10.11.22
Editorial Note
The queer scholar Corinne Blackmer published a new book, Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism.
The book offers a pointed critique of LGBTQ scholars whose anti-Israel bias pervades their academic work. Blackmer demonstrates how the BDS movement has become a central part of social justice advocacy on campus, such as gender and sexuality studies. The book focuses on the work of Sarah Schulman, Jasbir Puar, Angela Davis, Dean Spade, and Judith Butler. Blackmer demonstrates how these scholars misapply critical theory in their writings of the State of Israel. Blackmer shows how these LGBTQ scholars mobilize the queer and intersectionality studies to support the BDS movement – eager to delegitimize, isolate, de-normalize, and extirpate Israel – at the expense of academic standards.
Blackmer notes that the word “Pinkwashing” refers to Israel’s “putatively dishonest abuse of its sterling record on LGBT human rights” to “whitewash” its crimes against the Palestinians. Accusing Israel of “Pinkwashing” is part of the strategy of the BDS movement. According to Blackmer, “Pinkwashing” derives from the seventeenth-century verb “whitewashing,” which means to hide crimes and vices.
Blackmer discusses the work of Sarah Schulman, a Jewish American lesbian BDS activist and academic, and mentions Aeyal Gross, an associate professor of Law at Tel-Aviv University. She quotes Gross, who asserts, “the term Pinkwashing is not very successful. It causes people to misunderstand the situation.” Unlike the use of the word Greenwashing to describe false environmental claims, Israel has real LGBT rights. BDS activists failed to make such crucial distinctions and conflated LGBT Israelis with their government. This negates the premises of “Pinkwashing,” Blackmer sums up.
By mentioning Gross briefly, Blackmer does not give the full scope of Gross’s involvement in advancing the narrative of “Israeli Pinkwashing.”
LGBT journalist Michael Luongo broadened the picture in an article published in The Gay City News journal, where he discussed the term’s origin. He quoted Gross, who said “Pinkwashing” dates back to 2001. Gross admitted he was part of this early movement of Israeli LGBT activists who created Black Laundry (Kvisa Shchora, in Hebrew), to protest the Israeli military crackdown following the Second Intifada. Gross presented a paper at Amsterdam Sexual Nationalism Conference stating, “I will explore the politics of sexual freedom apparent in Israel’s attempt to brand itself as ‘gay friendly,’ and as a ‘western’ and ‘European’ country, as opposed to supposedly ‘backwards,’ ‘homophobic’ Islamic countries which surround it in the Middle East… One should not deny the progress in sexual freedoms in Israel, but address the way they serve to cover and legitimize the denial of other freedoms, especially from Palestinians.”
Luongo disclosed that Gross told him that after long battles for LGBT equality in Israel, “It is a way for Netanyahu to talk about gay rights, but not too much… He would use it against Iran and the Palestinians in the UN.”
It was Gross who helped to advance the false “Pinkwashing” narrative. In 2011, Sarah Schulman wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, accusing Israel of “Pinkwashing.” She wrote, “The growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation has named these tactics ‘pinkwashing’: a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.” She then quoted Aeyal Gross who confirmed that “gay rights have essentially become a public-relations tool… conservative and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic.”
Not surprising that holding negative views of Israel fits well with the agenda of SOAS University of London, where Gross has been holding an academic position.
Charges of “Pinkwashing are still rampant today. Last week, a Palestinian student, Sarah Dajani published an article, “Pinkwashing”: Disguising Oppression as Progression in the student newspaper of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She stated: “The world is not a safe haven, especially for minority groups; however, countries that promote progression at the cost of human rights avoid and neglect dealing with violations and, sometimes, war crimes. Pinkwashing is the promotion of LGBTQIA+ rights of a corporate or a political entity to conceal ‘negative’ aspects of that entity. These aspects can range from human rights violations to war crimes.
She added that “Pinkwashing spreads ingenuine sympathy messages that are exploited to continue ‘The Burden of the White Man’ or ‘The Civilizing Mission’ propaganda.” She also mentioned Sarah Schulman and Aeyal Gross as researchers on the topic. Dajani ended by stating that as someone living in the West, “We still have a lot of work to be done when it comes to challenging the inequalities of our modern society, but we need to be aware of using the LGBTQIA+ community as a marker for civilization and a justification for violence and human rights abuses.”
