{"id":82286,"date":"2020-11-29T17:05:50","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T15:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=82286"},"modified":"2020-11-23T09:32:32","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T07:32:32","slug":"29-00-53","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=82286","title":{"rendered":"Israel Respects Gay Rights; the Palestinians Do Not"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Israel Respects Gay Rights; the Palestinians Do Not<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Aidan Segal<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Revelers take part in Tel Aviv\u2019s annual Pride Parade, June 14, 2019. Photo: Reuters \/ Ronen Zvulun.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The University of Pittsburgh\u2019s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) held a meeting in October on the topic of \u201cpinkwashing<\/a>\u201d \u2014\u00a0 the accusation that Israel exploits the LGBTQ+ community to propagandize a progressive image of the country, and to obscure the reality that Israel is allegedly an apartheid state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pinkwashing is one of many false narratives manufactured by anti-Israel organizations. Like any country, Israel is not perfect and not without prejudice; but it strives to be a beacon of freedom for all its inhabitants. In a region hardly brimming with liberal democracies, Israel \u201cadamantly\u00a0protects<\/a>\u00a0the rights of its gay citizens, and the LGBT community is represented in the highest echelons and in all facets of Israeli society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel celebrates the community not to appear progressive, but because it truly respects gay rights, and has an uncanny level of support for the LGBT+ community.<\/span><\/p>\n

The founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl,\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0that a Jewish state would be a positive force not only for Jews, but \u201cfor the good of humanity.\u201d Nothing could be more true for the prosperous LGBTQ+ community in Israel, though anti-Zionist activists such as adherents to the BDS movement insist that an ulterior motive is at play.<\/span><\/p>\n

The BDS movement\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cIsrael\u2019s pinkwashing agenda seeks to portray itself as a fun-loving gay haven while using racist stereotypes to depict Palestinians as backward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In reality, there are no\u00a0civil rights<\/a>\u00a0protections for LGBTQ+ people in the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which has prompted hundreds of gay Palestinians to\u00a0flee<\/a>\u00a0to Israel for fear of persecution.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Amnesty International<\/a>, there have been \u201cat least eight cases of LGBTI individuals who were arbitrarily arrested or ill-treated by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank in relation to their sexual orientation or gender identity.\u201d Not to mention that, according to a survey conducted by the Arab Barometer research network just last year, only 5% of West Bank Palestinians\u00a0accept<\/a>\u00a0gay relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n

Homosexual activity is an\u00a0imprisonable<\/a>, even fatal, offense in the Gaza Strip. The terrorist organization\u00a0Hamas<\/a>\u00a0executed one of its own commanders in 2016 for, among other allegations, \u201cmoral turpitude, by which Hamas meant homosexuality,\u201d according to a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0report<\/a>. While no society is completely free of intolerance, singling out the Jewish state as uniquely evil while disregarding the plight of the LGBTQ+ community throughout the region is antisemitic and intellectually dishonest.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example,\u00a0Middle East Eye<\/em>\u00a0contributor Nada Elia didn\u2019t seem the least bit concerned about the treatment of the LGBTQ+ community under the Palestinian leadership\u00a0in an article published in 2018<\/a>. Instead, she accused Israel of pinkwashing. \u201cAll of Israel is not gay-friendly,\u201d she wrote, \u201cand even those few places that are, are \u2018white-and Jewish-gay-friendly.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Elia\u2019s canards are nothing new. In her\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0How to Fight Anti-Semitism<\/em>, journalist Bari Weiss explains how antisemitism conveniently \u201cturns Jews into the symbol of whatever a given civilization defines as its most sinister and threatening qualities.\u201d In Elia\u2019s case, Jews aptly fill the role of colonialist white people \u2014 a nonsensical attempt to conceal Israel\u2019s distinctive LGBTQ+ rights record and its vibrant\u00a0communities<\/a>\u00a0from North Africa and the greater Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

In nations such as Iran, Saudia Arabia, and Yemen, same-sex relations are punishable by\u00a0death<\/a>, yet these countries seldom face the same degree of criticism from activist groups as Israel does.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pinkwashing claims can be similar to other falsehoods peddled by anti-Zionist organizations, in that they are at best an undermining of Israel\u2019s LGBTQ+ rights records, and at worst, a political facade masking Jew hatred and antisemitism. In 2019, the DC Dyke March\u00a0banned<\/a>\u00a0the Israeli flag in the name of restricting \u201cnationalist symbols\u201d and representations of \u201cviolent nationalism.\u201d Palestinian flags, on the other hand, were deemed acceptable, even though they are also \u201cnationalist symbols.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Israelis know better than anyone the pain of being rejected by the world, and thus should be proud to have fostered such a tolerant environment for another persecuted people. Anti-Zionist organizations continually selling the baseless and homophobic myth that LGBTQ+ Israelis are simply parts of an apartheid propaganda machine only decreases chances for peace, and more devastatingly, risks hurting the very people they claim to be liberating.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Aidan Segal<\/strong> is a student at the University of Pittsburgh, and a campus fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Israel Respects Gay Rights; the Palestinians Do Not Aidan Segal Revelers take part in Tel Aviv\u2019s annual Pride Parade, June 14, 2019. Photo: Reuters \/ Ronen Zvulun. The University of Pittsburgh\u2019s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) held a meeting in October on the topic of \u201cpinkwashing\u201d \u2014\u00a0 the accusation that Israel exploits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82286"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82305,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82286\/revisions\/82305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}