21 thoughts on “Seattle Jewish Community Leadership Misrepresents Israeli LGBT Pinkwashing Event – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. The truth hearts, doesn’t it ?
    While you can find some people who oppose gays in Israel, the whole country welcomes them.
    It is even weird to talk about “accepting” people who are just part of your life in Israel. Nothing special, to the majority of the state.
    All a while around Israel they are prosecuted by both state and people just for being.
    Some interesting way you’ve got of making the world a better place.

  2. Richard: I want to thank you for your tireless efforts in encouraging people to make the world a better place.

  3. The LGBT community’s leadership in Israel is an elitist, white, male, racist, transphobic, biphobic, sexist group that is heavily entrenched with the larger Israeli powers-that-be. It is increasingly right-wing, particularly Likud, and more than willing to participate in Pinkwashing.

    Pinkwashing requires, of course, two kinds of erasure – it not only hides the occupation, but to do so it must first cover up Israel’s rampant homophobia.

    The Hasbara’s “gay arm”, comprised of the community’s top economic, political and social echelons, has done just that.
    The truth is, Israel is a very bad place to be LGBT, especially outside Tel Aviv.

    1. Who are some of the people you are referencing here?

      Can you identify some Israeli LGBT leaders who are, for example, biphobic and/or sexist?

      1. I’m sorry, but I’m not in the business of naming-names against people in my own community to people abroad.
        They may be despicable, but I still have to live with them.

  4. Israel, the progressive state in which a Jew cannot even marry a non-Jew is engaging in pinkwashing as befitting a morally bankrupt state.

    For a country that hold millions of people for generations without basic human rights such as the right to fair trial and freedom of movement, to tout itself as a gay heaven is the sort of macabre spectacle that you’d expect from an Orwellian state trying to impose its upside-down world view on the rest of humanity.

  5. Excellent post Richard,

    I can’t say I’d actively support gay rights, in Jerusalem or anywhere, (as a believer in God’s laws trumping civil laws if they clash), though i’d support their right to be gay as long as they didn’t insist others become like them, but you’re right about using it as a cudgel to beat Palestinians with.

    All the Abrahamic religons frown upon homosexuality, and encourage man/woman relations.

    Even from a secular point of view, one could say gay rights and gay marriages, take away from the rights of children raised in such partnerships. When gay or lesbian couples adopt a child they are trashing it’s rights to two parents. When after having grown up, does the adopted child have the right to question why society didn’t prevent them from being raised by a gay couple as opposed to a normal man/woman couple? If i were in that position, i’d certainly question what kind of society allowed that to happen. The rights of children should come first.

    1. That makes no sense whatsover. What’s a “normal man/woman couple?” And how is gay adoption “trashing” a child’s right to have 2 parents? Are couples consisting of two men or two women somehow less than 2 parents?

      1. Richard,

        Are couples consisting of two men or two women somehow less than 2 parents?

        Yes, because only a man and woman can create or conceive a child, even if by test tube or invitro, it takes a woman and a man. Sperm and egg. Not two women. Nor two men.

        1. Or to put it another way, if a child reaches of age and decides he/she want’s gay parents, then that is a conscious choice. No problem with that. He or she can seek such parents.

          This also leaves the door open for other types of ‘partnerships’ to raise children. How about bestiality partnerships? In Sweden and Denmark bestiality or Zoophilia is legal.
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoophilia_and_the_law

          What is to stop a couple consisting of a human and animal, from adopting a child? The human partner can make the same argument that gay couples do, and insist on adopting and raising a child. How would that child feel when growing up?

          Again, if any child upon coming of age decides he/she would rather have parents consisting of a human and animal then he or she should be free to find them and become adopted by them.

