Re: Action against ‘pinkwashing’ at filmscreening Kriterion
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.