Subscrevemos a Queer Coalition for Palestine call to action de 2024:
https://queercoalitionforpalestine.noblogs.org/pw-2024/en/pcta/
It’s fifty-five years since the Stonewall uprising, and Gay Pride celebrations are planned in many cities around the world. But what is there to celebrate? Our Palestinian siblings are enduring a brutal genocide at the hands of Zionist Israel, funded and armed by Western governments. A growing global movement in solidarity with Palestinians is mobilizing to stop Israel’s siege and genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. We proudly stand as a part of this movement.
As LGBTQIA+ people fight for healthcare, housing, and against the fascist politicians who seek to erase us from society, we understand that our own liberation is tied to the liberation of not only queer Palestinians but all Palestinians — and of every colonized people.
“You cannot have queer liberation while apartheid, patriarchy, capitalism and other oppressions exist. It’s important to target the connections of these oppressive forces.”
— Ghaith Hilal, AlQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society
The origins of Pride are in the 1960s: in San Francisco young gay men radicalized by the US invasion of Vietnam organized huge anti-war protests, and LGBTQIA+ communities — with trans women at the forefront — fought back against police harassment and violence at Compton’s Cafeteria and the Stonewall Inn. We continue to fight back against violence and oppression, wherever they occur.
Over the last eight months the world has witnessed Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, blatantly and publicly announced as such by Israeli leadership. The Israeli military has devastated Gaza to such an extent that counting the dead and martyred is now impossible. Despite the ICJ orders to stop genocidal acts and halt its Rafah offensive, Israel has not ceased its relentless blockade and bombing campaign, continuing a legacy of over 76 years of Zionist settler-colonial violence against Indigenous Palestinians.
The brutality and magnitude of the atrocities committed by the Israeli state is producing increasingly harrowing conditions for Palestinians everywhere. This brutality is being sustained through the continued economic, military, diplomatic, and political support of mainly Western leaders and international institutions and corporations. Western governments remain unwavering in their inhumane support for (and arming of) Israel, while cracking down on protests that dare to oppose the genocide at home.
Palestinian queers, just like LGBTQIA+ people all over the world, face multiple layers of oppression. In all settler colonial states, Indigenous women, and queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people — and especially those at the intersections of those identities — bear the brunt of these systems of oppression. It is impossible to seriously address anti-LGBTQIA+ violence and oppression without addressing these larger structures.
We cannot advocate for queer and trans people in our own countries while supporting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians — queer, trans, heterosexual and cisgender alike. Our struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights and freedom is intersectionally connected to worldwide struggles for Indigenous rights, women’s rights, the rights of People of Color, Black Lives Matter, and climate justice.
“When we support Palestine we’re not saying that we only support Palestine, we’re saying that we support struggles for freedom and liberation all over the world.”
— Angela Davis
Since adopting the “Brand Israel” strategy in 2005, Israel has weaponized LGBTQ+ rights in an attempt to conceal its apartheid regime. US scholar Sarah Schulman documented ‘pinkwashing’ in 2011, describing the ways in which the Israeli government presents itself as queer-friendly to hide the violence of its occupation of Palestine.
Pinkwashing is when Israel promotes Tel Aviv as a gay tourist destination, without mentioning that the city is built on top of several Palestinian villages that were destroyed and whose populations were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Pinkwashing is the LGBT soldiers in Israel’s illegal occupying army, who bomb Palestinian family homes and then wave rainbow flags atop the ruins.
But what Israel is doing is more than simply queer-friendly marketing, it is the strategic characterisation of Palestine and other Arab countries as homophobic, in order to justify violence against Palestinian people, including queer Palestinians. Jasbir Puar calls this ‘homonationalism’.
International feminist and queer activists in solidarity with Palestine face attacks and harassment by Zionists under the premise that those who support Palestine will face violence from Palestinians for merely being women and queers. Yet more often than not, violence, rape and death are what Zionists wish upon Palestinians, queers and women who stand in solidarity with Palestine. The Israeli apartheid state surveils, blackmails, and harasses our queer Palestinian people. There are countless testimonies, reports, and documentations of sexual violence Palestinians have been facing throughout Israel’s 76 years of settler-colonialism and apartheid rule.
Through lobby groups, often allied with right-wing homophobic organizations, Israel promotes its Pinkwashing agenda around the world — to events like Eurovision and Pride.
When LGBTQIA+ organizers allow Israeli embassies, lobby groups, and businesses complicit in Israeli apartheid and occupation to participate in Pride events, this further contributes to pinkwashing Israel’s war-crimes. We cannot let this happen. Challenging pinkwashing is part of answering the Palestinian call for BDS.
We draw inspiration from countless examples of this: from the Seattle queer activists who cancelled an Israeli propaganda tour to the queer Palestinians and allies in Chicago who shut down pinkwashing at the Creating Change LGBTQ Conference. More than 10,000 people participated in the first Berlin Internationalist Queer Pride, organised in response to Pinkwashing and anti-Palestinian racism within both mainstream and alternative pride events. Sam Smith dropped their Israel show, and Lisbon Pride refused the participation of apartheid Israel’s ambassador. Over 4000 queer artists have pledged “not to perform or participate in public events in Israel until Palestinians are free.” More than 300 queer filmmakers have pledged not to participate in the Israeli government-sponsored Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival (TLVFest) after learning about the festival’s pinkwashing agenda. And over 60 LGBTQIA+ organisations called for a boycott of Eurovision 2024 due to Israel’s participation during its Gaza Genocide.
At a moment when trans people around the world are under attack from right-wing institutions and politicians, and Palestinians of all gender and sexual identities are resisting Israel’s oppression, we must join together to build justice and self-determination for all, including queer and trans people.
As queer collectives from Palestine and around the world, we refuse to have our identities instrumentalized by the settler-colonial apartheid regime of Israel. We refuse to be complicit in oppression, in occupied Palestine and everywhere.
We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their popular resistance to displacement, land theft, and ethnic cleansing and their struggle for the liberation of their lands and futures from Zionist settler-colonialism.
Our pride resides in our collective struggles for an end to oppression, colonisation, and genocide everywhere. The first Pride was a riot against police violence. In that spirit, let us rise up against all forms of oppression. Palestine will be free, and we will all be free.
In the words of Compton’s cafeteria legend Donna Personna, “[Pride] ain’t a party. It’s time to act up!”
WE CALL ON LGBTQIA+ GROUPS TO ACT UP:
- Organize Palestine blocs in Pride marches (send photos to queercoalitionforpalestine@riseup.net or tag us @queercoalitionforpalestine)
- Organize and/or attend a protest, action, or educational event about Queers In Palestine or about Pinkwashing
- Reject Israeli funding, refuse collaborations with complicit Israeli institutions, and refuse to cover up, pinkwash, or normalize apartheid Israel
- Work to exclude LGBT+ groups with ties to the Israeli government from international bodies such as ILGA
- Boycott LGBTQIA+ tourism in apartheid Israel and pinkwashing events like Tel Aviv Pride and TLVFest
- Boycott and push for divestment from companies targeted by the BDS movement
- Answer the call from Queers In Palestine
- Share this campaign!
Sign our Call to Action
To sign our Call to Action, send us an email to queercoalitionforpalestine@riseup.net with the following information:
- Your Name (optional)
- Collective or organisation name (required)
- Contact email (required)
- Social Media Profile or Website Link (required)