Action against ‘pinkwashing’ at filmscreening Kriterion
Wanneer: 20/03/2012 - 16:23
On the evening of Monday March 19, activist collective Queeristan organized a protest at the film screening of 'Yossi and Jagger' which was shown in cinema Kriterion in Amsterdam in the context of the Pink Filmdays. They wanted to pay attention to the Israeli state's multimillion dollar ‘pinkwashing’ campaign of which this film forms part and additionally call for solidarity with the Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (PQBDS).
On the evening of Monday March 19, activist collective Queeristan organized a protest at the film screening of 'Yossi and Jagger' by Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox in cinema Kriterion in Amsterdam. The film displays the love between two Israeli Defense Force officials stationed at the Israel-Lebanon border in the 1980's. During this war over 17.000 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed, of which the film makes no reference. The activists interrupted the introduction to the film, hosted by the University of Amsterdam's UvA Pride platform, shouting slogans such as “There is NO PRIDE in any army”; “There is NO PRIDE in Israeli occupation”; “There is NO PRIDE in Apartheid” and “Stop using gay rights to pinkwash war crimes”. After their action the activists left the cinema, handing out flyers (see below). The intervention was meant as a solidarity action to support the call of Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (PQBDS). Additionally they wanted to pay attention to the Israeli state's multimillion dollar pinkwashing campaign, which uses liberal gay rights to divert attention from Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, apartheid within Israel itself, and Israel's refusal of the UN sanctioned Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees. They argue that talking about homosexuality in the Israeli army is part of the larger pinkwashing campaign that denies the rights of Palestinians.
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Text of the flyer distributed to those present at the film screening:
STOP PINKWASHING!
SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
END ISRAELI APARTHEID!
Pinkwashing is a multimillion dollar sponsored strategy of the Israeli state that uses progressive LGBTQ rights in order to cover up human rights
violations, such as the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, the building of illegal settlements, the marginalization and criminalization of Palestinians in Israel, the open-air prison of Gaza, the refusal of the UN sanctioned Palestinian Right of Return, and the apartheid wall.
The pinkwashing of Israel’s national image is found in campaigns of gay tourism, cultural production and international policies. This film you are
about to see is part of that pinkwashing campaign.
Israel’s pinkwashing is used as a cover up to the systematic oppression and exclusionary politics of the state against the Palestinian population.
Palestinian queer activists living in the occupied Palestinian territories and inside Israel have come together to promote and stand for the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, which was launched in July 2005, and finds increasing resonance within the international (queer) community.
Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (PQBDS) argue that the struggle for sexual and gender diversity is interconnected with
the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination.
If you want to learn on how to support pqbds you can visit the following websites: http://www.pqbds.com/ & http://www.pinkwatchingisrael.com/
We are sick of it. Homosexuality per se in Arab and other Moslem countries is usually punishable by the worst and cruelest penalties, from public whipping and stoning, through to death. In Israel, homosexuality is legal. It is largely accepted in the general community as a non-issue, and except for marriage and adoption rights, laws are in place to ensure full rights for members of the LGBT community. It’s a far stretch of the imagination to label that as “pinkwashing”.
Palestinians in Gaza have a much lower standard of living than their Israeli counterparts in Israel proper. There are appalling refugee camps in Gaza, but since for several years, Gaza has been under the full control of its own government, Hamas, presumably these humanitarian crises should be laid wholly at the door of the Palestinians, not Israel. Furthermore, these camps are perpetuated by and presided over by the UN, not Israel. Why is Egypt, with its long Gazan border, not being held accountable? Unspeakable religion-based discrimination exists in Palestinian Gaza. There is dreadful poverty next to lavish vulgar wealth. The powers in control in Gaza suppress and demean their own people. Why, therefore, are they not being held accountable, and why does PQBDS accuse Israel of those crimes?
Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it …. the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie …”. It seems PQBDS correspondents, allegedly representing the will of the Arab LGBT community, have adopted this technique. PQBDS’s repeated use of the politically-loaded word “apartheid” is just one example.
South African apartheid was race-based discrimination designed to separate blacks and whites. Separate buses and trains, separate courts, separate housing, no racial intermarriage, separate schools, medical facilities, universities, restaurants, movie houses, toilets, even separate churches! Nothing remotely resembling apartheid exists in Israel. Israeli Arabs (about 20% of the population) are full citizens. Arabic is an official language in Israel. Arabs attend the same schools and universities as other Israelis. They are members of the Knesset (parliament), judges, lawyers, bus drivers and bankers.
It is totally without foundation to state that IGY is supported by the IDF or the Israeli government. PQBDS’s unfounded and undocumented claims that Israel is in violation of International law for 63 years is simply untrue. PQBDS’s use of such loaded phrases as “violating Human Rights”, “colonial domination” and “racial segregation” are used to confuse the issues. We lost count of the number of times the words apartheid, discrimination, occupation appear in the PQBDS document.
Furthermore, it is an open “secret” that gay men (and sometimes even lesbians – although it’s more difficult for women) escape from Israel’s neighboring Arab lands, seeking (and finding) refuge in Israel. The Agudah, Israel’s premier LGBT organization, has long run a program for providing support and shelter for LGBT refugees from Arab lands. Still, the situation in this young democracy is not yet perfect, and we are not blind to the remaining problems.