NYC QAIA response to NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson's statement on Israel's Independence Day

Corey Johnson just went on a
JCRC-funded junket to Israel again.

New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (NYC QAIA) condemn New York City Speaker Corey Johnson's appalling statement celebrating Israel's Independence Day.

The Speaker is the leader of the New York City Council and as such has a responsibility to represent all of the residents of this great city, including those who trace their origins to Palestine. As Speaker, he also has a responsibility to uphold the standard of human rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and embodied by the United Nations, whose General Assembly and Security Council have called on Israel to end its illegal occupation in UN Resolutions 242 and 338. Nowhere in Speaker Johnson's statement celebrating Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel's Independence Day) is there any recognition of the illegality of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories or of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of historic Palestine that was the pre-condition for the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Instead, Johnson characterizes the state of Israel as 'a beacon of hope and opportunity'; but it is anything but a beacon of hope and opportunity either for its Palestinian citizens, whom it subjects to institutionalized discrimination and racism, or to the Palestinians in the occupied territories, whom it subjects to a brutal apartheid regime. And Speaker Johnson's use of the expression 'Am Israel Chai' is despicable, as it is coded language for the triumph of the Israeli state over the Palestinian people.

An openly gay man who claims to understand discrimination and oppression, Johnson has betrayed the Palestinian people and LGBT/queer Palestinians in particular with a statement that erases their oppression. Johnson's statement is especially egregious given that the Israeli military has wounded more than 1,600 unarmed Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip since the Great March of Return began on March 30, killing 36 of them, three of them children and one of them a journalist (Yasser Murtaja) who was wearing a vest clearly marked 'press' when he was gunned down by an Israeli sniper. Palestinians began the Great March of Return to protest the policy of incremental genocide being pursued by the Israeli government in the Gaza Strip, to which it has subjected its residents through an illegal blockade that is in clear violation of international law. In light of the countless war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Israeli state, we call on Speaker Johnson to issue a statement condemning those crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine and Johnson should use his power as the second most powerful elected official in the City of New York to challenge the illegal occupation of Palestine.

NYC QAIA was founded to create a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community-based challenge to Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip and to support Palestinians  — both LGBT and non-LGBT — in their struggle against Israel's brutal and illegal apartheid regime.

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Statement By Speaker Corey Johnson

Re: Israel’s Independence Day    

Today I join in celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day.  For 70 years the State of Israel has stood as a beacon of hope and opportunity, overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges.  I am honored to be in Israel to mark this historic occasion with my Council colleagues on a mission to learn more about Israeli culture and economic opportunities, as well as to meet with civic, government, and business leaders. As Americans we saw firsthand the shared democratic principles and values that both our countries possess. We have also seen and met many people hard at work with a genuine spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, and a desire to provide a better life for themselves and their children. Clearly, the Israeli dream is no different than the American version, nurtured in an environment like ours that encourages free-thinking, free speech and a commitment to equality. I stand here proudly as an American with a genuine love for the people of the State of Israel, wishing their country a happy 70th.  "Am Yisrael Chai!"

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FAQ for trolls

QAIA’s facebook page has been heavily trolled lately. The comments display an exhausting mix of misinformation and straight-up racism. Our work is on anticolonialism, not on educating trolls. So rather than take commenters on individually, we’ve written up this FAQ. It gives real answers to the often ridiculous “questions” posed to us here. We’ve also banned hateful commenters and deleted conversations. They are archived, don’t worry.

Here’s the list of comments we respond to here. It may grow as needed. (2019 update: nope, the trolling is pretty much always the same.)

1. 
“There is no apartheid or genocide in Israel!”
   
