Beach Blanket Bingo: Zionism and Its Queers

Is the Obama administration engaged in a secret plan to promote gay rights as a way to obscure the existence of the military industrial complex and American efforts to prop up its hegemony worldwide? I suppose it would if it could, but the fig leaf of gay marriage and queer equality is paper thin, if it's a leaf at all, and thus unlikely to obscure larger problematics of American power in geopolitics. My friend Sarah Schulman asks a similar type of question in her NYT op-ed piece from last month – Is the Israeli government trying to cover up its on-going violations of Palestinian human rights by promoting its global reputation as a safe heaven for queers? Pinkwashing

All nations attempt to brand and re-brand themselves in world markets in hopes of bolstering trade or tourism. According to Schulman Pinkwashing Documents 26 million dollars was allocated to branding efforts in 2010 by the Israeli government, and in 2011 the Tel Aviv Tourist board spent over 90 million dollars to paint the city as “an international gay vacation destination.”

Well I don't know about you, but I've totally forgotten about the Wall, the refugee camps, the internal check points, and the arbitrary delays in allowing UN aid into the territories. I've even forgotten that Syria, Jordan and Egypt – funded and equipped with Soviet weaponry – have engaged in numerous wars with Israel for the sole purpose of destroying it and expelling its Jewish citizens from the Levant.

Branding is way powerful! I'm thinking about the beach, the hot Mediterranean men, and how civilized, progressive, and democratic Israel really is compared especially to its primitive medieval Arab neighbors who shun modernity if only to ensure half the population feels obliged to go about in cloth bags. I've forgotten about the scenes on TV immediately after September 11, 2001 showing Palestinians dancing and singing in celebration over the success of the attacks. I've forgotten about Arafat being confronted with a genuine statehood deal at Camp David in 2000 and – abjuring the negotiating technicality of making a counter-offer in response – running to the airport stupefied by the rude intrusion of a viable deal into a peace negotiation. I've forgotten the election of Hamas and Hezbollah, and their liberating and inspiring likeness to groups like the Unitarians and Quakers in their struggle to end America's involvement in southeast Asia.

What concerns me is what might happen if the “Arab Street” gets wind of these branding efforts – not only would Israel's macho/warlike image be undermined, but the spread of a Western perversion into a western colonial territory in the region could be interpreted as a further effort to pollute Islamic culture. Hmmm … Israel better be careful, the pinkwashing could actual hurt its image in the Arab world by linking in the public mind a sickening western perversion with Jewish occupation of Arab territory. It might even risk alienating the American Christian right who support Israel's right to exist based on non-queer-friendly suppositions – you know that insane end days scenario-mongering they can't resist. Boy, come to think of it, this pinkwashing “strategy” might not work out so good. In fact, it's kinda dumb as a strategy – it fails to cover up injustices Israel is responsible for, while simultaneously breeding an additional visceral contempt for the nation's legitimacy among the population of its neighbors.

Well, the gay friendly branding is unlikely to resonate very strongly outside LGBT communities targeted (Basically northern and central Europe), and may not reach past the part of our community contemplating a longish beach vacation in the next couple of years.

The branding is definitely gonna get deep into the European work-out and tanning sector of the gay male community – a sector of LGBT “nation” vital in determining how the marginalization of Palestinian human rights struggles will play out in broad geo-political terms.

With the European gay male beach bums and tanning slaves in their pocket, I don't see how Israel can lose.

Sarah Schulman writes that there is a “growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation,” of which she is a big part as the intellectual rock of the New York group “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” QuAIA  It seems to me that if pinkwashing does anything more than support Israeli queer tourism, it might work its re-branding magic on the staple of potential recruits to the modestly relevant Israeli Divestment Campaign on American campuses. If this movement loses students, and freshly engaged queer students especially, it cannot hope to expand or perhaps sustain its efforts.

On a one-to-one match up increasingly LGBT-aware youth on college campuses are gonna find the Palestinian Authority's record less than inspiring – Sarah Schulman mentions that homosexuality was decriminalized in the West Bank, and presumably word-count restraints prevented her from pointing out that in the Gaza Strip homosexuality remains a crime. There are credible reports that LGBT persons are subject to Sharia enforced by PA and Hamas, and that queers under Palestinian jurisdiction face being labeled collaborators and are at risk for arbitrary arrest, interrogation, and torture. WIKI

Palestinian liberation has much bigger fish to fry than tackling the long and difficult issue of the status and rights of LGBT people. Funny, the issue presents a kind of microcosm of the journey to a genuine and sustainable peace with Israel – it presents a test of non-violence and of tolerance.