As a Palestinian, Dajani fails to mention Ahmad Abu-Marhia, a gay Palestinian who was beheaded in the West Bank in early October. Abu-Marhia was seeking asylum in Israel and had spent two years in Israel. How he ended up in his home city of Hebron is unclear. His body was found decapitated. Video of the murder was circulating social media. His friends told the press he was kidnapped to the West Bank, where homosexuality is rejected by Palestinian society. Some 90 Palestinians who identify as LGBTQ live as asylum seekers in Israel.
The UN Human Rights Council published a written statement for 22 February–19 March 2021, submitted by United Nations Watch, a consulting NGO. “Torture of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ),” examines Palestinian Authority and Hamas human rights violations. It found that Palestinian LGBTQ living under PA and Hamas “suffer severe persecution and ostracism. Many Palestinian homosexuals end up fleeing to Israel.” The testimonies of gay Palestinians who escaped recounted “harrowing torture by both family and PA/Hamas security forces, often successful attempts to coerce them to inform on others, forced marriages and death threats.” The report discusses a gay Gazan Palestinian who lives in exile in Turkey. He described his arrest and torture by Hamas. “They arrested me, hanged me from the ceiling, beat me up and interrogated me for five days,” on suspicion of him being gay. Similarly, in February 2016, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, a Hamas commander, was “executed” by his former comrades for “crimes against morality, such as homosexuality.” He was subjected to severe torture by Hamas while in custody for over a year. He suffered “beatings, hanging from the ceiling for long hours and sleep deprivation.” In a note which his wife sneaked out, he wrote, “They nearly killed me, I confessed to things I have never done in my life,” the report stated.
Accusing Israel of “Pinkwashing” is a falsification of reality and a tactic to deflect from the brutal human rights record of the Palestinian Authority. Israel is a promoter of human rights, not only for Israelis but also for Palestinian civilians. Of course, the situation is complex, and Israel is not perfect. But Israel tries hard to protect all civilians, including Palestinians, even during a war. Scholars who are delegitimizing Israel instead of criticizing the two Palestinian regimes’ murderous policies are wrong and misleading. Therefore, Blackmer should be commended for her brave act of uncovering the truth.
References
https://books.google.co.il/books?id=TXd7EAAAQBAJ
Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism
Wayne State University Press, 8 Nov 2022 – Social Science – 256 pages
With engaged scholarship and an exciting contribution to the field of Israel/Palestine studies, queer scholar-activist Corinne Blackmer stages a pointed critique of scholars whose anti-Israel bias pervades their activism as well as their academic work. Blackmer demonstrates how the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to delegitimize and isolate Israel has become a central part of social justice advocacy on campus, particularly within gender and sexuality studies programs. The chapters focus on the intellectual work of Sarah Schulman, Jasbir Puar, Angela Davis, Dean Spade, and Judith Butler, demonstrating how they misapply critical theory in their discussions of the State of Israel. Blackmer shows how these LGBTQ intellectuals mobilize queer theory and intersectionality to support the BDS movement at the expense of academic freedom and open discourse.
===========================================https://muse.jhu.edu/article/720059/pdf
Pinkwashing
Corinne E. Blackmer
INTRODUCTION
WHEN USED IN RELATION TO THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT, the word “pinkwashing” refers to Israel’s putatively dishonest abuse of its sterling record on LGBT human rights to conceal or “whitewash” its struggles with the Palestinians. Alleged to constitute an invidious “cover up”, pinkwashing actually represents a term of art deployed to deceive and fabricate fallacious arguments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It comprises part of the larger strategy of delegitimization of Israel by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to isolate, de-normalize and, eventually, extirpate Israel as a democratic Jewish State. Despite the deceptive misuse of this term in this context, however, the word originated in other loci where it had different—as well as politically legitimate and rhetorically lucid—meanings.
