Op-ed: What’s So Gay About Apartheid?

When a seriousscholar like Lillian Faderman argues that LGBT people must stand with Israel inan op-ed for The Advocatewhere she attacks the growing number of pro-Palestine LGBT activists for oursupposed "insane logic or misinformation,"activists must respond.

Fadermanargues that because Israel has more progressive legislation regarding LGBTpeople than other Middle Eastern countries, as well as the United States, weought to support Israel. What an aggressively narrow vision Faderman advocatesfor our movement. Just because LGBT Jewish Israelis enjoy some basic reforms isno reason to ignore the racist, colonialist and inhumane policies of thatnation.

"Whywould we work against such a country?" Faderman asks. How about the facts thatIsrael has brazenly occupied Palestinian land for decades, in defiance ofinternational law, and denies equal rights to its Arab citizens, 20 percent ofthe population? Or that Israel periodically bombs the imprisoned 1.5 millionpeople of Gaza, including its LGBT population, and jails, tortures and killspeople who try and peacefully challenge Israel's brutality and apartheid.

Ifwhite LGBT people in the United States were to apply Faderman's logic regardingIsrael to our own country, then white queers would never stand alongside ourBlack and Brown brothers and sisters to advance their civil rights. Hers is notonly an argument against solidarity to fight all oppressions, but also for LGBTpeople to accept racism as a palatable necessity in the extension of ourrights. Progressives must reject this reactionary proposition.

Israelis on a campaign to whitewash its crimes against Palestinians with a marketingblitz to promote its pro-LGBT policies, which Palestinian queers call"pinkwashing." At a San Francisco forum earlier this year, Palestinian LGBTactivist Haneen Maikey explained, "It doesn't matter what the sexualorientation of the soldier at a checkpoint is, whether he can serve openly ornot. What matters is that he's there at all." Sami Shamali, also a member ofthe Palestinian LGBT group, Al Qaws, agreed, "the apartheid wall was not created to keep Palestinian homophobes out of GayIsrael, and there is no magic door for gay Palestinians to pass through."

Theinstitutional racism of the Israeli state is not only in gross violation ofinternational law, but also defies any sense of human decency. B'Tselem, theIsraeli human rights organization, recently reported that 93 percent of Palestinian children caught throwing stones at heavily armedIsraeli soldiers are jailed, including those under the age of 14.

LongtimeIsraeli adviser Dov Weisglass justifies the blockade of Gaza that has led towidespread malnutrition as a means to "put the Palestinians on a diet, but notto make them die of hunger."

It'snot only Palestinians and solidarity activists who view Israel as an apartheidstate, but many of its own Jewish politicians and supporters describe it thatway. For example, Roman Bronfman, a former member of Israel's Knesset, argues,"The policy of apartheid has also infiltrated sovereign Israel, anddiscriminates daily against Israeli Arabs and other minorities."

Theformer head of the American Jewish Congress, Henry Siegman, challenges that oft-repeated lie that "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East":"A political arrangement that limits democracy to a privileged class and keepsothers behind military checkpoints, barbed wire fences and separation wallsdoes not define democracy. It defines its absence."

Inher op-ed, Faderman repeats familiar tropes about the Arab world andhomophobia, so often attributed to Islam, without any reference to the legacyof Western colonialism. Virtually all Western societies until recently wereantigay, which they spread to their territories; and the three major religionsoriginating in the Middle East--Christianity, Islam and Judaism--have all beeninterpreted as homophobic throughout the centuries.

Inthe colonizer countries of the West, industrialism gave rise to a growth ofsecularism and the explosion of social movements that demanded LGBT equality.In much of the Arab world, these developments were stymied--and continue to bein most countries--by brutal dictatorships in cahoots with the West.

Inthe case of Egypt, which Faderman explicitly cites for its LGBT repression, thenow-deposed dictator, Hosni Mubarak, was a close ally of both the U.S. andIsrael. In fact, Israel defended Mubarak to the bitter end.

InPalestine, a largely secular and leftist tradition was smashed, and most of itsleft leaders were exiled, jailed or killed by Israel. Pointing an accusatoryfinger at Palestinian leaders' illiberal stance toward LGBT people today isobscene. To ignore Israel's dispossession, occupation and immiseration of 10.6million Palestinians in the world and then expect sexually liberatory ideals toflourish under such a condition is absurd. No population anywhere on Earth hasrisen to such expectations.

Asa result of pressure from a global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)movement against Israel, the general assembly meeting of the International Gayand Lesbian Youth Organization was canceled a few weeks ago from its originalIsraeli site. This is great news and a sign that more and more LGBT activistsare rejecting Israel's pinkwashing in favor of the politics of solidarity. Ihope Faderman comes to reject her position and joins us. Either way, the BDSstruggle continues.

Sherry Wolf is theauthor Sexuality andSocialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation and blogs atSherryTalksBack.com. She is an active member of the Palestine solidarity group,Siege Busters.