QAIA's statement on Center's banning of our event with Sarah Schulman

Statement from Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
on the NYC LGBT Center’s banning of QAIA-NYC’s Sarah Schulman reading

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is (again) appalled at the hijacking of our NYC LGBT Community Center. At this point, the Center has banned any discussion of Palestine – and the growing movement to support Palestinian queers’ calls for civil and human rights – for two full years. We’re reminded that the Center’s board enacted this ban at the instigation of an avowed Islamophobe, who uses his wealth as a megaphone, who claimed to have organized other wealthy gay men as a threat to the Center, and who is the partner of a former chair of the Center’s board. The ban is not a community decision, but an action by a few wealthy, politically-powerful people to leverage their control of a community resource. The Center’s board and administration have refused to meet with the community, talk to the media, or respond to queries about excluding so many of us.

It’s worth noting that a number of groups of queers of color, immigrants and trans people have written to the Center to report that this ban further marginalizes them in a space that’s critical to them. The Center is not interested.

In its latest reprehensible move, the Center refused QAIA’s space request for a reading by Sarah Schulman from her new book, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. Sarah is a respected author, activist, organizer and educator, and this book, like her other books, reflects critical currents in the queer community. The ban on her reading insults the integrity and intelligence of New Yorkers. The Center gave no reason for the ban, except to refer obliquely to “Center policy.”

In banning Sarah’s reading, the Center made no distinction between refusing space for Sarah’s reading and refusing QAIA’s particular request for space for that reading. That’s because there is no distinction. Sarah and QAIA are engaged in the same work. It’s that work, in which much of the queer community is engaged, that the Center has banned.

The work of QAIA and Sarah that the Center is banning is this:
1) exposing Israel's pinkwashing of the occupation, and
2) supporting the civil and human rights of Palestinian queers, which are inseparable from the civil and human rights currently denied to all Palestinians.

The Center ban covers anyone working with or in support of Palestinian queers who are trying to secure their rights.

Meanwhile, the issues of Palestine and pinkwashing – the Israeli government’s draping of itself in “LGBT rights” in an effort to obscure its gross violations of civil and human rights – have come to the forefront of queer organizing. While the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” public relations campaign paints Israel as a gay haven, queers in Palestine are increasingly organized and vocal. Their call to queers worldwide is that Palestinians cannot begin to have “queer rights” under conditions where Palestinians have no rights at all. Worldwide, queers have increasingly responded. In fact, few issues are more front and center in queer political organizing right now than Palestine.

The Center’s claim that its ban maintains neutrality on Israel/Palestine is absurd. No reasonable person would interpret room rental as an endorsement of a position. QAIA is not neutral, but we support our community’s freedom of speech at the Center, and would of course support the right of pro-Israel groups to meet there. The Center is not neutral either: in banning Sarah Schulman, QAIA, Siegebusters and any discussion which dares to touch on Palestinians, gay or not, the Center’s board exposes its complicity with broader right-wing elements who are no friends to LGBT people. With shady maneuvering reminiscent of the recent attacks on Brooklyn College, they trample the rights upon which the Center was built.

The Center’s comportment mirrors exactly the attacks on the BDS forum at Brooklyn College. It reflects the same bias against human rights organizing by inconvenient people, the same censorship, and the same racism. It leverages the same complicity of “progressive” elected officials: with Brooklyn College, they piled on in attacking discussion of Palestinian rights. Here, they pile on with a deliberate, deafening silence in the face of racism and exclusion. The difference between Brooklyn College and the Center is integrity: Brooklyn College undertook its role as a taxpayer-supported institution to preserve free speech, while the taxpayer-supported Center sets out to undermine it.

The queer movement to expose and unravel Israel’s pinkwashing is gaining strength. In the process, we are forced to challenge the anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim hysteria in the US that pervades circles of wealth and political power, which in turn support the ugliest, most bigoted corners of the queer community. To the extent that queer institutions have pulled those queers into their boards as fundraisers and political connectors, we’re forced to challenge them too. We are not afraid of public discussion of these issues; we welcome it. Those ugly forces pulling the strings of queer communities have been hidden for too long – let’s bring them out.

For more information about QAIA:
http://queersagainstisraeliapartheid.blogspot.com

For info on the event:
http://tinyurl.com/schulman-reading

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