HISTORY OF THE TERM PINKWASHING
The portmanteau compound term pinkwashing derives from the seventeenth century verb to whitewash, which means to hide crimes and vices, or to exonerate through biased presentation of evidence. The Nazis forced gay male concentration camp inmates to wear inverted pink triangles to shame them for their “inverse” gender identification. Subsequently, in the LGBT activist ACT-UP movement, the pink triangle was repurposed to symbolize political resistance to homophobia and the plight of HIV+ people and those living with AIDS.1
In the 1980s, the now iconic pink ribbon logo became a form of so-called “cause marketing” that companies used to advertise their support for breast cancer survivors, victims, and charities. These logos became ideal means to promote products and sell merchandise. However, in a classic case of false advertising, research revealed that many products sold by these companies contained carcinogenic ingredients linked with the increased risk of [End Page 171] breast and other forms of cancer. In addition, the focus on mammograms, prevention, and “the cure” ignored environmental factors and the fact that poor women of color suffered disproportionately from breast cancer. Accordingly, in 1985, the organization Breast Cancer Action (BCA) coined the term “pinkwashing” to characterize this fraudulent and deceptive form of cause marketing.2 In 2002, BCA inaugurated its Think Before You Pink®3 campaign as an impassioned feminist protest against the indiscriminate and disingenuous abuse of pink ribbon logos to turn profits and, according to Cary Nelson, “hid[e] the ways they are actually contributing to cancer through their manufacturing processes”.4
As applied to anti-Israel movements, the Jewish American lesbian BDS activist, writer, and academic Sarah Schulman claims that the term “pinkwashing” emerged informally in the United States in 2010 as a nonce blending of whitewashing and “greenwashing”, or the marketing of products on the pretense that they were environmentally friendly.5 However, according to Aeyal Gross, Associate Professor of Law at Tel-Aviv University, the pinkwashing moniker actually originated in Israel in 2001 when leftwing queer activists created the group Black Laundry (Kvisa Shchora in Hebrew) to protest the Israeli Defense Forces’ crackdown on Palestinians following the Second Intifada. After long struggles for LGBT equality in Israel—often against the determined opposition from the government and Orthodox Judaism—the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu cynically appropriated LGBT rights to advance its own agendas against Iran and the Palestinian Territories at the United Nations.6 He presented Israel as a gay-friendly, progressive, democratic country that protected human rights, as opposed to other benighted and homophobic Middle Eastern nations.7 Although the claims he made were accurate, and he therefore did not engage in pinkwashing, Netanyahu hypocritically supports parties and organizations abroad (particularly in the United States) that discriminate against LGBT people. Therefore, as Gross asserts, “the term Pinkwashing is not very successful. It causes people to misunderstand the situation,” because unlike the use of the word Greenwashing to describe false environmental claims, Israel has had real LGBT rights advances.8
BDS activists not only failed to make such crucial distinctions but also conflated LGBT Israelis with their government and denied the “real LGBT rights advances (emphasis mine)” made in Israel, which negate the premises of pinkwashing and, in the case of the pink logo, “cause marketing” for breast cancer, both of which rest on fraudulent claims.
======================================
Sep 19, 2022
Corinne E. Blackmer
Queering Anti-Zionism
Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism
WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2022
Why do some scholars sacrifice truth and logic to political ideology and peer acceptance?
With courage and intellectual integrity, queer scholar-activist Corinne Blackmer stages a pointed critique of scholars whose anti-Israel bias pervades their activism as well as their academic work. In contrast to the posturing that characterizes her colleagues’ work, this work demonstrates true scholarship and makes an important contribution to the field of Israel studies.
In Queering Anti-Zionism: Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism (Wayne State UP, 2022), Blackmer demonstrates how the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to delegitimize and isolate Israel has become a central part of social justice advocacy on campus, particularly within gender and sexuality studies programs. The chapters focus on the intellectual work of Sarah Schulman, Jasbir Puar, Angela Davis, Dean Spade, and Judith Butler, demonstrating how they misapply critical theory in their discussions of the State of Israel.
Blackmer shows how these LGBTQ intellectuals mobilize queer theory and intersectionality to support the BDS movement at the expense of academic freedom, open discourse, and intellectual integrity.
Send comments and suggestions to: reneeg@vanleer.org.il
https://megaphone.link/NBN9032090591
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas
Interviews with thought-leaders about their new books.
Books
History
Society & Culture
3
Corinne E. Blackmer, “Queering Anti-Zionism: Ac…
An interview with Corinne E. Blackmer
=====================================================
Pinkwashing”: Disguising Oppression as Progression
November 1, 2022 trinitytripod
Sarah Dajani ’26
Contributing Writer
The world is not a safe haven, especially for minority groups; however, countries that promote progression at the cost of human rights avoid and neglect dealing with violations and, sometimes, war crimes.
Pinkwashing is the promotion of LGBTQIA+ rights of a corporate or a political entity to conceal ‘negative’ aspects of that entity. These aspects can range from human rights violations to war crimes. Pinkwashing spreads ungenuine sympathy messages that are exploited to continue “The Burden of the White Man” or “The Civilizing Mission” propaganda, which depend on spreading the ideas that are seen as ‘progressive’ and ‘civilized’ through violence, conquest, and military intervention.
