting at the LGBT Community Center. Israel lobbyists, including the JCRC, weighed in with elected officials who pushed the Center to ban discussion of Palestine. When the ban prevented lesbian author Sarah Schulman from discussing her book, LGBT communities voiced outrage – and the situation was again managed by the JCRC. Gay City News found emails in which the JCRC approved LGBT officials’ new position: they could endorse lifting the ban while reiterating support for Israel as a matter of gay rights. The Center’s statement lifting the ban, and officials’ statement in support, were released within an hour of JCRC approval.
The JCRC has managed Councilmembers’ dealings with constituents on other occasions. In 2013 Councilmembers attacked Brooklyn College for hosting discussion of the Palestinian call for BDS. The JCRC appears to have vetted Councilmembers’ letter as it had before. (The letter illegally threatened to pull CUNY funding.) A decade earlier, a Jewish justice group was honoring the parents of an activist for Palestinian rights, and four elected officials were on the host committee. Working with the American Jewish Congress, the JCRC called Councilmember Christine Quinn, who quickly quit the host committee and pledged to “boycott” along with Councilmember Gale Brewer. The other officials also dropped out. All had been longtime supporters of the justice group. [NY Sun, “Synagogue Honoring PLO Supporter” 5/30/03] Later, Quinn characterized the JCRC as “keeping us on a daily basis in New York City focused and united in our support of Israel.”
The police murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and an alarming roster of Black people of all genders and ages, have brought racial justice to center stage. Also, public support for Israel has crumbled after last summer’s war on Gaza, and is falling further as Palestinians now freeze to death in demolished homes. It’s to be expected that the JCRC cultivates officials in communities of color and LGBT communities, using them to repaint Israel’s liberal veneer. For the first time, though, New Yorkers are resisting the JCRC’s demands. It may take courage to resist the politically powerful Israel lobby. But ignoring Israeli apartheid is a dangerous game. Public officials who were slow to join the call for South African divestment are still tarred with that failure. Those who refuse to recognize Israeli apartheid should fear the same fate.
Palestinian LGBT voices are not hard to hear, nor are New York’s voices for racial justice. Instead, City Hall seems to be inviting American Israel lobbyists to tell LGBT people of color in the Middle East what’s good for them, and then repeating their words. We’re left to wonder what the JCRC has whispered in the ears of Progressive and LGBT Caucus members to make them stray so far from their principles – and their voters.
“and a State of Israel where rights are allocated, and lives valued, according to race”
This is just complete nonsense. There are no distinctions in Israel made on the basis of race. You have Jews of every race in Israel, and Palestinians of every race too. The conflict is a national one, and occasionally, a religious one, but it is not a racial one.
Well done! Many thanks for this detailed exposé of these Councilmembers and their cohorts, Emmaia.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
What are you talking about? With the exception of the Congressional Black Caucus virtually the entire country was slow to join the call for South African divestment and while I may be forgetting AFAIK I have yet in the almost 30 years since once heard someone’s slowness to join the call used in a single campaign against them. People joined at different times, the government of South Africa flipped everyone moved on. Heck Ronald Reagan was the figure most associated with fierce resistance to sanctions: arguing against them, vetoing them, and then doing as bad a job as possible enforcing them when his veto was overridden and the topic is rarely mentioned when discussing his legacy.
BDS and anti-apartheid are nothing alike. Anti-Apartheid never divisive in this way.
I find it rich that pro Israel folks tout its gay rights record. But is Gay marriage in Israel legal? Um no, but it is in the very red state of Alabama, as of yesterday. So really, how progressive is Israel on this issue?
@Annie Robbins Robbins
Because the classification didn’t / doesn’t match at all the underlying motive becomes an issue. It could just be stupidity or name calling but if it is a disproportionate fear / hatred of Israel then that’s often anti-Semtitism. The axis of evil countries:
1) Were seeking weapons of mass destruction, Israel at that point and this already had them and had for decades
2) Armed terrorists.
3) Attack the USA or allies, Israel exclusively attacks enemies of the United States
4) Indifference to their military gains would be catastrophic. Israel has been advancing without catastrophic impact.
Criticism of Israel need to have some relation to reality otherwise they become suspect. So for example Israel generally places around 80-100 on world press freedom scores because it has fairly liberal laws, by global standards but often kills or jails Palestinians journalists. That’s a fair criticism. Considering the worst in the world or one of the worst is not and is motivated by something other than Israel’s treatment of the press. It for example is much better than Palestine or Egypt.