Statement from Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
on the NYC LGBT Center’s banning of QAIA-NYC’s Sarah
Schulman reading
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is (again) appalled at the
hijacking of our NYC LGBT Community Center. At this point, the Center has banned
any discussion of Palestine – and the growing movement to support Palestinian
queers’ calls for civil and human rights – for two full years. We’re reminded
that the Center’s board enacted this ban at the instigation of an avowed
Islamophobe, who uses his wealth as a megaphone, who claimed to have organized
other wealthy gay men as a threat to the Center, and who is the partner of a
former chair of the Center’s board. The ban is not a community decision, but an
action by a few wealthy, politically-powerful people to leverage their control
of a community resource. The Center’s board and administration have refused to
meet with the community, talk to the media, or respond to queries about
excluding so many of us.
It’s worth noting that a number of groups of queers of
color, immigrants and trans people have written to the Center to report that
this ban further marginalizes them in a space that’s critical to them. The
Center is not interested.
In its latest reprehensible move, the Center refused QAIA’s
space request for a reading by Sarah Schulman from her new book, Israel/Palestine
and the Queer International. Sarah is a respected author, activist,
organizer and educator, and this book, like her other books, reflects critical
currents in the queer community. The ban on her reading insults the integrity
and intelligence of New Yorkers. The Center gave no reason for the ban, except
to refer obliquely to “Center policy.”
In banning Sarah’s reading, the Center made no distinction
between refusing space for Sarah’s reading and refusing QAIA’s particular
request for space for that reading. That’s because there is no distinction.
Sarah and QAIA are engaged in the same work. It’s that work, in which much of
the queer community is engaged, that the Center has banned.
The work of QAIA and Sarah that the Center is banning is
this:
1) exposing Israel's pinkwashing of the occupation, and
2) supporting the civil and human rights of Palestinian
queers, which are inseparable from the civil and human rights currently denied
to all Palestinians.
The Center ban covers anyone working with or in support of
Palestinian queers who are trying to secure their rights.
Meanwhile, the issues of Palestine and pinkwashing – the
Israeli government’s draping of itself in “LGBT rights” in an effort to obscure
its gross violations of civil and human rights – have come to the forefront of
queer organizing. While the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” public
relations campaign paints Israel as a gay haven, queers in Palestine are
increasingly organized and vocal. Their call to queers worldwide is that
Palestinians cannot begin to have “queer rights” under conditions where
Palestinians have no rights at all. Worldwide, queers have increasingly
responded. In fact, few issues are more front and center in queer political
organizing right now than Palestine.
The Center’s claim that its ban maintains neutrality on
Israel/Palestine is absurd. No reasonable person would interpret room rental as
an endorsement of a position. QAIA is not
neutral, but we support our community’s freedom of speech at the Center, and
would of course support the right of pro-Israel groups to meet there. The
Center is not neutral either: in banning Sarah Schulman, QAIA, Siegebusters and
any discussion which dares to touch on Palestinians, gay or not, the Center’s
board exposes its complicity with broader right-wing elements who are no
friends to LGBT people. With shady maneuvering reminiscent of the recent
attacks on Brooklyn College, they trample the rights upon which the Center was
built.
The Center’s comportment mirrors exactly the attacks on the
BDS forum at Brooklyn College. It reflects the same bias against human rights
organizing by inconvenient people, the same censorship, and the same racism. It
leverages the same complicity of “progressive” elected officials: with Brooklyn
College, they piled on in attacking discussion of Palestinian rights. Here,
they pile on with a deliberate, deafening silence in the face of racism and
exclusion. The difference between Brooklyn College and the Center is integrity:
Brooklyn College undertook its role as a taxpayer-supported institution to
preserve free speech, while the taxpayer-supported Center sets out to undermine
it.
The queer movement to expose and unravel Israel’s
pinkwashing is gaining strength. In the process, we are forced to challenge the
anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim hysteria in the US that pervades circles of
wealth and political power, which in turn support the ugliest, most bigoted
corners of the queer community. To the extent that queer institutions have
pulled those queers into their boards as fundraisers and political connectors,
we’re forced to challenge them too. We are not afraid of public discussion of
these issues; we welcome it. Those ugly forces pulling the strings of queer
communities have been hidden for too long – let’s bring them out.
For more information about QAIA:
http://queersagainstisraeliapartheid.blogspot.com
For info on the event:
http://tinyurl.com/schulman-reading
