"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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"Not so complicated": Discussing pinkwashing in Washington Blade

US queers are increasingly familiar with pinkwashing and Israeli apartheid, but as they say, solidarity is complicated. Getting information, separating information from propaganda, and entering accountably into public discussion about Israel, Palestine and particularly queers requires a lot of careful work.

Here, Pauline Park engages the Washington Blade's Kevin Naff. Naff recently returned from a sponsored tour to Israel, on which some participants got the sense that there was more to the story of Israel than "gay heaven", and called on their handlers to connect them with Palestinian voices.

Kevin Naff's reportback: Is Israel ‘gay heaven?’ It’s complicated  

"Some critics claim the country’s embrace of LGBT rights is merely a propaganda effort to claim the mantle of modernity and establish a stark contrast to homophobic regimes in the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East... I’m not convinced. Politics is about the art of the possible, not the ideal and certainly not the perfect. Sometimes we have to accept imperfect solutions or motives in the interest of securing protections for people in need... Our group trip featuring nine outspoken American LGBT advocates is simply not possible anywhere else in the region."

Pauline Park's response: Pinkwashing & Israeli occupation – not so complicated

"Naff is in fact rearticulating... the attempt to use Israel’s record on gay rights (supposedly better than that of its Arab and Muslim neighbors) as a justification for an Israeli occupation that is illegal under international law, or at the very least as a means to distract attention from it... [Is] the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestine really that complicated?... [The] occupation makes no exception for Palestinians who might be LGBT/queer, who face the same restrictions and daily humiliations living under Israeli occupation as non-LGBT Palestinians. And contrary to propaganda in circulation, Israel is not and cannot be a haven or a refuge for LGBT Palestinians because there is no such thing as refugee status for non-Jews in Israel, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity."

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After the QPH forum: More straight people tell queers how great Israel is for us.

From Pauline, a heads up about the Queens Chronicle's reaction to the Palestine forum at Queens Pride House:

Attached are the news story & the editorial that the Queens Chronicle just published on the Israel/Palestine forum that we had at Queens Pride House on Tuesday. As you can see, the article is a pretty 'straight forward' news story, even if the reporter did get QAIA's name wrong. The editorial, on the other hand, is more like a scene from "The Empire Strikes Back." 

While the editorial is extremely misguided, just spewing talking points from the pinkwashing playbook, I think both the editorial & the news story represent something of a breakthrough, as they're the first instances I'm aware of that a Queens publication has published an article using the terms 'pinkwashing' & 'Israeli apartheid,' much less focusing on Israel/Palestine as an LGBT issue.

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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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Dueling op-eds: NY Post & NY Daily News

Can it be that that the doomed, wrongheaded effort to repress speech at a City University has ended decades of blackout on public debate on BDS, queers, silencing criticism of Israel and EVERYTHING!!!? Today, Omar Barghouti talks gentle sense in the Daily News! Alan Dershowitz spews victimology and hate (targeting CUNY again, and queers too) in the NY Post! The floor is open, people.

Barghouti:

"Our opponents call us “Jew haters.” That is a lie and a slander. BDS advocates equal rights for all and consistently opposes all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. In fact, many progressive Jewish activists, intellectuals, students, feminists and others participate in and sometimes lead BDS campaigns in Western countries. The increasing impact of Israeli supporters of BDS has led the Knesset to pass a draconian anti-boycott law banning advocacy of any boycott against Israel or its complicit institutions..."

"...Building on its global ascendance, the BDS movement is spreading across the U.S., especially on campuses and in churches. Multi-million-dollar campaigns by Israel’s foreign ministry to counter BDS by “rebranding” through art, science and cynically using LGBT rights to “pinkwash” Israel’s denial of basic Palestinian rights have failed to stem the tide."

Dershowitz:

"Are the media supposed to be so impressed with Israel’s pro-gay policies that they no longer cover the Palestinian issue? Well, that certainly hasn’t worked.Are gays around the world supposed to feel so indebted to Israel that they no longer criticize the Jewish nation? That surely hasn’t worked, either — witness the increasingly rabid anti-Israel advocacy by some radical gay groups..." 

"...But to the anti-Semite, it doesn’t matter how Jews manage their supposed manipulations. The anti-Semite just knows that there’s something sinister at work if Jews do anything positive. The core characteristic of anti-Semitism is the certainty that everything the Jews do is wrong, and everything that’s wrong is done by the Jews."

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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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Sarah unpacks it for you in 5 minutes or less.

