In support of the Chicago Dyke March, and against pausing our work on racism & state violence.

In the attacks on the organizers of the Chicago Dyke March, NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid see a panicked attempt to shut down the growing queer movement against Zionism and Israeli apartheid. To do it, they switch hats in the middle of the conversation. A Wider Bridge (“Building LGBTQ Connections With Israel”) and other Zionist activists bring political Zionist messages into a queer space, and when queers object, they say they’re being targeted as Jews. They’re not.

A Wider Bridge has made these claims of anti-Semitism (and even homophobia) in LGBTQ spaces before. They appear intended to sow Jewish mistrust of queer community.

Why would they do that? The claim that Jewish people are marginalized “even by queers, who are supposed to understand oppression” seems aimed at making Israel more appealing, more necessary, to a generation of Jews and non-Jews that increasingly rejects Israel as racist and violent. It turns the spotlight away from violent armies, cops, and the people of color they target. This is not a new practice: similar tactics were used to push Arab Jews to separate from their home communities and become Israeli. It’s a violent disruption of community, and a cruel way to use people.                            

Let’s also be clear about where this is happening. Anti-Semitism is a problem in party politics from left to right, and among the white supremacists freewheeling around the U.S. right now. It is not a problem in dyke marches or other explicitly grassroots, antiracist queer spaces. It just isn’t. What’s big in those queer community spaces are anti-Zionism and anti-pinkwashing.

In the last decade or so, virtually all the alarms raised about anti-Semitism in U.S. queer communities have been about challenges to Zionism, and have been raised by pinkwashing organizations. This is important: it means that charges of anti-Semitism in queer spaces are intentional diversions. And they work. The conversations online get so focused that they turn on individual words rather than how power is being used. They become so intense that they destroy friendships and alliances. The damage to progressive queer community seems to be deliberate.

In the last month, Zionist LGBT activists have diverted our attention from catastrophic state violence against Palestinians by claiming anti-Zionist queers are anti-Semitic and homophobic. The uproar shuts down discussion of the fact that Gaza is down to two hours of electricity per day. That Israeli settlers continue to shoot at Palestinians in their homes and streets while Israeli soldiers stand aside. That Palestinians, queer or otherwise, can’t move freely even within their shrunken, fenced-in spaces: not for medical emergencies, not for education, not for food, not for work.

Queers are fighting back against pinkwashing, and against charges that queers who oppose Zionism are “homophobic.” Now we have to fight back against the manipulation of our community conversations. Yes, it’s important to hold each other accountable in conversations about racism, including anti-Semitism, and violence. But check those conversations. If we’re not talking about power and our relationship to it, if we’re obscuring actual state violence happening now, then we’re being played. That’s how to tell when charges of anti-Semitism are being used to mess with queer movements, rather than to improve them. And that’s when to say: no more.

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NYC Pride/Resistance 2017: photos!

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Letter in support of #cancelpinkwashing: to 'Creating Change' and The Task Force

January 20, 2016

NYC QAIA stands with those LGBT community members challenging the pinkwashing of Israeli occupation and apartheid by A Wider Bridge at the Creating Change 2016 conference in Chicago, as expressed in the #cancelpinkwashing statement.

A Wider Bridge's mission is to 'pinkwash' the Israeli occupation of Palestine and generate support for Israel within the LGBT community in the United States. It serves as a front organization for the Israeli government and the Israel lobby that supports it. AWB is trying to mislead the community about the nature of the event that the National LGBTQ Task Force cancelled and then uncancelled. AWB insinuates that those who opposed the reception were targeting the shabbat service scheduled to precede it, and Jerusalem Open House, which is a co-sponsor of the event.

In fact, the anti-apartheid activists who spoke with Creating Change's Sue Hyde made clear that they were not objecting to the shabbat service or to the participation of JOH, but rather to the reception and AWB's use of it to promote the Israeli government and its illegal occupation of Palestine. AWB dishonestly portrayed the #cancelpinkwashing initiative as 'anti-Semitic.' AWB board member Dana Beyer went so far as to write a blog post on HuffingtonPost.com entitled, "National LGBTQ Task Force Censors the Jews" (1.17.16), in which she called the Task Force's initial decision to cancel the AWB event "an act of bigotry against Jewish LGBTQ persons as mean-spirited as any other."

It is well documented that the Israeli government is actively rebranding itself by using "community" organizations, mostly targeting youth and LGBT people, to make the case that Israeli is a hip Middle Eastern hangout rather than an apartheid state. The campaign's much-repeated tactic has been to slip an ostensibly Jewish cultural event onto conference agendas that is in fact intended to build support for the Israeli government -- and to cry discrimination if anyone objects. The Task Force is not the first victim of this ruse, but it has a responsibility to understand the tawdry history it is currently reenacting.

Clearly, the Task Force has not understood it yet. In the Task Force's Jan. 18 statement reversing the cancellation, executive director Rea Carey wrote: "It is our belief that when faced with choices, we should move towards our core value of inclusion and opportunities for constructive dialogue and canceling the reception was a mistake," adding, "We are aware that our original decision made it appear we were taking sides in a complex and long-standing conflict."

In fact, by reversing its original decision and re-scheduling the pinkwashing event, the Task Force is taking sides, providing a platform to build LGBT support for Israeli apartheid and occupation. The reference to 'inclusion' rings especially false as LGBT Palestinians living under the occupation are not included, given that Palestinians need special permission from the Israeli authorities to leave the West Bank, which is rarely granted.

It is not clear what the Task Force is planning when Carey says, “…we will also be creating a facilitated session for dialogue around these issues.” It is hard to imagine how this can happen when the organizers are hosting a group whose mission, again, is to build support for an apartheid state that is specifically using LGBT rights rhetoric -- and Creating Change -- to target Palestinians.

Further, we are upset that Carey felt she needed to call for "peaceful protests" should any be planned at Creating Change. Strong feelings and sharp disagreements should not lead to the assumption that a protest would be anything other than peaceful. In the current climate of Islamophobia in this country, this statement only serves to reinforce stereotypes.

An organization cannot insist that it is on the cutting edge of the pursuit of progressive social and political change when its annual conference legitimizes the pinkwashing of Israeli occupation and apartheid.

Signed,
Naomi Brussel, Leslie Cagan, and Pauline Park
on behalf of NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

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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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Action: Write to NYC Councilmembers headed to Israel

Click here to send a letter to NY City Councilmembers going on the Israel junket.

Let let them know New Yorkers are paying attention, and that we object. They've gotten hundreds of letters so far -- more than ever before.

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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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