Gay Star News: Hooray For The IDF!

GSN has to be the most politically disgusting right-wing power serving gay publication ever.

The IDF is a conscript army dedicated to evicting and killing Palestinians, you fucking gaytard.

Orlando: Pinkwashing

Pink News.

Oh fuck off out of this, you murderous state terrorist Zionist hoodlum.

Orlando: Islam

'The instant exploitation of this attack is part of a more general trend of exploiting liberal social issues to glorify agendas of militarism, tribal conflicts, and aggressive foreign policies. Decorate the GCHQ headquarters or the Tel Aviv city hall with the LGBT’s rainbow flag colors and suddenly mass surveillance and decades-long military occupation seems pretty and liberal. Choose militaristic U.S. Presidents who represent social milestones of race and gender and suddenly their militarism seems to liberals to be more tolerable and even inspiring. Pretend that the war on Afghanistan is about feminism, and aggression toward Iran is about protecting LGBTs, and watch liberals melt with appreciation. Disguise anti-Muslim animus as pro-LGBT activism and one can quickly expand support for a neocon mentality and agenda into large sectors of western liberalism.

'Depicting anti-LGBT hatred as the exclusive (or even predominant) province of Islam is not only defamatory toward Muslims but does a massive disservice to the millions of LGBTs who have been — and continue to be — seriously oppressed, targeted, and attacked by people have nothing to do with Islam. The struggle of LGBTs around the world is difficult enough without having them cynically used as some sort of prop to bash a group that itself is already being bashed from multiple directions.'

Stop Exploiting LGBT Issues to Demonize Islam and Justify Anti-Muslim Policies, Glenn Greenwald.

Hope Peter Tatchell reads this - then maybe he'll see why so many gay men on the left think he's a right wing imperialist stooge.

Here he is being not racist or Islamophobic earlier.

Orlando: Leave

And to think some say the debate about the EU referendum has become so debased it's been reduced to hysterical apocalyptic doom-mongering.

An Israeli group is trying to blame it on the Palestinians!

Pinkwashing: With Gay Star News

Colin Wilson from No To Pinkwashing writes for Gay Star News!

One of the few good things about having a completely hopeless editor is that as he'll print anything, so some interesting stuff will occasionally get through.

The piece is a bit short for a complex subject, so best to visit No To Pinkwashing's website.

Anyway, after that brief interlude, it's time for GSN to get back to the serial Pinkwashing...

Independent: Front Page

And in other news...

Palestinian baby burned to death, three wounded after settlers set fire to home http://t.co/jWPhJZNnUc pic.twitter.com/yRIJVCjNRt

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) July 31, 2015

Great Corrections Of Our Time: Associated Press

Last week, in an article on the controversial rainbow flag mural a Palestinian artist painted on Israel’s apartheid wall, the Associated Press made this claim: “A 1951 Jordanian law banning homosexual acts remains in effect in the West Bank, as does a ban in Gaza passed by British authorities in 1936.”

In fact, there is no law in the West Bank, or in Jordan, that bans sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex.

Yesterday, several days after I contacted AP to inform them of this, they issued the following correction:

In a story June 30 about Palestinian protesters whitewashing a gay pride rainbow flag, The Associated Press reported erroneously that homosexual acts are banned by law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While homosexuality is largely taboo in Palestinian society, there are no laws specifically banning homosexual acts.

This may surprise people, since the notion that homosexual activity is criminal – and even punishable by death – is a staple of a form of anti-Palestinian propaganda called pinkwashing...

Electronic Intifada.

Myths about how homosexuality is oppressed in other Arab and Middle Eastern countries are very popular in the Western media - they are rarely corrected.

But that's Orientalism for you.

Tel Aviv Pride: That Number Again...

From a quick search on Google News.

Numbers of participants on Pride events are usually hilariously over-inflated by organisers.

Then often obediently repeated without question.

Note here it's the gay media that have gone for this magic 180,000 number.

The figure is taken from this email sent out earlier by 'Tel Aviv-Yafo International Relations', an official Israeli government PR body, natch.

And who'd think there was any need to question anything they say, eh?

Update: And here's a cartoon video made by the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry and released to the US media Monday.

It's meant to satirise liberal Western journalists 'naivety' about Gaza and Hamas - and depicts a crazed Arab terrorist abducting and then shooting a gay man.