2. “You don’t get to self-report that you aren’t anti-Semitic! Anti-Semitism is a problem in queer anti-racist organizing!”
3. “Israeli security is for the protection of Jews under threat from racist/hostile Arabs!”
4. “Israel is where Palestinian queers run to, because in Palestine, queerness is punishable by death!"
5. “Queers and Jews who are anti-Zionist are self-loathing!”
6. “Queers are being murdered in Chechnya, Syria, etc. – but Israel is your problem?!”
7. “You’re condemning a Jewish-only state but promoting an Arab-only state?!”
8. “Saying Jews are white is only logical if you’re anti-Semitic!”
9. “What about Arab oppression of minorities?!”
10. “Do you protest Pakistani, Saudi, Iranian apartheid?!”
11. “I oppose occupation/acknowledge Israeli apartheid exists, but I’m still a Zionist.”

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1. “There is no apartheid or genocide in Israel!”


There is apartheid. The 2017 UN ESCWA study examined Israel’s governance of Palestinians in the four categories Israel uses: in the Occupied Territories, Jerusalem, inside Israel, and in refugee camps. It also used international jurisprudence to define apartheid. The report was published according to usual UN practice. (The claim that it “wasn’t cleared” before publishing is a canard: such studies don’t get “cleared.” They are research publications.) Here’s a running list of apartheid laws in Israel.

There is genocide. Genocide is a term defined by the Polish Jewish scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1944. The term has been debated and updated, as ideas should be. Israel’s destruction of Palestinian life fits Lemkin’s definition and others since then. Here’s a simple legal explanation from the Center for Constitutional Rights.



2. “You don’t get to self-report that you aren’t anti-Semitic! Anti-Semitism is a problem in queer anti-racist organizing!”


We got this troll-comment in response to this post, where QAIA said that anti-Semitism isn’t an issue in queer, anti-racist organizations like the Chicago Dyke March. Self-reporting can be iffy (as when Israelis say “there’s no apartheid or genocide in Israel.”) It’s worth looking at the context.

• QAIA folks work in many queer anti-racist organizations, and our trolls don’t. It’s an activist culture we know. Queer anti-racist organizations – especially collectives! – are extremely attentive to any inkling of anti-blackness, anti-immigrant bias, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, transphobia, and classism. They are intensively self-policed, believe it. They’re. Not. Anti-Semitic.

• Accusations of anti-Semitism against queer anti-racists only ever come up when people call for Palestinian rights. Literally, ever. 

  Accusations of anti-Semitism have been levelled by white Jewish activists against queers of color, without any acknowledgement of the power differential between them. White queers claiming they’re being victimized by queers of color… If you’re okay with that, this FAQ is not up to your needs.


• Accusations of anti-Semitism are often levelled against Jews, without the accuser acknowledging that complication. They’re implying that the person is acting from outside a community, against that community, which is a pretty vile deception. Accusing someone of being self-hating requires a lot more engagement and questioning in order to be credible. Lying about someone being both self-hating and anti-Semitic for your own ends? Despicable. 

   
• Stories about supposed instances of queer anti-racists being anti-Semitic are increasingly being placed by organizations with PR departments, and are increasingly “post-factual.” For instance, a staff person of a Zionist LGBT organization wrote an article in a national Jewish newspaper about the Chicago Dyke March claiming that supposedly anti-Semitic organizers were “triggered” by seeing a Star of David. Only much later did the people whom she said were “triggered” get to speak for themselves – and not in a national newspaper. Among them were Jewish activists, who had also been wearing Stars of David and other Jewish symbols. Anti-Semitism is real, but the recent crop of accusations is not honest, and it interrupts anti-racist work that actually is interested in combating anti-Semitism along with other racisms.

3. “Israeli security is for the protection of Jews under threat from racist/hostile Arabs!”

Since 1948, Israel has been a colonizer working with other colonial powers. When we talk about security, let’s talk also about what we’re trying to secure.

In more recent decades, Israel has not been insecure: it’s been the aggressor. But it has been useful to present Israel as a vulnerable victim – a tactic commonly used by powerful states. Like when Americans cry “why do they hate us?” as US drones bomb civilian schools and hospitals. Here’s just one take on Israel's insecurity.


4. “Israel is where Palestinian queers run to, because in Palestine, queerness is punishable by death!”

