Reply #18: More from Toronto.

[ConsAreLiars]

Outright censorship is not the only means in the Israel lobby's toolkit for silencing opposition. In recent years, Israel has embarked upon a "re-branding" campaign to promote an image of itself as a modern, liberal society with open values while whitewashing its deplorable human rights record.

A key component of this campaign has been the promotion of Israel as a nation with a progressive outlook on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, especially in relation to its neighbors and Palestinian society. There is truth in this, at least for the Israeli Jewish population, but claims that this is of widespread benefit to Palestinian queers and trans people (e.g. Tel Aviv as a "gay Mecca") are unfounded. More importantly, that Israel recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other countries does nothing to excuse the humanitarian disaster that has resulted from its siege and attacks on Gaza.

It was in response to this re-branding campaign that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) formed. In fact, there are several members of QuAIA who also marched against South African apartheid during the 1980s in solidarity with South African anti-apartheid activist Simon Nkoli, who was a black gay man. Even then, critics disparaged their presence in the Pride parade in Toronto, pointing to relatively greater acceptance of homosexuality in the white South African community compared to blacks living under apartheid. Today, queer activists have begun to label this type of expropriation of the LGBT struggle to distract from other human rights abuses with the term "pink-washing."

QuAIA also endorses the Palestinian civil society call for BDS, and in particular a September 2009 initiative to boycott LGBT leisure tourism to Israel. This campaign was initiated in response to the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association's decision to hold a tourism conference in Tel Aviv in coordination with an Israeli LGBT group, Aguda, despite the Palestinian call for the boycott of Israel.

From: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11368.shtml

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