Against The PINKWASHING of Israel

[Ken Burch]

11. Anytime some group is oppressed, it is an issue to people who fight oppression.

And there aren't THAT many people who say there's NOTHING good about Israel. I actually admire a lot of things about the place myself(particularly the socialist aspects that both Likud AND Labor are now, tragically, committed to wiping out). For most, the argument is that the good things don't vindicate the bad things(LGBTQ policy and personal liberalism if no longer any vestiges of workers' rights or a commitment to social equality don't mean that the Occupation, the settlements and the bombing
are acceptable).

The reason the Israeli government keeps bringing up the LGBTQ issue is that they are arguing that, if Israel is somewhat better than the Arab world(a place that is deeply repressive and needs a revolution-from-below, as the people of the Arab Spring were valiantly trying to start)on this issue and some other things, this somehow means that what they are doing to the Palestinians either doesn't matter or is, to some degree, justified. The latter point is absurd, of course, because nothing Netanyahu and the IDF are doing is ever even possibly going to have the effect of helping liberate gays in Palestine or anywhere else in the Arab world. Pinkwashing is about trying to use progressive policy in one area to leverage acquiescence about reactionary and oppressive policies in another.

The OP makes a valid point. It is wrong to try to whip the LGBTQ community into support of or silence about what Israeli does to Palestinians just because LGBTQ people in Israel(and I'm not sure this includes LGBTQ Israeli Arabs)have a better deal than they would in Saudi Arabia.