"When gay rights trample racial justice: Why the NYC Council should cancel its Israel junket"

QAIA's op-ed is in Mondoweiss today, just a week before NYC Councilmembers take off on their junket to Israel -- placing the Israel lobby clearly above their constituents. Lots of speculation about why they're doing it, and about how much they're squirming. This is by far not the first such junket to Israel, but it's the first time New Yorkers have really organized to say: WTF?? It won't be so easy for electeds to say yes to the JCRC next time around.
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(Read the story on http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/trample-justice-council to access the reference links behind the text.)

When gay rights trample racial justice: Why the NYC Council should cancel its Israel junket Activism 

By Emmaia Gelman

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.”

(Image: Anti-Defamation League)

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.