One thing you can say about Sarah Schulman: she has a knack for wading into a somewhat complex issue that has nice liberals wringing their hands about what's right and how to walk the delicate line between (for instance) anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism (they're not worrying about the line between Zionism and anti-Arab racism in this example) -- and she can pick up that line like a freakin' javelin and stab waffling in the heart.

Which is to say, this is a refreshing little interview.

Saeed Jones' BuzzFeed interview with Sarah Schulman:

'It's hard to understand the logic of the LGBT Center. At the failed community meeting with their director, Glennda Tentone and her board, there were no Jews on staff, yet they kept telling us that this censorship would make the Center a 'safe space" for Jews! It was bizarre, especially considering that Jews like myself, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Judith Butler, Joan Nestle etc were among the 1500 people who signed a petition for an open center. It seems that they hold cliched and stereotyped beliefs about punitive rich Jews who will pull out their Jew-money if anyone criticizes Israel, and it was this misguided prejudice that lead them to defensively ban any criticism of Israel. I know it sounds insane, but I honestly think that that is what happened. A weird kind of anti-semitism combined with a profound lack of intelligence and integrity.'

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Gay City News: LGBT Center Bars Sarah Schulman Reading

LGBT Center Bars Sarah Schulman Reading

'A leading queer community author was barred from an appearance at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center apparently because the book she was to discuss deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.' 

'“We requested space for me to do a presentation of my new book ‘Israel/ Palestine and the Queer International,’ which has gotten a good review in the Lambda Literary Review,” wrote Sarah Schulman in a February 11 email. “It is amazing to me that after all my work in the community, I could be refused a platform to present a queer book.”'

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Gay institutions vs. progressive queers, in the Village Voice ("Does Gay Inc. believe in free speech?")

We've been thinking it, you've been thinking it, and now the Village Voice's Steven Thrasher has written an excellent article on it: GLAAD, HRC, the LGBT Center and other gay institutions are obstacles to queer community organizing, not helpers. They answer to their boards full of finance industry gay-bots, not queers. They use queers -- and especially queer tragedies of violence and exclusion -- as their platform for taking a seat at the table with corporations and politicians. There, they hold on to power by not making waves, and pulling the curtain over queers who do.

The article is "Does 'Gay, Inc.' believe in free speech? In the battle over gay rights, dissent during wartime isn't always tolerated."  It ranges over the Center's weird, wrong banning of Palestine-supporting queer groups, and the larger lockdown on queer political organizing that squeezes out "radical" ideas like ensuring that all people can access health care. It charts the almost-funny contortions that BGOs have to go through to define homophobia and equality in ways that serve them, but make no sense in real life. Here are some pull-outs:

'I first learned the term "Gay Inc." from Lieutenant Dan Choi when I was writing a profile about him in 2010... Choi was a darling of the gay establishment, including the Human Rights Campaign, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, and the Courage Campaign. His name was attached to e-mail blasts routinely to raise money or rally activists.

But Choi was so outspoken, he couldn't really be "handled." He chafed at the PR box Gay Inc. tried to put him in and was apt to go "off message" anytime. He described Gay Inc. as "those groups so desperate for a place at the table, they'll do anything to keep their place at the table."

By the day "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was first on the floor of the U.S. Senate in September of 2010, Choi had worn out his welcome. As we got lunch in the cafeteria before the failed vote, a good chunk of Gay Inc.—HRC, SLDN, and various staffers of Democratic legislators—was assembled at one table like a high school clique. Choi was clearly at odds with them.

Almost two years later, I was reporting last week from the East Room of the White House as much of Gay Inc. attended President Obama's LGBT Pride Month reception. There was no denying, as the president affirmed his commitment to a number of Gay Inc.'s issues, that there is a benefit to having a place at the table. But many of the most radical voices that had helped push Obama to that point (including Choi) were noticeably absent.'

and

'The first and only time I covered an HRC event in person was on the eve of the National Equality March in 2009 in Washington, D.C. President Obama addressed 3,000 donors at a black-tie gala in the Washington Convention Center, but he was only a warm-up act, he joked, for a rising talent named Lady Gaga. 

The real stars of the evening for me (a neophyte at such functions) were the ads. There were endless videos promoting various corporations, mostly defense contractors. Like supporting a telecom merger, I wondered naively, "What does peddling the latest hardware in the military-industrial complex have to do with being gay?"'

There's more -- it's a good read! One correction to the article: ACT UP chapters around the country have been demanding single payer health care for many years. Real queer organizing lives on in the shadow of the Gay Inc. behemoths.

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Pinkwashing is NPR's top story right now!

This story popped up on NPR's All Things Considered this afternoon, and this evening it's the top story on NPR's website!