If you’re truly interested in Palestinian queers’ needs, read what this activist from Palestinian queer organization Al Qaws says about Israel as a “haven” and Palestine as a home place for queers. Please stop concern trolling us about Palestinian queers, and worse, using them as props for your argument.


5. “Queers and Jews who are anti-Zionist are self-loathing!”

• Being anti-Zionist means being against the reasoning of Zionism. It means being against the idea that we as queers, Jews, or anyone else need to fence ourselves in, and fence others out, in order to be safe.

• It means rejecting the idea that danger to Jews, queers, or anyone is somehow lessened by occupation, apartheid, and the dehumanization of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, or others.

• It means rejecting the Israeli governments’ (and lobbyists’) claims about its intention to “protect” anyone. The idea of believing what any state claims about its virtues is silly, whether it’s Israel, the US, or any other. In the case of Israel, which openly represses, jails, and kills civilians who disagree with it, believing it’s a democracy that “protects rights” is ludicrous.

• Queers and Jews are anti-Zionist because we’re fighting for our survival and liberation, and Israel is a violent oppressor and generator of violence.

6. “Queers are being murdered in Chechnya, Syria, etc. – but Israel is your problem?!”

• This is like “all lives matter” but worse. In order to deflect attention from Palestinian suffering, you’re using another group of people’s suffering that also isn’t yours. And you’ve chosen specifically queer suffering to try to claim some moral ground. It’s so foul. Please. Stop. 


• Israel is the US government's key partner in making war, developing weaponry, and generating fear and "clash of civilizations" rationales for colonialism. So yes: Israel is particularly our problem.


• When people are working against Israeli apartheid, it doesn’t mean they’re not working against other abuses. 


• Anti-Zionist queers care about queers, and also other people. A million people in Gaza are starving, without a health care system or other basic needs, denied electricity (cooling, food storage, running water) by a terrifying collusion between Israel and the corrupt Palestinian Authority, and trapped at closed borders by agreement between Israel and Egypt. Palestinians have been undergoing some version of these abuses for 65 years. And Chechnya is your problem? (Of course it is – but Palestine should be too.)

7. “You’re condemning a Jewish-only state but promoting an Arab-only state?!”

Who TF is promoting an Arab-only state? Anti-Zionism opposes the Zionist idea of a state that grants different rights to different groups of people. Supporting Palestinian rights doesn’t mean expelling Jews, it means making people equal and ending the pretense that Palestinians don’t have a right to live freely in Palestine. It also means undoing  some of Israel’s illegal actions, like expelling Palestinians from their homes. Wondering what that would look like? Read one possibility here.



8. “Saying Jews are white is only logical if you’re anti-Semitic!”


Not at all. European Jews were once marginalized as a race, excluded from civic life and political and economic power. Today, they are generally not. White supremacists do indeed target all Jews as a race, and as they gain power, European Jewish inclusion is less stable. But the claim that European Jews are people of color – as it has been made lately by Zionists – is a coded claim that European Jews are marginalized in US and Western society like black people and historically colonized people. And that claim is untrue.


Jews from outside of Europe are people of color, including Arab, Asian, and other Jewish people. Some Jews from POC heritage have white privilege, including political and economic power, that has been created by the whitening of European Jews and the complicated nature of Jewish racialization. Recognizing those Jews as people of color is a way of recognizing and undoing Zionism’s portrayal of Jews and Israel as “European.” At the same time, it’s important to notice when “people of color” is being used to describe people who have and are exercising power – for example, the Israeli military – as if they were disempowered.



9. “What about Arab oppression of minorities?!”

There’s a robust discussion of racism and classism in Arab communities. Pay attention. No need for people from a country with a white supremacist and queer-phobic president, police force, and militia movement to be all that smug.



10. “Do you protest Pakistani, Saudi, Iranian apartheid?!”

QAIA works on the issue of Zionist violence, US support for it, and Israeli pinkwashing. We are proud and supportive of other anti-racist and anti-colonial activists around the globe (and we can’t help it: we especially love the queer ones.) There are SO MANY other issues that also need attention. We encourage trolls to get off our Facebook and go address them.



