It is deeply disheartening to witness the complete absence of any semblance of moral integrity from the leaders of North American and European nations, who have long boasted their images as the most developed and progressive countries on the global stage, as they continue to censor and endorse Israel’s genocide that relentlessly ravages the entirety of Palestine. This same silence and censorship extend into academia, where the genocide is grossly misrepresented and sanitized, being reduced to an oversimplified and misleading narrative of a “conflict” or “war,” as an attempt to obfuscate and distort the true nature and magnitude of the genocide and settler colonial violence. Therefore, it is necessary for me to acknowledge the urgent need to research the historical context surrounding the emergence and use of “pinkwashing” as a strategic tool by the state of Israel, to fully understand the ways in which it has successfully created an image of itself as the only democratic, feminist and queer friendly nation in the Middle East, while simultaneously committing countless war crimes and ethnic cleansing to the indigenous Palestinians. For this reason, it is important to emphasize the remarkable efforts of grassroots queer Palestinian organizations like alQaws, whose vision of Palestinian liberation goes beyond the limitations of mainstream western liberal politics regarding race, nationality, gender, and sexuality (alQaws, n.d.). This essay argues that the “pinkwashing” of Palestinian genocide and the misrepresentation of Palestinian queerness, disseminated by Western imperialist powers and the settler colonial state of Israel, reinforce hegemonic structures and imperialist agendas. This manipulation fits into broader frameworks of empire and geopolitics, where queer rights are weaponized by Israel to mask its illegal and genocidal occupation of Palestine. Thus, analyzing the grassroot queer Palestinian movements and the “pinkwashing” of Palestinian genocide unveil deeper insights into the complexities of global power dynamics and underscores the urgency of reclaiming narratives for Palestinian resistance and Queer liberation.
To provide a contextual understanding of how Israel employs queer politics to advance their settler colonial, imperialist, and genocidal agenda, it is imperative to comprehend the origin and establishment of “pinkwashing”. In the scholarly article titled “Decolonial Queering: The Politics of Being Queer in Palestine,” written by Walaa Alqaisiya (2000), an in-depth analysis is presented, delineating how pinkwashing serves as a tool utilized by the Israeli state to legitimize the ongoing settler colonialism in Palestine by asserting itself as a progressive nation that ensures legal rights for queer individuals (31-32). This deliberate strategy intentionally marginalizes and erases queer Palestinians living in occupied Palestine and effectively perpetuates the myth that Israel is the sole progressive and compassionate sanctuary within the Middle East, wherein marginalized and oppressed queer individuals can enjoy freedom and protection. At the same time, pinkwashing reinforces Orientalist narratives depicting the Middle East as regressive and violent, while positioning itself as the “colonial savior” for queer Palestinians in the region (Alqaisiya 2020, 35-36). By weaponizing the genuine struggles faced by queer individuals in Palestine, pinkwashing seeks to solidify the notion of the Middle East as conservative and undemocratic, thereby advocating for the rescue of Muslim women and queer Muslims from their own culture. As a result, Pinkwashing functions as a diversionary tactic that exploits Islamophobia, as well as the politics of gender and sexuality, to appeal to Western queer and/or liberal audiences, who perceive Israel as the sole Middle Eastern nation aligned with the progressive and gay-friendly values advocated by the West. This process obfuscates the genocidal settler colonialism and apartheid regimes imposed by Israel upon indigenous Palestinians. Furthermore, it grants liberal audiences from the “developed” countries, who possess both comfort and resources, the power to determine whether a state can be deemed progressive based solely on its treatment of queer individuals.