          1. “In Sweden and Denmark bestiality or Zoophilia is legal”

            Well, wikipedia is NOT always correct and using it on topics that one has no prior knowledge about is not a very good idea.
            I don’t know about Sweden, but Zoophilia is not “legal” in Denmark. It’s not automatically illegal but that doesn’t make it legal. Human intercourse with animals are restricted by the Danish laws on the protection of animals – and they are very strict.
            Comparing Zoophilia with homosexuality shown more about you that about homosexuals…

            By the way your “I’d support their right to be gay as long as they didn’t insist others become like them” shows that you know a great number of gays. No bias around here.

          2. I find this comment homophobic & unacceptable in the context of the comment threads here. I don’t accept comments about strange conspiracy theories & I don’t accept bizarre offensive comments like yours. Do not publish anything further in this vein. Keep your homophobia to yourself. If you can’t, you won’t continue here.

        2. SOrry, you’re talking biology which has very little to do with actual parents since gay & lesbian couples are parents no less than heterosexuals. If you can’t acknowledge that then your mind & world view are warped & distorted. I’m sorry for that for your sake & for the rest of us.

  6. RE: “Make no mistake, this far-right Israeli government cares very little about gays or gay rights.” ~ R.S.

    SEE: Israel’s Treatment of Gay Palestinian Asylum Seekers ~ by Caroline Esser, The Washington Note, 6/06/11

    (excerpts). . . The newest way to sell Israel to Americans: LGBT rights. Search gay rights on the Anti-Defamation League’s website and what do you find? A ready-to-print and available for order poster that reads, “Which of the Middle East nations protects the legal rights, safety & freedom of the LGBT communities? Only Israel.”. . .
    . . . In their 2008 study, “Nowhere to Run: Gay Palestinian Asylum-Seekers in Israel,” Michael Kagan and Anat Ben-Dor describe in detail Israel’s unsympathetic and unbending policy towards gay Palestinians. . .
    . . . In pursuit of protection and the ability to openly express their sexuality, there have been at least ten cases in which gay Palestinians have sought refuge in Israel. However, despite their desperation, Israel refuses to even review gay Palestinian applications for asylum (those who have successfully received asylum have had to submit their cases directly to the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva). Moreover, gay Palestinians who have illegally entered Israel have been arrested and promptly deported–returned to the very environments in which their lives were at risk and in which they will now face further danger as they are questioned not only for their sexuality but for their choice to spend time in Israel. . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2011/06/israels_treatme/

  7. RE: “…there are entire swaths of Israeli society which vehemently denounce everything that gay rights stand for, including the large Orthodox and settler populations.” ~ R.S.

    SEE: “Israeli earthquakes are gays’ fault, says MP”, By Tom Chivers and agencies, The Telegraph (U.K.), 02/21/08

    (excerpts) An Israeli MP [Member of Parliament (the Knesset)] has blamed a spate of recent earthquakes in the Middle East on gays.
    Six earthquakes have struck Israel and neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan in recent months, with two coming last week alone. Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas party, suggested that the tremors could be stopped through the simple expedient of repealing various liberalising laws on homosexuality that have been passed by the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, in recent years. . .
    . . . “God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up,” he [Benizri] added. . .

    SOURCE – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1579424/Israeli-earthquakes-are-gays-fault-says-MP.html

  8. RE: “As for JVP’s actions ‘resulting in violence against Jewish people here in Seattle,’ this again is more histrionic overstatement taking a page directly from the hasbara handbook. ~ R.S.

    SEE: “HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on
    Campus”
    , published by the World Union of Jewish Students (March 2002)
    LINK – http://www.scribd.com/doc/53789685/Hasbara-Handbook-Promoting-Israel-on-Campus

    ALSO SEE – http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hasbara

  9. As a queer Seattlite with a queer Palestinian-American partner, I am proud of my city. Know that you were praised at the Friends of Sabeel conference in Sunnyvale by members of JVP in the Bay Area.

  10. Why not just let them have their meeting and take them to task if they try to say anything positive about the occupation or make any political statement of any kind? Make sure they stick to addressing issues relating to problems facing LGBT people and ways to address same. That way whatever insights they can share on that topic and that topic alone could be discussed with like-minded individuals.

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