It's pretty straightforward reporting on the issue: Israel is unpopular so it's doing intensive PR, it's using queers as fodder and massively overblowing its queer progress, and the occupation is still a war crime that can't be papered over. Couldn't be simpler.

Full text is below, but go read it on NPR's website.

June 4, 2012

The sun is setting, gay pride flags wave next to the water, same-sex couples kiss and cuddle on the beach. This is Tel Aviv — which the government of Israel is now pushing as one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world — and gay tourism is booming.

"It's a place you have to go, good parties, nice people, beautiful people and just different from all the other tourist destinations you can go to," says Jorg Grosskopf, a German tourist who, together with his partner, Peter, is on his seventh vacation in Israel.

Tel Aviv will host its annual gay pride parade June 8. The government and organizers say it's expected to be the biggest one ever.

The government of Israel is styling the country as a haven for the gay community. But it's more than just beaches, parades and clubs. Israel has laws protecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community.

"LGBT rights in Israel are truly an achievement," says Itai Pinkas, a former Tel Aviv council member. "It's an obligation to show to the world."

Pinkas notes that gays can openly serve in the Israeli army. Gay marriages from other countries are respected. However, Israel's religious authorities, who control marriages in the country, do not sanction civil marriages, a prohibition that covers both heterosexual and same-sex couples.

Drawing Comparisons In The Region

The LGBT community has other protections as well, which is not the case in other parts of the Middle East, Pinkas says.

"People should not forget that our neighborhood is not a good one for gays, as for women, as for anyone who is not religious or very conservative," he says.

EnlargeKfir Sivan/Israel Sun/Landov

Thousands of members of Israel's gay community and its supporters marched on June 11, 2010, in the annual gay pride parade in Tel Aviv. The parade began in central Tel Aviv and ended at the city's beachfront.

However, even within Israel, acceptance of the gay community is not universal. Jerusalem, for example, is just an hour's drive from Tel Aviv, but is far more conservative, and there is less tolerance for the gay community.

Not everyone in the gay-rights community agrees that the government should be taking credit for any progress that has occurred.

"They don't have the right to claim fame on that," says Mike Hamel, who is on the board of Israel's National LGBT Task Force, a private organization.

"If Israel is a haven for the LGBT community, it's because of the community, the organizations that are working very hard to make it a good place for LGBT people to live," he says. "It's not because of the government policies. It's in spite of the government policies."

Generally speaking, Hamel says successive governments have not been supportive of gay rights, and it took legal challenges for there to be progress — a pattern that continues today.

For example, a recent bid to include a specific clause barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in a student-rights bill was blocked by Israel's justice minister, Yaakov Neeman, who is a member of a religious party.

Israel's current government is a coalition that includes several conservative religious parties that control sensitive ministries such as justice and the interior — ones that control what services and rights the gay community has, Hamel says.

"When it comes to practical things, we still have a hard battle to fight," he says.

Other critics accuse the government of what they call "pinkwashing."

Gay groups that support the Palestinian bid for an independent state use the phrase to describe Israel's public relations strategy. They charge that the Israeli government is highlighting the rights enjoyed by the gay community in Israel to obscure the occupation of the Palestinians.

"Israel is a wonderful country in many ways. The sea is beautiful, it's a wonderful country for high-tech, and they've made a lot of progress in terms of gay rights," says Sari Bashi, who is with the Israeli human rights group Gisha, which advocates on behalf of the Palestinians. "It doesn't change the fact that what is going on in the occupied territories is a severe violation of human rights that needs to be stopped."

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At NYC Israel parade, QAIA challenges "gay rights" diversion from apartheid laws

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
Date: June 3, 2010

"QUEERS AGAINST ISRAELI APARTHEID" PROTEST AT NYC ISRAEL PARADE
Protesters denounce Israeli government plan to use pro-gay messages to divert attention from apartheid laws; challenge Quinn to oppose anti-Muslim discrimination at LGBT Center

New York - 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.

For more information: queersagainstisraeliapartheid.blogspot.com

###

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Hanging out the pinkwashing: word is on the street.

It took a while, but after 5 years of Israeli PR targeted at LGBT tourists, queers are finally succeeding in blowing the lid off the Israeli government's pinkwashing campaign. Just as pro-Israel/pro-Apartheid newspapers are full of claims (like this one) that queers should adore Israel and despise Palestinians, LGBT newspapers are increasingly full of calls to refuse the hate bait. Here are this week's bits:

• Calling Israel to task - Philadelphia Gay News (About the Equality Forum's plan to highlight Israel as its "featured nation" at its conference this year.)
• U.S. LGBT group tours Palestine - The Bay Area Reporter
• Protest Hits Ongoing Ban on Israeli-Palestinian Debate at NYC LGBT Center - Gay City News

...And a must-read from Israel's Alternative Information Center (plus credit for photo above):
Israel seeks minorities, gays for propaganda efforts

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Video, articles & speak-outs from "Occupy the Center!"