There is no evidence this actually happens in Gaza, but why let that stop you?

Pinkwashing: Debate

The day before Tel Aviv's internationally renowned gay pride parade, Haaretz asked: Is gay pride more complex when it comes to Israel? Should we be questioning whether Israel is using gay rights to "pinkwash" its actions in the West Bank and Gaza, or are pinkwashing charges just an irrelevant ploy to change the subject back to the Palestinians?

Aeyal Gross, Haaretz's legal commentator, and James Kirchick, a Washington-based journalist, debated the question right here.

Kirchick defined pinkwashing as "anything Israel does that's positive with regard to LGBT rights [having] an ulterior, sinister motive." Gross, meanwhile, called pinkwashing an "appropriation of LGBT rights for propaganda to promote an image of [Israel] as democratic while diverting from other rights violations."

When Kirchick challenged Gross to provide an example of a leader who used LGBT rights to justify the occupation, Gross replied that "when after the flotilla, Netanyahu says 'go to Gaza, not to us,' the message is clear."

Kirchick and Gross continued to debate the merit of claims that gays in Israel have more rights than gays in the Arab world. "So what," Gross said. "Gays in the U.K. have many more rights than in Israel. So what?" ...

From a Twitter debate held by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Kirchick is arguably America's most right-wing gay journalist.

He once famously tried to end homophobia in Russia by revealing that he was wearing some rainbow suspenders [braces] during an interview on Russia Today.

PS Israeli security forces exploit Palestinians’ sexual orientation to blackmail them into becoming collaborators. The Israeli LGBT mainstream’s silence about this persecution exposes a moral lapse.

Why I Won't Be Participating In Tel Aviv's Pride Parade.

Sepp Blatter: A Joke

When he said this about gay fans going to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar: "I'd say they should refrain from any sexual activities", it was clearly a joke (as you can see in this video).

That's why he said 'Seriously...' after, and then spoke out against all discrimination, and how he hoped to overcome it.

Get over it and stop imagining homophobia where it doesn't exist.

PS If you're concerned about human rights abuses, why not ban Israel from the World Cup?

PPS Ban jokes!

Tony Blair: Mission Accomplished

The Guardian.

Bring back hanging!

PS Only Israel will miss him - Robert Fisk.

Madonna: Solves MIddle East Conflict Once And For All!

Wooh!

PS Mad Madge now claims to be an Israelite.

PPS Oh and it's a picture promoting a Gay club night in Tel Aviv.

PInkwashing Exposed: Trailer

Trailer: Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back! from Pinkwashing Exposed on Vimeo.

"Pinkwashing" is a term activists have coined for when countries engaged in terrible human rights violations promote themselves as "gay friendly" to improve their public image. Israel is the country most famous for this strategy, having initiated it as part of a rebranding campaign has been engaged in for the last decade. 

In 2012, activists in the Pacific Northwestern region of the US responded to an Israeli Consulate-funded pinkwashing tour featuring Israeli gay and lesbian activists that was coming to the region. Local queer Palestine solidarity activists exposed the "Rainbow Generations" tour as pro-Israel propaganda and got some of the events, including the tour's centerpiece event hosted by the City of Seattle's LGBT Commission, cancelled. A significant backlash ensued involving the Seattle City Council and Seattle's leading LGBT and HIV organizations. 

Through the inspiring story of these activists' victory, Pinkwashing Exposed explores how pinkwashing works and what local activists are doing to fight back.

Vimeo.

Here's a Truthout interview with the director, Dean Spade...

We all need to learn how to read state rhetoric that promises to promote our interests - uses our images and our struggles' terminology - in order to preserve and expand the violence of racist, colonial regimes. Pinkwashing is one overt version of this politics that we can identify and resist in our work to build real transformation rather than celebrating when governments simply change the window-dressing in order to shut us up and keep justifying and expanding harm.

The documentary will be available to watch free online - check in here.

Nepal: Propaganda Masquerading As Philanthropy

Daily Mail.

Interesting priority to get IDF soldiers to fly out around 30 babies in military aircraft when elsewhere the Mail say over a million people have been affected by the earthquake.

If only Israel cared so very, very much about Palestinian children.

Paul Hansen, Gaza City 2013.

Eurovision: Pavlov's Gays Say Boo To Putin!

Pink News.

Take that Putin!

Of course it's great that gay men show international solidarity, but do you only get angry about things we're told to be angry about?