11. “I oppose occupation/acknowledge Israeli apartheid exists, but I’m still a Zionist.”


Yeah… no.




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"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.

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New Yorkers ask City Councilmembers to skip racist Israel junket

QAIA joins with the 65+ New York City community groups calling on our elected officials -- many of whom are in the LGBT and Progressive Caucuses of the NYC Council -- to skip a trip to Israel. Below is the text of the letter.

The 9-day junket (!) is paid for and organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the United Jewish Appeal. NYC Councilmembers who are planning to go on the Feb. 15 junket are: City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Members Mark Treyger, Brad Lander, Antonio Reynoso, David Greenfield, Rafael Espinal, Darlene Mealy, Mark Levine, Helen Rosenthal, Corey Johnson, Ritchie Torres, Andrew Cohen, Donovan Richards, Eric Ulrich, and James Van Bramer.

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OPEN LETTER 

As a diverse coalition of concerned New Yorkers and grassroots social justice groups, we urge you to exercise the responsibility entrusted to you as elected officials by declining to accept an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, scheduled for February 2015 and sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and United Jewish Appeal, which inaccurately claim to speak for the Jewish community. Do not neglect your official responsibilities to our diverse city by touring an apartheid state.

In light of the 2014 massacre in Gaza that killed over 2,300 people, including over 500 children, (1) injured over 10,000 (2), and left countless others displaced and psychologically scarred (3), this trip would be an exercise in misinformation. You will not see Israel’s Apartheid Wall, four times longer and twice as high as the Berlin Wall. Nor will you traverse the labyrinth of military checkpoints that West Bank Palestinians encounter daily. You will not walk Gaza’s decimated streets to speak to residents about their murdered families, or the poverty imposed upon 1.8 million people, mostly refugees, in an open-air prison one-third the size of New York City. (4)

As New Yorkers, we recognize that the struggle for social and racial justice in our own city is deeply connected to that of the Palestinian people. Israel’s callous disregard for international human rights norms and the impunity enjoyed by Israeli police and occupation forces cannot be viewed apart from the near-total lack of accountability mirrored by the NYPD and other police forces as they target communities of color in the United States.

In recent weeks, many of us joined demonstrations to protest the killings of countless Black people by police forces across the country. Members of City Council also protested these killings. However, these gestures are wholly incompatible with participating in a private tour funded by special interests hoping to legitimize Israel’s laws discriminating against its Palestinians citizens and the violence it inflicts upon Palestinians under military occupation. To demonstrate in support of racial justice while participating in a tour of apartheid is a fundamental contradiction.

International law requires Israel to protect the civilian population in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, yet it has repeatedly failed to do so. The world has witnessed Israel’s increasingly horrendous war crimes, from the fatal shootings of protesters in the West Bank (5) to the horrific slaughter in Gaza. Strengthening cultural, business, and educational ties to a state engaged in these ongoing transgressions is not a proper goal for our city.

The trip is especially worrisome given the NYPD’s long history of cooperation with Israeli forces, including its 2012 establishment of an office in Kfar Saba, just outside of Tel Aviv, funded with our taxes. (6) NYPD officers, including former Commissioner Ray Kelly, have joined at least 9,000 US law enforcement officials on trips to Israel. (7)

These junkets have an undeniable effect on NYPD policies. A former official described the Department’s notorious Demographics Unit, disbanded in April after outrage followed revelations of its unconstitutional surveillance of Muslim communities, as “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.” (8)

At a time of public outrage over police brutality, participation in a delegation ignoring Israeli policies that inspired and reinforced unjust tactics of the NYPD can only aggravate New Yorkers’ concerns. Any trip in support of Israel conflicts with a concern over domestic police abuses. Finally, accepting this invitation would breach a request for solidarity from Palestinian civil society organizations, who have called for boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel until it “meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.” (9)

These demands, which have inspired a robust movement with international support, call on citizens and public officials alike to do their part in bringing comprehensive justice and peace to the region. Being part of this trip is the equivalent of crossing an international picket line. In a year when the people across the world have been inspired by the Palestinian people’s resistance to an unjust occupation, and at a moment of heightened political tension in our city, participating in an all-expense-paid vacation to a country committing war crimes enabled by United States tax dollars would be viewed by many as entirely inappropriate.

