Pinkwashing and “Brand Israel”
by anzya
Sarah Schulman’s “A Documentary Guide to Pinkwashing” was recently published on Pretty Queer. It reveals the history of “Brand Israel” which explicitly aimed to promote Israel to young people and “liberals”. Some of this was also published in a shorter piece in the NY Times. But the longer one is definitely worth a read and is full of interesting info. For example, apparently one of the findings of a 2010 Israeli Policy and Strategy conference was “That many criticisms of Israel will stop when policy towards Palestinians is changed”. But, of course, the Israeli government preferred the tack of promoting Israel as a fun gay travel destination. Schulman reveals that the “Gay Israel” campaign has nothing to do with a concern for gay rights or combatting homophobia, but is rather a cynical strategy that appropriates gay rights for the sake of PR. Here is an extract from the article:
What makes LGBT people and their allies so susceptible to Homonationalism and Pinkwashing is the emotional legacy of homophobia. The vast majority of Queers have had profound oppression experiences, often in the searing realm of Family, reflected by the lack of legal rights, and reinforced by distorted representations in Arts and Entertainment. The relative civil equality of white gays in The Netherlands and Germany has only been achieved within a generation, and still does not erase the pain of familial and cultural exclusion. As a consequence, many people have come to mistakenly assess how advanced a country is by how it responds to homosexuality. Yet, in a selective democracy like Israel, the inclusion of LGBT Jews in the military, or the relative openness of Tel Aviv are not accurate measures of broad human rights.
jew on this 
Have you read this piece in The Forward?
http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/147026/
Michael.
Sarah Schulman suggests that Israel, in its diabolically cunning way (now where have we heard that before about the Jews?), started a cynical campaign in 2005 to improve its image, and that campaign included an appeal to progressives who support LGBT rights. Yet the fact is that LGBT rights in Israel go back LONG BEFORE 2005. Since the 1980s and 1990s, Israeli LGBT people have enjoyed rights that predated or exceeded those rights given to LGBT people in America–and almost anywhere else in the Western world. And the struggle for them in Israel has been nowhere near as prolonged or difficult as it has been in America and most of Europe.
I’ll limit myself to just a few examples of those rights enjoyed by ALL LGBT citizens of Israel, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim:
–In 1988, all sodomy laws were abolished in Israel.
–In 1992, Israel passed a law protecting any LGBT citizen (Jewish, Christian or Muslim) from employment discrimination.
–In 1994, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on favor of spousal benefits for same-sex couples— regardless of whether they were Jewish, Christian, or Muslim .
–In 2004, Israeli lesbian or gay couples (Jewish, Christian or Muslim) were given the right to qualify for common-law marriage status.
–In 2005, the same year that Schulman says Israel began its suspicious attempts to show that LGBT people were welcomed there, Israeli legislation recognized all same-sex marriages performed abroad.
The only place in the Middle East that Arab LGBT people can organize OPENLY is Israel. Al Qaws holds its “Palestinian Queer Parties” in a gay bar in Tel Aviv. Aswat, the Palestinian lesbian organization, held its conference at Tel Hai College in Northern Israel. Jerulaselem Open House hosts meetings of Arab Israeli LGBT people and organizations.
Since 2002, the Refugee Rights Clinic at Tel Aviv University has been fighting for asylum for LGBT Palestinians who fear for their lives in the territories. A 2008 academic report NOWHERE TO RUN, on gay Palestinians who seek asylum in Israel, records experiences of, for example, a gay man living in the West Bank who was set on fire as punishment for his sins; another who was immersed for days in filthy water up to his neck; another who was sodomized with a coke bottle by West Bank police who taunted him, asking whether it was as good as a cock up his ass.
Regardless of how much Sarah Schulman and her ilk disapprove of Israel, what else but insane, irrational, obsessive hatred would cause them to see diabolic cunning in social decency? What else but insane, irrational, obsessive hatred would keep them from acknowledging that Israel is an oasis for LGBT people in a region of absolute horror?
And of course the murders in Tel Aviv at a gay centre, also leaving several injured, has never been solved by the authorities. Strange, isn’t it in this “gay-friendly” country where rabbis, priests and ayatollahs got together to try and stop any pride parades taking place.
What next – Palestine-friendly Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories?