by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Nasser Barghouti and
Sara Giordano
“Tel Aviv: This
City Is HOT!,” read the slogan on the ad, which featured three scantily clad
young men in an attempt to sell Queer tourists — Gay men in particular — on
vacationing in Israel. It was on a PowerPoint slide shown by San Diego State
University women’s studies professor Sara Giordano and Nasser Barghouti,
president of the San Diego chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee, at Canvass for a Cause headquarters in Hillcrest May 10. Giordano
and Barghouti came to talk about how Israel’s increasingly desperate attempts
to rehabilitate its international image have taken a new form: “pinkwashing,”
attempting to convince the world’s Queers that Israel is a Queer-friendly
country and deserves both political and financial support from the Queer
community.
“The term
‘pinkwashing’ was started in 2002 by Breast Cancer Action (BCA),” Giordano
explained. “As the feminist movement raised awareness of breast cancer,
corporations took over the anti-breast cancer campaigns.” What BCA was trying
to do, Giordano said, was raise awareness that companies that were cultivating
“women-friendly” images by donating to breast cancer groups and sponsoring big
events like the Susan G. Komen three-day walks were also “producing many of the
toxins that cause cancer. BCA started a campaign called ‘Think Before You
Pink.’ A lot of corporations use women’s, Gay or environmental issues to cover
up the atrocities they are involved in worldwide.”
Giordano said
that the first time the term “pinkwashing” was applied to Israel was by College
of Staten Island professor Sarah Schulman in an op-ed in the New York Times in November 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html?_r=0).
Schulman said that improvements in the status of Queers in the U.S. and western
Europe “have given rise to a nefarious phenomenon: the co-opting of white Gay
people by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political forces in western Europe and
Israel. … [D]epictions of [Muslim] 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.”
According to
Schulman’s article, Israel’s government launched an international public
relations campaign called “Brand Israel” in 2005, with help from U.S. marketing
executives. Intended to convince people in developed countries that Israel was
“relevant and modern,” the campaign included efforts to attract Queer support —
and tourist dollars — for Israel. In 2010 an Israeli Web site reported that the
Tel Aviv tourism board had allocated $90 million to sell their city as “an
international Gay vacation destination.” The campaign included depictions of
young same-sex couples and funding screenings of pro-Israel movies at Gay and
Lesbian film festivals in the U.S. Giordano explained that the “Brand Israel”
campaign was launched in response to increasing anti-Israel sentiment over its
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — and, indeed, over its colonization of
virtually all of historic Palestine.
Israeli Jews: Oppressed
Become Oppressors
Barghouti’s role
in the presentation was to explain just how Israel took over Palestine and how,
in order to rule as a minority population in the Middle East, Israelis had to
adopt many of the practices of the apartheid government in South Africa. Barghouti is Palestinian, although he was
born in Egypt after his family was driven out of historic Palestine by
Israelis, and so the issue for him is both personal and political. “The term apartheid is Afrikaans for ‘segregation,’” Barghouti
explained. “Israel says it’s a ‘Jewish state’ and indigenous Palestinians are a
problem. They’re not considered part of the [Israeli] state even though we were
here before the state was founded.”
Citing the
definition of apartheid adopted by the
United Nations in 2002 — “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression
and domination of one racial group over another” — Barghouti explained why he
believes Israel qualifies as an apartheid state. “If you are Jewish and you emigrate to Israel, you
automatically become a citizen and can own land anywhere in the country,” he
said. “If you are Palestinian, you cannot own land in 93 percent of Israel.
That land is controlled either by the state or the Jewish National Fund. The
areas Israel took control over in the 1967 war are all under military
occupation today, and in effect Palestinians only have access to 10 percent of
that land. The rest is taken up by ‘security checkpoints’ and ‘access roads’”
over which only Jewish Israelis can drive.
Barghouti showed
a slide of four maps of Greater Palestine that starkly demonstrated how
complete the Jewish takeover has been. The first map was of Palestine as it
existed before World War II, with a series of small white dots representing the
7 percent of Palestine in which Jews had settled. The remaining 93 percent,
occupied by Palestinian Arabs, was in green. The next map was of the U.N.
partition of Palestine, approved in 1947, which showed the original portion of
Palestine assigned to Jews. The third map showed the state of Israel as it
existed after the 1948 war, which Israelis call the “War of Independence” and
Palestinians call the Nakba — Arabic for
“catastrophe.” “The Nakba cost us
80 percent of our historic land in one day,” Barghouti said, “and since 1967
Israel has occupied 100 percent of historic Palestine.” The final map shows
Palestine today, with a handful of green dots representing the parts of the
West Bank and Gaza that haven’t been taken over by Jewish settlers, encouraged
by all Israeli governments regardless of political party, and the
infrastructure of walls, checkpoints and “access roads” with which Israel protects
the settlers against the indigenous population.