  In the spirit of the progressive values you espouse, we urge you to withdraw from this delegation. We are eager to dialogue and will follow up with your offices in the coming weeks.

Sincerely, The Undersigned Groups


SIGNERS ON THE OPEN LETTER (as of Jan. 10, 2015)

Jewish Voice for Peace - New York
Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel
Direct Action Frontfor Palestine
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
Jews Say No!
Granny Peace Brigade
CUNY for Palestine
Students for Justice in Palestine Chapters: Hunter, Brooklyn College, Pace, NYU, Columbia, CUNY School of Law, College
of Staten Island, John Jay
CODEPINK NYC
Women in Black Union Square
NYC Solidarity with Palestine
We Are All Dominican
Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism
Librarians and Archivists with Palestine
New Day Church
Existence is Resistance
Queens Families Speak Out
MADRE
Center for Constitutional Rights
Palestine Solidarity Legal Support
Laborfor Palestine
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network - New York
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
New York City Labor Against the War
Boricuas for Palestine
People Power Movement
Brooklyn For Peace
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership (NYACT)
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
VirtualBoricua.org
Trinity Lutheran Church (Brooklyn)
American Muslimsfor Palestine
Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)
Breakaway
National Lawyers Guild, NYC Chapter
North Manhattan Neighbors for Peace
West-Park Presbyterian Church
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition
International Socialist Organization (ISO)
Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV)/Organizing Asian Communities
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)
Campaign to End the New Jim Crow-NY
Freedom Road Socialist Organization, NY/NJ District
(continued)St. Michael's Task Force on Israel Palestine
Park Slope Food Coop Members for BDS
Irish Queers
Rising Tide NYC
Critical Resistance, NYC Chapter
YaYa Network
Washington Heights Women In Black
Queens Peace Council
War Resisters League, National Office
Justice Committee

Notes:
1) Ma’an News Agency | maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=751290
2) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs | ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_04_09_2014.pdf
3) Washington Post | wapo.st/1uq7cHK
4) British Broadcasting Company - Profile: Gaza Strip | bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19975211
5) Amnesty International | amnesty.org/en/news/trigger-happy-israeli-army-and-police-use-reckless-force-west-bank-2014-02-27
6) Al Monitor | al-monitor.com/pulse/security/01/09/nypd-kfar-saba-branch-new-york-p.html
7) Al-Akhbar | al-akhbar.com/content/occupation-%E2%80%9Coccupy%E2%80%9D-israelification-american-domestic-security
8) Associated Press | ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2011/With-CIA-help-NYPD-moves-covertly-in-Muslim-areas
9) BDS National Committee | bdsmovement.net/call

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GCN calls it: LGBT pols' "perfect inversion" of reality

Gay City News' editor Paul Schindler writes this week about the shameful behavior of LGBT elected officials. (First they failed to confront the LGBT Center's pusillanimous failure to stand up for the queer community's right to have its own ideas; then they piled on with a scandalous failure of their own.)

Schindler's letter speaks for itself. The queer community has spoken for itself, too. Deafening silence persists, though, from the other queer institutions who would be our "leaders."

LGBT Community Center: A Bad Policy Ended Badly (2/27/13)

BY PAUL SCHINDLER | Turning a corner on an unhappy episode in the history of New York’s LGBT Community Center that lasted nearly two years, the Center announced on February 15 that it was ending its “indefinite moratorium” on renting space to organizations that “organize around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The difficulties began in the spring of 2011 when several well-known supporters of Israel, springing into action at the urging of gay porn entrepreneur Michael Lucas, complained the Center was renting space to Siege Busters, a group challenging the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, for a commemoration of Israeli Apartheid Week, a worldwide protest aimed at the Jewish state over its policies toward its Palestinian residents.