Like whitewashing, the term is supposed to indicate hiding crimes with a humane and progressive ‘color.’ The American novelist Sarah Schulman claims that the term “pinkwashing” was used in the United States in 2010 when talking about products that are falsely advertised as eco-friendly. However, according to the Israeli author Aeyal Gross, the term originated in Israel in 2001 by the queer activist group Black Laundry, Kvisa Shchora in Hebrew, to protest the Israeli violence against Palestinians following the Second Intifada. In his book Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, Palestinian Anthropologist Sa’ed Atshan mentions how during the panels he has given around U.S. universities, the interventions that were related to Palestine focused on “Palestine homophobia with the existence of queer spaces and expression in Israel.” He emphasizes that this should not distract from “condemning patriarchy and homophobia in my [the Palestinian] society.” Despite the common association of the term with Israel, pinkwashing is all around us.
The Pink Dollar is a term used for profit made off of the LGBTQIA+ community. Companies that promote the rights of marginalized groups were considered fighters for equity and peace. However, in countries like the United States, where political power is in the hands of corporate CEOs, one should question the disparity between the popularizing of these causes and the actual legislation passed. The American experimental writer Alexandra Chasin said that “going to the market” means “abandoning the effort to challenge inequalities in society.” This propaganda, whether promoted by corporates or political entities, supports the abuse of human rights and dismantles the struggle for equity.
In 2014, the Israeli court convicted Ben David of murdering and kidnapping Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy. Before the case was considered ‘solved,’ rumors were spread speculating that the murder was an ‘honor killing,’ reports Haartz, the longest running Israeli newspaper. People spread that the victim was gay because he was known at the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance (an LGBT organization in Jerusalem that had supposedly released a statement about his death). The executive director of Open House denied this claim, but images entitled, “The Arabs killed him for being gay,” were still widely spread.
The certainty in the messages spread show the strength of the propaganda in portraying ‘Arabs’ as barbaric and intolerant; this is no different than the European propaganda that dehumanized indigenous people. Similarly, Jasbir Puar, an American philosopher and queer theorist, suggests that the subsequent human rights abuses following the invasion of Iraq were disguised as “sexually progressive multiculturalism justifying foreign intervention.”
We still have a lot of work to be done when it comes to challenging the inequalities of our modern society, but we need to be aware of using the LGBTQIA+ community as a marker for civilization and a justification for violence and human rights abuses. When we support organizations that promote ‘inclusivity’ while still maintaining inhumane labor practices, biased hiring processes, and support for discriminatory organizations, we are part of the problem.
========================================================
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63174835
Gay Palestinian Ahmad Abu Marhia beheaded in West Bank
7 October
It is not clear how Ahmad Abu Marhia ended up in his home city of Hebron
Palestinian police have arrested a suspect in the killing of a 25-year-old man after his body was found decapitated in the occupied West Bank.
LGBTQ groups in Israel, where Ahmad Abu Marhia was seeking asylum, say he had received threats because he was gay.
Video of the murder scene in Hebron has spread widely on social media raising speculation about the motive, but police say nothing is confirmed.
It is unclear for now how Mr Abu Marhia ended up in the city.
LGBTQ groups say he had spent two years in Israel waiting on an asylum claim to flee abroad after receiving death threats from within his community.
Israeli media quote friends of the victim as saying he was kidnapped to the West Bank.
His family, however, said he regularly visited Hebron to see them and to work. They described the claims about the motive as rumour.
Homosexuality is rejected within the most socially and religiously conservative parts of both Palestinian and Israeli societies but gay people in Israel can freely lead their lives. The reports suggest he had fled his home on a humanitarian permit while hoping to go to Canada.
Activist Natali Farah told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper Mr Abu Marhia was well known and liked and the whole LGBTQ community was “crying now”.
“Everyone is scared,” she added.
Palestinians also expressed revulsion at the beheading.
A presenter for Karama radio station, quoted by the Times of Israel, said the crime had “crossed every single red line in our society, whether in terms of morals, customs, or basic humanity”.
Some 90 Palestinians who identify as LGBT currently live as asylum seekers in Israel, the newspaper said, after suffering discrimination in their home communities. They have only been allowed to seek work in Israel since July.
israel-academia-monitor.com 