This article was originally published as a thread on Twitter. With the permission of the author, we turned this thread into an article and published it on Velvele.net on May 13, 2021, during the demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah; the original text was translated into English by Mercan Baş.
Pinkwashing has become one of the methods used by Israel to cover up its crimes in Palestine. The Israeli state spends millions of dollars on campaigns that portray the country to the West as “gay-friendly” and “the most democratic country in the Middle East”; Tel Aviv Pride is advertised in Europe and the US and tours to attend the event are being organized.
I believe the timing is just right to reinforce the concept of pinkwashing and other related phenomena at this point, so let me break down the basics of these notions. Gather round, darlings.
Jasbir Puar defined pinkwashing in 2013 as the practice of covering up or distracting attention from a nation’s discriminatory policies against certain communities by touting gay rights reserved for a small group of people.
Pinkwashing, first and foremost, creates a distinction within the LGBTQIA+ people by creating a concept of “good gays.” Simultaneously, the pinkwashing “progressive” white-nation-state attributes homophobia to the “reactionary” nations and puts itself forward as the new symbol of civilization.
This can be very well connected to homonationalism, as defined by Puar in her Terrorist Assemblages (2007). According to Puar, recognition and inclusion by the nation are possible only through the incorporation of homosexual jargon into mainstream discourse and the disqualification and segregation of racial and sexual others from the national imaginary. This process brings to the fore a sexual exceptionalism and results in the emergence of national homosexuality, which Puar refers to as homonationalism.
The process of pinkwashing proceeds as the nation-state tweezes out some of the LGBTQIA+ subjects and validates their identities by nationalizing them. These subjects, to whom the state gives a higher moral status, are highlighted as the only acceptable queer examples in society.
States engage in pinkwashing practices by creating a post-homophobic and gay-friendly image for themselves, but they gain this gay-friendly image by attributing homophobia to communities of color, both inside and outside their borders.
This is where dear Sara Ahmed‘s concept of the “politics of attribution” is so important:
“[The politics of attribution] is an important mechanism for creating moral grounds for war. When homophobia is attributed to Islam, it is a cultural attribution. Thus, homophobia is seen as intrinsic to Islam, as a characteristic of a whole culture, whereas homophobia encountered in the West is seen as an external, individual characteristic.”
The fact that the “progressive” state singles out homophobia as an individual fault of its own citizens shows that the aim of this political move is not to eradicate the phobia, but to shift attention to another oppressed community in order to maintain the superior position of the state.
It’s important to point out Bosia and Weiss’ concept of “political homophobia” (2013) here. Bosia and Weiss argue that political homophobia, which they define as “a state strategy, social movement, and transnational phenomenon that is powerful enough to structure the experiences and sexual expressions of sexual minorities”, is practiced by the state, associated with scapegoating an ‘other’, and is a product of transnational influence peddling and partnerships; and is integrated into issues of collective identity with complex legacies of colonialism.
This brings us back to the Israel-Pinkwashing relationship: This very concept, true to the name of the occupying state, reveals how Israel’s LGBTQIA+ advocacy is a PR exercise. Sarah Schulman summarizes this campaign, which began in 2005, as follows:
“Carried out with the help of American marketing executives, the ‘Brand Israel’ campaign targeted men between the ages of 18 and 34… The objective of the campaign was to portray Israel as ‘reasonable and modern'” (2011).
Of course, being reasonable and modern in a conflict-ridden geography would raise a country’s level of civilization in the global arena, and for this to happen, a new negative aspect needed to be attributed to the enemy.
The timing of this Israeli performance of gay rights advocacy cannot be separated from its neo-colonial context in Palestine, or in other words, from Israel’s typical settler colonialist activities in the region.
While Israel’s negative image is already etched in the world’s memory due to its numerous attacks on Palestinians and many war crimes, the occupation of Palestine provides a critical backdrop for Israel’s brand strategy, which draws on gay rights and human rights rhetoric.
Aeyal Gross, a law professor at Tel Aviv University, uses the metaphor “fig leaf” for Israel’s performative gay rights advocacy. Here, the fig leaf is Israel’s advocacy of gay rights, attempting to cover up the crimes against humanity that the state of Israel perpetrated in Palestine.