In response to the complaints, the Center canceled that gathering, explaining that Siege Busters was not an LGBT group and was bringing undue controversy into the West 13th Street facility’s operations. When others then criticized the Center for betraying a tradition of open access, it held a town hall meeting to vent the issue and also hired a consulting firm to advise it on establishing a new policy.

In the meanwhile, the Center accepted space reservations from a second group, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which had an overlapping membership with Siege Busters. When complaints quickly resurfaced, the Center canceled the final two of QAIA’s three dates and announced the “indefinite moratorium.”

Given that the Center had engaged outside consultants to advise them, it was not unreasonable to hope that the “indefinite moratorium” would yield in some reasonable period of time to a coherent access policy honoring the traditions of a community center serving diverse populations. No new policy, however, was forthcoming.

Until, that is, the Center faced an uproar over its denial of space to QAIA for a reading by noted author, novelist, playwright, and activist Sarah Schulman from her book “Israel/ Palestine and the Queer International.” Schulman is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement aimed at punishing Israel economically for its Palestinian policies. She is also a New York lesbian leader of 30 years, and her exclusion from the Center proved a bigger challenge than the untenable policy — which was really an abdication of responsibility for making policy — could absorb.

In the day or so after the story broke on February 13, Center staff adamantly denied there was any contemplation of a change in policy — and then suddenly late on a Friday afternoon, new guidelines were announced. The nearly instantaneous release of a statement from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and three other out gay and lesbian elected officials made it clear they were working hand in glove with Center officials to tamp down the latest crisis.

The new guidelines can be made to work. The Center has for some time had a policy requiring groups renting space to sign a pledge that they are non-discriminatory and do not engage in bigotry or hate speech. Disavowing any intention to “pre-vet” groups asking for space or the content they will present, the Center has put the onus on those charging any group with bigotry or hate speech to come forward with a formal written complaint.

Personally, I am not thrilled at the prospect of signing a statement attesting that “I am not now nor ever have been” engaged in hate speech. On the other hand, the Center has an obligation to create a space where people are free from discrimination and bigotry, so an overall policy and pledge addressing discrimination, bigotry, and hate speech — if required universally with appropriate due process and evidentiary standards — can be an acceptable approach.

I am not encouraged, however, by the way the Center framed its February 15 announcement, nor am I happy about the manner in which the public officials chimed in.

The Center’s announcement would have us believe that the change of heart resulted from the salutary effects of a moratorium that “allowed things to cool down and gave us time to rethink the Center’s space use policies.” Baloney. It came in response to an angry community reaction to the snub of Schulman.

This is no academic question, because in the next paragraph, when discussing the pledge required of space renters, the announcement states, “we deplore the rhetoric of hate and bigotry.” If the policy change had come in its own time, that statement might be seen as a umpire’s neutral observation. Articulated as part of a reversal of another recent denial of space to QAIA, it is clear finger-pointing at the critics of Israel. Not only is the statement unnecessary but it flies in the face of the Center’s avowed intention to stay out of the Israeli/ Palestinian controversy. The Center was clearly covering its butt against charges it had caved to Israel-haters.

I wouldn’t use the word apartheid in describing Israel’s policies toward its Palestinian residents and neighbors, much as I have problems with the way in which Israeli politics has retreated from any sincere commitment to working toward humanitarian solutions to the tragedy faced by the Palestinian people. I don’t like use of the word for the same reason I reject glib comparisons to the Nazi regime, to slavery, or to Jim Crow racism. Just as with the challenges facing LGBT people, I think we should talk about the difficulties confronting the Palestinians — and the culpability Israel might have in that regard — in language specific to the situation. I don’t see any purpose served by saying, “You don’t have to bother educating yourself about Israel and Palestine, it’s just like the former white regime in South Africa and its black majority.”

I am dismayed, however, at how much more difficult it is to have a thoughtful debate about Israel’s shortcomings in the US than it is in Israel. There, the opposition is freewheeling in its criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Here, nuanced thinking seems to pretty quickly hit a brick wall of “My Israel, Right or Wrong.”