Furthermore, the phenomenon of pinkwashing in Israel intersects with the intricate dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality. This universalization of queer rights is a component of the liberal political ideologies that establishes modernity through an orientalist and white-supremacist framework. Consequently, this framework perpetuates the vilification and dehumanization of all Palestinians, whom I contend to possess an inherently “queerness”. The article “Israeli Settler Colonialism in Context: Celebrating (Palestinian) Death and Normalizing Gender and Sexual Violence,” written by Rabab Abdulhadi (2019), a Palestinian-born American scholar, explains how Israel employs Islamophobic and Orientalist tropes which mirrors the U.S imperialist occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan (550). The sexual abuse of Palestinian bodies, irrespective of their gender and/or sexuality, mirrors the dehumanization endured by illegally detained Iraqi civilians in Abu Ghraib prison during the U.S imperialist invasion (Abdulhadi 2019,550). It is crucial to note the inverted gender dynamic in such sexual abuse where many instances were captured and shared by Israeli and American women who served in the military while engaging in the sexual abuse of indigenous Iraqi and Palestinian men (Abdulhadi 2019,551). Another notable instance where gendered sexual violence intersects with settler colonialism is the fetishization of veiled Palestinian woman. In this case, the image was a symbol for a ground invasion in Gaza where a photoshopped half-naked veiled Palestinian women invites the Israeli prime minister to finish the sexual penetration (Abdulhadi 2019,562). This act serves as a representation of Zionist and colonial fantasies, using sexual violence as a metaphor to encourage the Israeli government to complete the destruction of Gaza, a region where indigenous Palestinians have been displaced from various parts of historical Palestine. In light of these observations, it becomes evident that Israel's settler colonial violence positions all indigenous Palestinian bodies as a threat that imperialist and Zionist forces should conquer. For this reason, all Palestinians become queered subjects as they are dehumanized, and their bodies are considered deviant from the heteronormative and racist settler colonial state of Israel. The overt sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinian bodies exposes the deceptive nature of the “progressive,” feminist, and queer-friendly claims made by Israel and its imperialist allies.
For this reason, it is crucial to emphasize the modes in which queer Palestinians resist and confront the phenomena of pinkwashing and settler colonial violence perpetrated by the Israeli government. As a grassroots queer Palestinian organization, alQaws has asserted that their mission is to represent all Palestinians, thereby dismantling the colonial narrative that positions queer Palestinians as victims within Palestinian society (Alqaisiya 2020, 36). This framework, known as “decolonial queering” according to the organization, rejects the notion of presenting sexuality as the sole struggle faced by queer Palestinians (Alqaisiya 2020, 36). While acknowledging the presence of patriarchal and capitalist structures within Palestinian societies, which exist globally, alQaws practices the process of disidentification through unwaveringly regards queerness as an integral component of the Palestinian identity (alQaws, n.d.). This framework disrupts Israel's exploitation of queer Palestinian movements by encompassing all Palestinians, irrespective of their diverse gender and sexual identities. Moreover, this process fosters the reimagining of a liberation that transcends the hierarchy of gender, race, sexuality, and nationality. Simultaneously, the persistent reclamation of their queer Palestinian identity by the organization refutes the colonial myth that constructs “queerness” as a product of liberal western politics.
This paper presents an explanation of how the settler colonial state of Israel, in collaboration with its imperialist allies, systematically employs the strategy known as pinkwashing to legitimize the acts of colonial violence and imperial conquest in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine. Ultimately, it is my hope that the culmination of this research can be a part of the radical movement that brings awareness and action in relation to the pinkwashing phenomenon within the context of the Palestinian genocide, as well as a call of resistance against colonialism and imperialism in the so-called progressive nation-states.
About the image: The picture I choose to use for this piece is from a pride parade in Germany in 2019 where two (presumably queer) women are holding a rainbow flag which says, “NO PRIDE IN ISRAELI APARTHEID”. I choose this picture as a reminder that queer activists everywhere should understand that queer liberation is deeply tied to the reckoning of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and Palestinian Liberation. The image is found through google search with free Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.
Works Cited
Abdulhadi, Rabab. 2019. “Israeli Settler Colonialism in Context: Celebrating (Palestinian) Death and Normalizing Gender and Sexual Violence.” Feminist Studies 45, no. 2–3: 541. https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.45.2-3.0541.
Alqaisiya, Walaa. 2020. “Decolonial Queering: The Politics of Being Queer in Palestine.” Journal of Palestine Studies 47, no. 3: 29–44. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2018.47.3.29.
AlQaws. n.d. “About Us.” alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society. Accessed February 25, 2024. https://alqaws.org/about-us.
Foto, Montecruz. Queers for Palestine – Berlin. 2019. Berlin, Germany. https://www.montecruzfoto.org/27-07-2019-Queers-for-Palestine-Berlin
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