That are part of a propaganda push in service to power and empire?

Has anyone ever booed, say, Israel - a criminal state whose human rights abuses make Putin and his cronies look like the Famous Five - at Eurovision?

Though fuck knows what they're doing in Eurovision in the first place, bar Pinkwashing.

PS 'Dima Bilan has previously signed an open letter condemning his country's 'gay propaganda' law'. Oops!

Update: A typically perceptive and amusing article by Peter York in The Times, tracing Eurovision's transition from camp to post modern

Israel: Satire Dies Once More

Despite Iran spat, US support for Israeli occupation continues without pause - Noam Chomsky.

History Lesson: Tear Down That Wall!

Don't forget, other walls are still available.

Fagburn has spoken - take that, Zionist entity!

Israel: Protection

Here's what happened: In mid-July, an editor from the venerable LGBTQ magazine [The Advocate] responded to my story pitch and asked me to write an op-ed on pinkwashing and the 51-day attack on Gaza, which Israel dubbed Operation Protective Edge.

After submitting an article, I received a revised draft that included heavy political editing. I was told the article would be published if I agreed to these changes. The edits included the removal of the words "apartheid," "occupation" and "colonialism," and the addition of a sentence condemning Hamas.

I told the editors I did not agree with their changes, but given the importance of the piece being published, I would accept them on two conditions:

First, the sentence they inserted about Hamas had to be removed because in my mind, it seemed to equate Israel's massive bombardment of a besieged, occupied territory that eventually killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, with Palestinian resistance.

Second, that a quote from Holocaust survivor and Palestine rights activist Suzanne Weiss be added to the piece.

I thought it was particularly important to get a piece into The Advocate because on July 9, just two days after the Israeli attack on Gaza began, it published an article titled "Why LGBT People Around the World Need Israel," lauding the state as a supposed haven of gay rights.

"Unless we want the Middle East to turn into an absolute free-for-all controlled by extremists who want to kill us and turn women into their slaves, then we need to do everything we can to protect Israel and stand in solidarity in any way we can," the piece stated, as U.S.-supplied Israeli bombs fell on Gaza, wiping out entire families. "Not only is it in our interests, but Israel deserves it after all it has done for us," the article added.

I was informed that my amended draft would be sent to the editors and that I would have a response promptly. More than a month later, I was finally told my piece would not be published.

Keegan O'Brien.

Please read this piece.

Israel and its supporters in the U.S. government and the corporate media would have us believe that this highly uneven conflict is justified because the only democratic society in the Middle East has the right to defend itself. The existence of some legal reforms for LGBT people in Israel is regularly touted while promoting this idea.

But while Israel has relationship recognition policies, and it allows gay, lesbian and bisexual people to serve openly in the military, those things matter very little when we're talking about issues of war and occupation.

At the end of the day, promoting Israel as a gay paradise is ultimately just a publicity blitz. It's an effort by Israel to demonize and scapegoat Palestinians as backward and homophobic and to portray Israel as progressive and tolerant in order to justify the country's horrific tactics.

Club Promo Of The Week: Dreck

Nightclub promoters in Tel Aviv have come under fire for mocking the ISIS beheadings of David Haines, James Foley and Steven Sotloff to advertise a gay night.

One advert shows a muscular man kneeling in an orange toga with a man in a revealing black wrap behind him with a hand on his neck.

It is an image strikingly familiar to those that have circulated around the world of an anonymous English-speaking Islamist wielding a knife before going on to behead the innocent hostages in three separate shock videos.

Another shows a man in tight trunks holding a black flag aloft – traditionally a symbol of jihadist extremists.

The adverts were posted to the Facebook page of Dreck – which runs gay club nights across the Israeli city...

Daily Mirror.

Although this was only an online ad for a Tel Aviv gay night, such is the current climate of media hysteria over all things ISIS/IZAL/Islamic State, on Monday this became a story that went GLOBAL!

Stay classy, boys, stay classy!

Fagburn loved Queerty's billiant juxtaposition of this DISTURBING SEXUALISATION OF TERRORISM, and some photos of some sexy dudes from the Israeli Defence Force posing in their pants with their rifles in Occupied Palestine!

Coz Zionist terrorists iz hot!

Leonard Cohen: Fuck Yeah!

Just beyond.

I'm taking this as an apologia for the Six Day War thing.
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