That is surely the attitude at the heart of the disconcerting release from Quinn, City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, State Senator Brad Hoylman, and Assemblywoman Deborah Glick. After praising the Center for finding an approach that will maximize access, the four gratuitously added, “That said, we want to make abundantly clear that we categorically reject attempts by any organization to use the Center to delegitimize Israel and promote an anti-Israel agenda.” Then, in a perfect inversion of what actually happened over the past two years on West 13th Street, they continued, “We adamantly oppose any and all efforts to inappropriately inject the Center into politics that are not the core of their important mission.”

If only they could have left it at a paraphrase of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s rebuke of those who threatened to punish Brooklyn College for hosting a BDS forum — and said simply, “If you want to go to a community center where the government or a board of directors meeting in private decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you look for a community center in North Korea.”

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The Nation: Victory, except on PEPs.

Lisa Duggan's new piece continues The Nation's coverage of how "progressive" electeds routinely throw Palestinians (and Muslims, and Arabs, and more...) under the bus. Indeed, there's a set of "Progressive, Except Palestine" politicians who draw funding and political capital from the pro-Israel lobby to support whatever moderately left-of-center work they do on fair wages, housing, policing, etc.

The more the pro-Israel lobby extracts from those PEPs, though, the further they're pushed into right-wing positions. And the more the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab underpinnings of the whole project peek through, the harder it is to preserve even the appearance of being progressive. Is a challenge beginning to emerge?

A New Consensus on Public Space and 'Free' Speech on Israel/Palestine in New York City

"It looks like a quick and decisive victory for the champions of free speech. But was it? Well, yes and no. The new consensus, evidently palatable to city politicians and the center’s major donors, now includes stated support for free speech and open discussion, sans demands and threats against public and community institutions that sponsor politically controversial events. But this openness comes with the ongoing requirement that public officials and community institutions ritually invoke their solid support for Israel’s policies and their disgust at critiques of those policies, critiques that are seen as always already underwriting anti-Semitic bigotry and hate speech."

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Getting personal with Michael Lucas (thanks, Mondoweiss.)

We don't like to pay much attention to Michael Lucas. Yes, he was the initiator of the "Muslim panic" at the LGBT Center which led to the Center's horrifying series of repressive actions: panic-cancelling a Palestine-related event; holding a kangeroo "community forum" in which they totally ignored the calls of the queer community to resist the panic; suddenly reframing the Center's mission as fulfilling social service contracts instead of being home to a community engaged in messy but important self-determination; totally ignoring the calls from queers of color, immigrant queers, trans people etc. that the Center's actions were further closing it off to queers who are already marginalized; banning all mention of Palestine (unless you could talk about Palestine without talking about Israel's occupation, so... just all mention of Palestine); refusing for two years to meet with the community or discuss the issue; and generally acting like a right-wing fortress instead of a community center.

But Lucas, we always say, is not the point. The point is the Center and the web of politics and money -- mostly not queer at all --- that seeks to squash critiques of Israel.

That said, it's worth a moment to look at who Michael Lucas is. Two reasons: first, he's a major advance-man for pinkwashing. Maybe he's to the right of other defenders of apartheid like Stuart Appelbaum, but his extremeness gives them cover to claim that they're centrists. And the queers who are reached by his porn may not be activists, but their consumption of pro-Israel, anti-Arab propaganda definitely shapes the queer community as a whole.

Second, Lucas' extremeness doesn't rob him of credibility as it should. He's the partner of the Center's former board chair. He's a full-fledged, much accepted member of a social network that includes wealthy and powerful queers -- in fact, Lambda Legal held a Fire Island fundraiser at his house last year. There is a massive failure of queer power brokers and institutions to say "this guy is a known racist, let's stay away" -- much less challenge him.