“My ancestors
didn’t do the Holocaust,” Barghouti said, “but we’ve become the victims of the
victims of Europe.” He talked about one of the most insidious forms of
anti-Palestinian apartheid: the fact that
Israel’s expansions in 1948 and 1967 left Palestinians literally unable to return to the homes and villages from
which their ancestors were driven out by Israeli arms. “Palestinians who still
have the keys to their homes are not allowed back,” Barghouti said. “Any Jew
can come to Israel and immediately become citizens and keep land. That’s why
it’s apartheid.” Barghouti noted
that one of the leading Black South Africans in the struggle against apartheid, Bishop Desmond Tutu, has said conditions in Israel
are even worse than in apartheid
South Africa because “the white South Africans at least allowed the Blacks to
live there. We are treated like immigrants in our own land. … Human Rights
Watch says Israel has a ‘two-tier system’ for the two populations of the West
Bank.”
Barghouti
discussed conditions for Palestinians not only in the West Bank and within the
internationally recognized boundaries of Israel itself, but in Gaza, the thin
strip between Israel and Egypt. The Israeli government formally “abandoned”
Gaza in 2006, but has maintained a siege that prevents Gazans from receiving
food or trading with the rest of the world. Given Gaza’s location — the only
countries that border it are Israel and Egypt, and the Israeli navy has sunk
boats that sailed in from Turkey attempting to land supplies for Gaza’s people
— the Israeli blockade, supported by Egypt, has essentially turned Gaza into a
giant open-air prison for its people, Barghouti said.
“The
International Committee of the Red Cross has called Gaza a prison,” Barghouti
explained. “The siege is completely against international law. Israel controls
Gaza by controlling its borders and not allowing anything in. Even
[Conservative British Prime Minister] David Cameron has called Gaza an
‘open-air prison.’ Amnesty International, Oxfam and Christian Aid have called
for ‘unconditional lifting of the blockade’ against Gaza.”
When the
pro-Western, pro-Israeli government of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak fell as
a result of the “Arab Spring” protests in 2012, Gazans hoped — and Israelis
feared — that the new Egyptian government would end their participation in the
Gaza siege and let goods flow freely between Gaza and Egypt. But that hasn’t
happened, according to New York Times
contributor Issandr el-Amrani (http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/tunnel-vision/),
because the current Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government of Egypt “fears
Israel wants nothing more than to dump its Gaza problem on Egypt’s lap. … For
Egypt, the risk is not only further entrenching the divide between Gaza and the
West Bank it has tried to heal through inter-Palestinian reconciliation talks,
but also creating new security and political problems.”
Israel Tries to Clean Up
Its Image
Though most
Americans don’t realize this because both the U.S. government and media have
generally been cheerleaders for Israel — indeed, Israeli media contain more
criticism of Israeli’s policies towards the Palestinians, including the
occupation and settlement of the West Bank, than U.S. media — in the rest of
the world “Israel’s image is not good,” Giordano said. Israel has been working
on its international image since 1948, she explained. “There have been
different stories about how you can claim domination over a land,” Giordano
said. “You don’t generally say you’re occupying another country to hurt their
people.” Instead, she argued, Israel’s flacks currently call their country “the
only democracy in the Middle East” and “a more progressive country” than its
Arab neighbors.
Giordano
identified three components of Israel’s outreach towards Queers: “tourism,
culture, and Gay rights and activism.” The tourist component, she said, has
mostly been focused on “Gay male tourists from Europe,” with an ad campaign
that basically sells Israel as a venue for sex tourism. The Israelis have also
started including Jewish Queers in their long-standing policy of offering young
Jews from other countries, particularly student activists and community
leaders, all-expenses-paid trips to Israel in hopes that when they return
they’ll talk up their experiences to their friends and promote Israel as a
wonderful country. “Unintentionally, well-meaning LGBT [Queer] groups are
convinced to get with Israel,” Giordano said. “There are lots of different Gay
tourist sites in Israel.”
On the cultural
front, Giordano noted, Israel mounted a major outreach to the Queer community
in 2010, when it sponsored an “Out in Israel LGBT Culture Festival” and an
“Israeli Pride Month.” They also bought a major sponsorship in the Frameline
Queer film festival with the understanding that Frameline would respond by
showcasing films with positive depictions of Queer life in Israel. “It’s for
the U.S., not for their own Gay citizens,” Giordano explained. “They’re taking
out ads in San Francisco trying to promote how Gay-friendly they are.”
According to Giordano, Queer-friendly countries like the Netherlands and Sweden
don’t feel they have to do that kind of marketing to American Queers — but
Israel does.
Giordano also
mentioned the role of pornography — and one pornographer in particular — in
promoting Israel to U.S. Gay men as a sex-tourist destination. “Michael Lucas
produces porn and is very rich,” she explained. “He’s not Israeli — I believe
he was born in Russia — but he’s taken it upon himself to promote Israel as a
sexually free land for Gay men. During Israel’s war with Lebanon he did a
USO-style live sex show in Tel Aviv with free admission for soldiers. In 2009
he filmed Men of Israel, with scenes set
in the ruins of Palestinians’ homes depopulated during the Nakba. His latest project is Israel Undressed, trying to show Israel as a Gay-friendly destination.
He’s out as being very anti-Arab and anti-Islam.”