Video

• #Occupy The NYC LGBT Community Center for Queer Palestinians (Siegebusters Ban)
• Occupy the Center M3: "There is a Check Point Around this Center! Check this."

Articles

• Gay City News: Protest Hits Ongoing Ban on Israeli-Palestinian Debate at NYC LGBT Center
• Times of Israel: Anti-Israel protesters return to New York LBGT center

Speak-outs (in chronological order)

• Emmaia Gelman - Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
• Tara Tabassi & Ana Conor - FIERCE
• Heidi Boghosian - National Lawyers Guild
• Darnell Moore - US LGBTQ Delegation to Palestine 2012
• Judith Butler - Queer scholar
• Pauline Park - QAIA & NYAGRA
• Caroline Klaasen - Jewish Voice for Peace/Young, Jewish & Proud
• Dave Lippmann - Musician (click on "Real Community.mp3")

These lists will be updated as coverage is posted online. Thanks to everyone who helped document this event!

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Pinkwashing hits the New York Times!

Queers have known about pinkwashing for a good while. But because queers are now the sacred darlings of liberals (or at least, nice queers are) it's been hard to crack through the well-meant mainstream's idea that Palestinian queers are better off with Israel.

Sarah Schulman's op-ed in the New York Times finally gets pinkwashing the huge exposure it deserves. She hits not just the pinkwashing of Israeli apartheid, but the use of queers to demonize Muslims and Arabs far beyond Palestine. And not too soon: QAIA's battles in NYC have been framed nearly as much by the general Muslim-hating of powerful New York institutions as by pro-Israel drum-beating. It's the logical extension of the post-911 freakout: not only are Muslims terrorists who are always a step away from procuring bombs, but they're homophobes all the time!

"...depictions of immigrants — usually Muslims of Arab, South Asian, Turkish or African origin — as “homophobic fanatics” opportunistically ignore the existence of Muslim gays and their allies within their communities. They also render invisible the role that fundamentalist Christians, the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Jews play in perpetuating fear and even hatred of gays. And that cynical message has now spread from its roots in European xenophobia to become a potent tool in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

That connection is at the heart of many QAIA folks' willingness to focus on fighting the LGBT Center and the bigots who turned human rights organizing into a "controversy" in the queer community, even though it's something of a distraction from more direct Palestine anti-apartheid work.

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'The Center Cannot Hold' - Jasbir Puar on queer anti-occupation activism (not at the Center.)

Jasbir Puar writes about why Palestinian queers are not devoting resources to fighting the LGBT Center's ban, and how the Center controversy has helped exposed both pinkwashing and deep conservatism in the queer community "leadership."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jasbir-k-puar/the-center-cannot-hold-th_b_991572.html

"Calls for free speech and equal access for all groups sound democratic on the face of it, but they leave unquestioned the default political positions of those running the Center; worse, it does not address the exclusionary logic of inclusion itself. If inclusion is granted without changing the terms upon which an exclusion was originally articulated, the granting of space is tokenistic at best... 

[F]or many Palestinian queers, gaining access to a LGBT Center that has positioned itself as indifferent to their concerns is a minor point in the agenda for political transformation. There is an incredible wealth of progressive queer organizing in this city that never did and never will originate or coalesce in the Center."

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Article on QFOLC, QAIA and more: "Protesting apartheid at Pride"

Here are some excerpts from "Protesting apartheid at Pride" by Frankie Cook (June 22, 2011)
http://socialistworker.org/2011/06/22/protesting-apartheid-at-pride

"While QAIA received a surprising amount of support and interest at the first two New York City-wide Pride parades, the same cannot be said of NYC LGBT Center, which has kicked pro-Palestine queers to the curb. 

...The center essentially took the same position as the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs by saying that it's illegitimate and illegal to call Israel an apartheid state. Until now, the LGBT Center has been a place where activists of all sorts have come to organize--from antiwar, to abortion rights, workers' struggles and many others. 

Activists, however, have continued to organize in groups such as the newly formed Queers for an Open LGBT Center and QAIA to demand that the center remain a safe haven of free speech and open to all types of queer organizing...