So let's have a look. Mondoweiss posted a story last week with some links to Lucas' history. We've all been quoting his well-known, deeply revolting statement about Muslims, reposted in Queerty in 2008:

'I hate Muslims, absolutely. It's a horrible, horrible religion. It's a plague. People ignore me the way they ignore Rush Limbaugh because he’s a drug addict. Michael Lucas is just a porn star. People take time to call me irrelevant. They write three detailed pages on a blog about my irrelevance. … There are moments in life when silence is your fault and truth is your responsibility. The religion, the institution, the system of Islam — they are as talented and creative and passionate as anyone else. But they’re stuck in a horrible lie, brainwashed from birth to death. And now they have been stuck in time Jsince the 7th century. They have not contributed to civilization in any way, in any field — political thought, science, music, architecture, nothing for century after century. What do they produce? Carpets. That's how they should travel because that’s the only way they travel without killing people.'

But Mondoweiss rightly prompts us to look further. Let's get really familiar with this beast. Let's all primary-sourced on his ass.

• Here are his ravings at The Advocate.
• Here's a 2008 article at the Forward where Lucas talks about his pinkwashing initiative. ('“Nobody goes to Israel for Golda Meir, I’m so sorry,” Lucas said in heavily Russian-accented English."')
• Here's a 2008 US News article that references Lucas' NY Blade piece (no longer online) in which he compares the Koran to Mein Kampf.
• Here's a blog repost of an unhinged Frontpage Mag interview with Lucas.

("Europe is very anti-Semitic and very nationalistic, which is a bit different than in America... It was not the primitive, Russian form of anti-Semitism, but rather a ridiculous Germanic form. They were obviously taught not to act on their anti-Semitism, but rather to keep their mouths shut. I remember when I would say that I was Jewish, people would reply, “No problem.” I would tell them that I didn’t care whether they had a problem or not. Then they will say, “When I talk to you, I don’t see a Jew, I see Michael.” My response was usually, “Where the hell are you looking?” So the Germans and I were not on great terms. As for the French, I shouldn’t even begin to elaborate. They completely sold themselves to Sons of Allah. If a Muslim steals your wallet, he will claim that he chased you down because you hate Muslims and not because he stole from you.")

• Here's the Boston Edge article, cited in Mondoweiss, about the uproar at Stanford over Lucas' appearance there. That appearance led to a dialogue in and around the Stanford Daily (no longer online) in which Lucas reiterated everything hateful he'd previously said about Muslims, queers who don't agree with him, and everyone else.
• Here is a celebratory repost, on jihadwatch.org, of Lucas' retort in the Stanford Daily to those who called out his racist rants.

There's nothing reticent about the guy. Let's look at the other places he's been, and the other things he's said.

And let's not let people, politicians or institutions get away with staying connected to him.

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Paisley Currah on standing up to NYC's "Progressive Except Palestine" Councilmembers

Paisley Currah writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the furor over Brooklyn College's Poli Sci department co-sponsoring a talk on BDS.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/02/05/a-melee-grows-in-brooklyn/

"...The usual suspects—New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz—piled on, and the rhetoric escalated. “We’re talking about the potential for a second Holocaust here,” one assemblyman told The Daily Beast. I’ve gotten hate mail and a death threat. I’ve been attacked in the media—I’m a “coward,” says Hikind; I’m an expert not on government or politics but on “transgender rights” (apparently that’s an insult), writes a conservative columnist in the New York Post.
...
"But late last week, the game changed when President Gould received two letters from elected officials. The first, from Congressman Jerrold Nadler and 18 other self-identified “progressive” legislators (including three other members of Congress and leading mayoral candidates) describes the BDS movement as “wrongheaded and destructive” and calls “for Brooklyn College’s political science department to withdraw their endorsement of this event.” The second, from Lewis Fidler, assistant majority leader of the New York City Council and nine other city councilors, is even more chilling:

'A significant portion of the funding of CUNY schools comes directly from the tax dollars of the people of the State of New York. Every year, we legislators are asked for additional funding to support programs and initiatives at these schools and we fight hard to secure those funds. Every one of those dollars given to CUNY, and Brooklyn College, means one less dollar going to some other worthy purpose. We do not believe this program is what the taxpayers of our City—many of who [sic] would feel targeted and demonized by this program—want their tax money to be spent on.'"

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