In Israel, the government is putting millions of dollars into a branding campaign to detract away from its treatment of Palestinians. Israel attempts to pinkwash its reputation by framing itself as a “gay haven” located in the Middle East through activities like funding gay Israeli advocacy groups and running gay tourism campaigns.
This strategy aims to normalise the Israeli occupation and larger apartheid policies and to reframe the occupation in terms of civilizational narratives measured by (sexual) modernity. It is also a countermove against the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement which has cultivated widespread grassroots mobilisation against Israel’s brutalities.
As pointed out by Al-Qaws, a Palestinian queer advocacy group, it is irrelevant whether Palestinian society is homophobic or not. The alleged concern for queer people in Palestine conceals Israel’s direct culpability in oppressing Palestinians.
Israel is framed as the only gay-friendly country in an otherwise queer-hostile region, done through pinkwashing and the use of orientalist tropes; positioning Israelis as civilised and egalitarian, and Palestinians as homophobic, barbaric, and anti-cosmopolitan.
Read the article by Imogen Grant in Honi Soit.