Recently in New York City, a propaganda/fundraising party was organized by the gay division of the racist Jewish National Fund--a large landowner in Israel that refuses to sell land to non-Jews--as way to build "ties" between Israel and the gay community of New York. 

To the frustration of the Israeli government, queers across the world have rejected this pinkwash within the Middle East and in Europe, Canada and the U.S. From Beirut to Jerusalem and now in New York City, LGBTQ activists have demanded human rights for all--whether they are gay, straight, Arab or Jew."

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GCN on QAIA & Queens Pride: Queer speech in queer space, what's the big deal?

Another vote against censorship, this one from the Queens Pride Committee and Councilmember Danny Dromm. From Gay City News: The World, Again, Comes to Queens.

'...Queens Pride also played host to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA), a group who used the parade to loudly voice their opposition to the Jewish state’s policies toward Palestinians....

[Councilmember Danny] Dromm voiced uncertainty about the specifics of QAIA’s stance, but said he had no doubts about their right to participate in the parade. 

 “I don’t know exactly what their stand is, although I have heard some of the press around it,” he said. “I know that the Pride Committee, when they discussed the participation of that group here, felt that, look, they’re gay, they should be allowed to march and to express their viewpoint. We all agreed on that.”'

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LGBT Center sit-in: weird success, failure & pix.

This evening's sit-in by Queers Against Israeli Occupation and Siegebusters, with support from QFOLC, went oddly unchallenged by the LGBT Center. About 60 people gathered in the lobby to hold the scheduled-then-banned QAIA meeting, since the Center had refused to allow QAIA to rent a room.

The meeting went on for about 90 minutes and broke just about every rule the Center has ever enforced about the lobby: meeting attendees sat on the floor, blocked the flow of traffic (not on purpose, but because there were so many people), spoke and applauded loudly, etc. The Center made absolutely no response -- staff just let the meeting go on. And amazingly, the sky didn't fall as queers discussed controversial topics and organized action.

While the Center was arguably wise to just let the moment pass without escalating (remember that in March they panicked and hired private security goons, ostensibly to protect the Center from the queer protest outside), it doesn't necessarily add up to good news. Instead, it seems like the Center will just go along with whatever pressure it most currently feels.

The LGBTQ community urgently needs the Center actually to stand up for queer space, for openness, for community and accountability. That includes refusing to be bullied into pushing queers out of the Center, making its operations transparent and public, and explicitly affirming that the Center is open to all facets of the community -- not just whenever it's convenient. Nothing like that happened tonight, and the fight goes on.

Here are photos from the sit-in. More will be listed here as we see them posted.
https://picasaweb.google.com/117132485970294538173/QaiaSitInPix#
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150269586599859.376954.716419858

Gay City News:

Critics of Israeli Occupation Occupy Center Lobby

Queer group terming treatment of Palestinians “apartheid” defies ban on its meetings

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Village Voice: LGBT Center's self-imposed "public humiliation."

This VV post speaks for itself. And for a lot of us.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/06/gay_center_now.php

"This is not particularly shocking, but it is the most blatantly embarrassing example of how both the Center's Board and its executive director, Glennda Testone, have been willing to placate Lucas and publicly humiliate themselves. It also shows how thoroughly they are willing to turn their backs on the Center's 28-year history as a locale of controversial free speech in order to become just another censored venue catering to influential donors."

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Gay City News sifts through the wreckage of the LGBT Center fiasco

Gay City News tries to sort out who exactly is pushing the Center to slam the door on queer political organizers. The verdict: a whole lot of Lucas' friends, Retail Workers Union leader Stuart Applebaum, maybe some elected officials (but maybe not.)

Also, GCN's Osborne asks, how much is the Center spending on a consultant to sort this out instead of actually talking to the community? (Way too much! Since bringing on the consultant, the Center's handling of the situation has just gotten worse. It's taking a major beating from all sides.)

http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/06/03/gay_city_news/news/doc4de95bd2022c0628479540.txt

"Opponents of QAIA said they spent the week following its meeting urging groups, individuals, and Center donors to contact the agency and ask it to reverse the decision, which it did on June 2... Lucas then said he had been copied on “well over 100 emails, but it's not 1,000” to the Center. Other groups and “lots of donors” contacted the Center, he said, though he would not identify any... 

Stuart Appelbaum, the openly gay president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said he had spoken with many people, including elected officials or their staff. 

"The Center is developing a new space rental policy with help from Ritchie Tye Consulting. The Center did not respond to an email asking what the consulting firm would be paid. In 2007, Ritchie Tye charged the Gay Men’s Health Crisis just under $92,000 for consulting, according to GMHC’s IRS filings from that year."

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