Indeed, Lucas has not only
produced porn movies to boost Israel’s image among U.S. Gay men, he’s used his
money to suppress discussion about Israel’s occupation of Palestine in Queer
venues. In February 2011 the Siege Busters, a group working to raise money for
yet another attempt to crash Israel’s blockade of Gaza by boat, arranged with
the New York LGBT Community Center to use their space for a party to publicize
Israeli Apartheid Week. When Lucas heard
this, he went ballistic and threatened to organize a contributor boycott of the
Center if they allowed the Siege Busters’ event to take place. “If the LGBT
Center wants to host a fundraising and awareness party for anti-Semites,” Lucas
said, “they might as well go all the way and host a tea dance for Fred Phelps.”
The Center caved
completely; they imposed a ban on all
events about Israel and Palestine which lasted for two years — until the Center
caught flack last February for banning a reading by Sarah Schulman to promote
her new book, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. According to Giordano, it took a sit-in at the
Center to get them to lift the ban.
The third issue used by
Israel to appeal to Queers, Giordano said, is “claiming Gay rights and using
Gay rights in Israel.” Giordano compared this to the justification offered by
the U.S. government to go to war against Afghanistan by saying we needed to
“save” Afghan women. Indeed, one of Israel’s arguments is that “Israel is a
haven for Gay Palestinians and other Gay Arabs,” Giordano said. “They’re
blocking all access but they say they’re doing it to ‘save’ Gay Arabs from
their ‘backward’ countries.” One of Israel’s arguments is that if Gay
Palestinians want to meet potential sex partners or social companions, they
have to do it in Israel because no Gay bars or Queer organizations exist in
Arab countries.
Of course, as Giordano and
Barghouti both pointed out, any Gay Palestinian who tries to go to an Israeli Gay bar will have to deal with
the same checkpoints and general hostility of any other Palestinian trying to move
about freely in Israel. “Most Gay Palestinians [in Israeli bars] risk being
discriminated against in the bar, being arrested by police and called
‘terrorists,’” Barghouti said. “In the 1980’s Israeli police would arrest Gay
Palestinians and blackmail them, threatening to expose them to their families
if they didn’t cooperate with Israel.”
In a particularly
startling example of what Jews used to call chutzpah, the Israelis are even trying to sell their country
as a haven for marriage equality — despite the fact that Israeli marriage law
is so totally controlled by the Orthodox community that many straight Israelis don’t have marriage equality because
they’re not considered “Jewish” enough. “Ninety percent of the Israeli
population doesn’t have marriage equality,” Barghouti said. Straight couples
who don’t qualify for a marriage in Israel can get married elsewhere, and the
Israeli government will recognize their marriage — which has led Israeli travel
agents to book tours to Italy so Israeli couples who don’t meet the Orthodox
community’s standards for marriage in Israel can sail across the Mediterranean
and get hitched, ironically enough, in the home country of Roman Catholicism.
Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions
Not only are
pro-Palestinian activists comparing Israel’s policies towards Palestinians to apartheid, they’re adopting a strategy based on the one that
finally put enough pressure on South Africa’s white leadership to realize the
game was up and they’d have to relinquish power. It’s called Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions — or BDS for short (a set of initials uncomfortably
reminiscent of the sexually kinky community’s current designation of itself:
BDSM, or Bondage, Discipline and Sado-Masochism). The BDS movement, Barghouti
said, “is non-violent, international and includes both Palestinians and Jews.
The movement wants to isolate and pressure Israel until it: 1) ends the
occupation of all the lands seized in 1967; 2) recognizes the full rights of
all 1.2 million Palestinians in Israel, who now cannot vote or serve in the
Israeli military; and 3) recognizes the rights of Palestinians to return to
their homes as stipulated in U.N. Resolution 194.”
Barghouti said the idea
behind the BDS movement is to make Israel “a pariah state” worldwide, much the
way similar campaigns against South Africa made that country a pariah state and
hastened the nonviolent end of apartheid.
He noted that BDS has attracted support from leading world figures such as
Desmond Tutu, Ralph Nader, physicist Stephen Hawking (who turned down an
invitation to attend a scientific conference in Israel this June), The
Color Purple author Alice Walker, feminist
philosopher Judith Butler and British musicians Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and
Damon Albarn of Blur. Among BDS actions in the U.S. have been culture-jamming
the posters for the Israeli-sponsored Frameline film festival and pickets at
benefits for the Jewish National Fund, including one that Giordano said “was
trying to organize LGBT Jews” to support an organization that helps keep ownership
of property in Israel reserved for Jews.
Asked how they justify
support for the BDS movement, Barghouti said that it’s supported by the
majority of Palestinians, while Giordano became more autobiographical — and
more philosophical. “I have a strong feminist background, I teach in women’s
studies, and I’m part of a Jewish anti-Zionist family,” she said. “My
grandparents were killed in the Holocaust. A feminist principle is to listen to
the voices of the most oppressed people. There are Palestinian and other Arab Queer groups who are
calling for BDS.”
For more information on
the BDS movement, visit its official Web site at http://www.bdsmovement.net/. For more
information on Queer participation in BDS, the “pinkwashing” of Israel and what
you can do about it, visit http://pinkwashingisrael.com/
or http://www.israelilaundry.org/.
