No Pride in Genocide: Pinkwashing doesn't paper over Palestinian's plight
Palestine
In last year’s Pride Month newspaper supplement readers would have learned about the practice and impact of ‘pinkwashing’ - the disingenuous use of LGBTQ+ rights to wash over problematic practices by companies, states or institutions. The piece touched on rainbow capitalism (profiting off the back of queer people while adding little to no positive material impact to their lives or to the advancement of LGBTQ+ liberation); apartheid ‘Israel’ and it’s sinister use of Eurovision (previously a keen favourite in queer culture) to pinkwash over the apartheid state’s heinous crimes against the Palestinian people; and about Gardaí participation in Pride events as queer people face disproportionate policing responses.
At the time of writing this piece this year, the terrain for those very conversations has heightened for queer people. The wealth gap widens as companies profit off them further - with queer people disproportionately affected by poverty; the Gardaí stand by as violence against queer people and other marginalised groups rises as the actions of people filled with hate allowed to go unchecked; and Israel’s apartheid and colonialism has escalated to outright genocide of the Palestinian people.
Building on this further, looking through the lens of Palestine, these three areas of pinkwashing can be applied to the genocide being committed in Palestine by Israel. The growing wealth of the military industrial complex and the profits being extracted through ‘Israeli’ businesses on stolen Palestinan land; the continued pinkwashing and artwashing through Eurovision; and the role of state secuity sources - in this case the Israeli Occupation Forces and the supporting state surveillance that is used to control, abuse, imprison and murder Palestinian people.
Despite the lack of real action from those in power, queer people in Ireland and across the world have been showing love and solidarity to Palestinians. Israel's participation in Eurovision is part of a wider campaign of artwashing and pinkwashing used to normalise and legitimise its horrific actions through the weaponisation of progressive imagery and movements on the world stage - including the LGBTQ+ rainbow and symbolism. It was heartening to see a huge growth and participation in the Boycott Eurovision campaign as more people, including many queer people, are not accepting the normalisation of pinkwashing genocide as part of the competition. Locally, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) South East branch ran a Boycott Eurovision Alternative Eurovision event - which Pride of the Deise promoted, Cork saw an alternative event run by drag queens, and Wexford Pride released a strong statement as to why queer people should boycott the competition.
No matter what the result of the competition, the boycott prevented views and money going to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) who have been complicit in facilitating apartheid Israel. This is part of a wider economic and cultural boycott of Israel.
It was the working class, specifically Dunnes Stores workers in their union, who led the successful Boycott campaign against the South African apartheid regime. If more of us ‘ordinary people from far away’ play our part and use our capacity to divest ourselves from Israel’s economic and cultural activities then we will end the oppression of Paleestinians sooner.
While there is a sea of horrific news coming in from Palestine every day, we can not forget that Palestinian joy and love, queer or otherwise, endures and is an act of resistance in itself. A project to archive queer people’s memories all over the world called ‘Queering the Map’ has captured entries from queer people in Palestine that are filled with love and resistance, in spite of the violence they face under occupation.
“Idk [I don’t know] how long I will live so I just want this to be my memory here before I die. I am not going to leave my home, come what may. My biggest regret is not kissing this one guy. He died two days back. We had told how much we like each other and I was too shy to kiss last time. He died in the bombing. I think a big part of me died too. And soon I will be dead. To Younus, I will kiss you in heaven.”
“I’ve always imagined you and me sitting out in the sun, hand and hand, free at last. We spoke of all the places we would go if we could. Yet you are gone now. If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything. I am sorry I was a coward.” Queer Palestinians continue to exist and resist as they have done for decades.
Palestinian couples getting married amongst the rubble during Israeli advancement is resistance. The laughter of Palestinian children is resistance.
Now, more than ever, it is time for queer people around the world to take serious and strategic action in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings. Our pride resides in our collective struggles for an end to colonisation, occupation and genocide everywhere.
