Showing posts with label pinkwash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pinkwash. Show all posts

Monday, 28 January 2013

Israel: Getting Away With It

Rupert Murdoch has apologised for a "grotesque, offensive cartoon" printed in the Sunday Times that has led to complaints of anti-Semitism.
The cartoon, by Gerald Scarfe, appears to depict Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu building a brick wall containing the blood and limbs of Palestinians.
It has the text: "Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?"
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it had complained to the Press Complaints Commission...
BBC News.

A Lib-Dem MP who accused "the Jews" in Israel of "inflicting atrocities on Palestinians" has received a letter of censure by the party.
Bradford East MP David Ward later apologised and said he had been "trying to make clear that everybody needs to learn the lessons of the Holocaust".
He had made his comments ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, on Sunday.
The letter was the "equivalent of a yellow card", a party spokesman said.
Mr Ward received the written warning at a meeting with party whips, after the party "condemned" his "use of language", on Friday...
BBC News.

Can any other state behave so terribly and claim to be beyond criticism?
Build a racist wall - may we say nothing?
Draw a cartoon about the wall - total shitstorm. 
Yay.

Monday, 31 December 2012

Glenn Greenwald: Useful Idiots

"A favorite tactic of neocons - who have led the smear campaign against Hagel - is to cynically exploit liberal causes to generate progressive support for their militaristic agenda. They suddenly develop an interest in the plight of gay people when seeking to demonize Iran, or pretend to be devoted to women's rights when attempting to sustain endless war in Afghanistan, or become so deeply moved by the oppression of Muslim factions - such as Iraqi Shia - when it comes time to justify their latest desired invasion...."

Glenn Greenwald, Guardian CiF.

Glenn Greenwald writes on the strange case of how the US gay republican group, Log Cabin Republicans, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times attacking Chuck Hagel and urging President Obama not to appoint him Defense Secretary.
Why?
Cause he's "anti-gay".
Oh, and cause he's "anti-Israel".
Even though they've supported politicians in the past who have been against equal marriage.
Guess which one is being used as a smokescreen for an attack about the other?
And double oh, LCR are broke, so who paid for the ad?
Greenwald writes; "Andrew Sullivan is right that this is a classic technique of the neo-con smear campaign - recruit progressives to their cause with exploitation of unrelated issues."
Looks like quite a few fell for it again this time.
I wonder if readers can think of any British gay journalists or leading gay activists who've been duped in this way?
I think the technical political term is "useful idiots".
Or Pinkwashing.


PS One of the best homo journo things to happen in 2012 was the American campaigning journalist Glenn Greenwald getting a regular gig writing for Comment Is Free.
He mainly writes about security issues and that, but the fags creep in occasionally.

Sunday, 22 July 2012

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

Pride London: Israel's Shame


Makes a nice change from the Israeli government trying to hijack an international Pride event for crude propaganda purposes.
Or them sending gay journalists on freebie holidays to Tel Aviv Pride for the same.
The above video was brought to you by the newly-formed NoPinkWashingUK.
Their website provides much information and resources about and/or against Israeli Pinkwashing.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

IDF: Pinkwashing

"It's Pride Month. Did you know that the IDF treats all of its soldiers equally? Let's see how many shares you can get for this photo."

Photo and quote from the Israeli Defence Force Facebook page.

"When I get through a hard day killing Palestinian kids and bulldozing peace activists to death there's nothing I like more than walking down the street with my boyfriend. In fact I'm so proud you can only see the back of our heads. But that may be because we're not a real couple, just a propaganda exercise..."

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Iran: Pinkwashing's Flipside

A story by Dan Littauer claiming four men in Iran had been sentenced to death for "sodomy" has been published by four British gay news sites; Gay Middle East, Gay Star News, LGBTQNation, and Pink News.
In the last few years, a number of stories about men being executed in Iran "just for being gay" have been found not to have happened, or to have no evidence to back the story up.
Because of their emotional potency, they are used for propaganda purposes by the Right about an Officially Declared Enemy of the US - the modern equivalent to First World War horror stories about German soldiers bouncing babies on their bayonets. 
It's the flipside to pinkwashing of Israel.
Scott Long, former LGBT director at Human Rights Watch, asks how sure we can be this time

"You can say anything you want because you support power, and nobody expects you to justify anything. For example, on the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, say, "Do you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?" I could say, "Yeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist." I don't need any evidence. Suppose I said, "George Bush is a terrorist." Well, then I would be expected to provide evidence, "Why would you say that?""

Noam Chomsky, 2002 interview

Update: There are some very interesting interviews with LGBT Iranians in LGBT Republic Of Iran by Small Media - which contradict the line that men are regularly executed for being gay and/or having gay sex).

Thursday, 12 January 2012

Pinkwashing: And The Best Gay City In The World Is...

In a poll on travel website GayCities the winner of the best city in the
world was... Tel Aviv, of course!
And they got a whopping 43% of the vote.
Runner-up boring old New York City got just 14%, Toronto 7%, Sao Paolo 6%, and London 5%.
Hmmm...
Did I mention it was an online poll?
Some poor bugger at the Israeli Ministry of Truth must have spent all day clicking away on that one.

Saturday, 17 December 2011

Pinkwash: But You Are Blanche, You Are!

"Some people tell me, 'They're using your films, your liberal message of gay-oriented films as a fig leaf. I've been accused of cooperating with the government or the establishment to create that fig leaf."

Director Eytan Fox in a very confused piece in Variety about gay men in "the Israeli film industry".
If you're appalled by the racist four page (!) ads for Israeli "tourism" currently running in the British gay press, please write to the editors.

Wednesday, 23 November 2011

Pinkwashing: Gay Rights As Zionist PR Tool

"In 2005, with help from American marketing executives, the Israeli government began a marketing campaign, “Brand Israel,” aimed at men ages 18 to 34. The campaign, as reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, sought to depict Israel as “relevant and modern.” The government later expanded the marketing plan by harnessing the gay community to reposition its global image.

"Last year, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the Tel Aviv tourism board had begun a campaign of around $90 million to brand the city as “an international gay vacation destination.” The promotion, which received support from the Tourism Ministry and Israel’s overseas consulates, includes depictions of young same-sex couples and financing for pro-Israeli movie screenings at lesbian and gay film festivals in the United States. (The government isn’t alone; an Israeli pornography producer even shot a film, “Men of Israel,” on the site of a former Palestinian village.)

"The growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation has named these tactics “pinkwashing”: a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life. Aeyal Gross, a professor of law at Tel Aviv University, argues that “gay rights have essentially become a public-relations tool,” even though “conservative and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic.”..."

The great Sarah Schulman writing in The New York Times (surprisingly).
See if you can spot the four page (!) front-of-house foldover ad from the Israel Government Tourism Office in your favourite gay mag this month.
Don't forget to read that fascinating history of the Galilee - but see if you can spot who's missing from it?

Friday, 29 July 2011

Jerusalem Pride: "Almost No Incidents Of Violence"

Jerusalem Post.
Well done to the holy state of Israel - a land without homophobia (or so I keep reading in the gay press).
"Thursday’s pride march will also mark the second anniversary of the shooting attack at Bar-Noar – the community center for gay and lesbian teens in Tel Aviv in 2009 – that left two dead and 15 wounded."
Oops!

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

Israel/Palestine: This Pinkwash Will Continue Til You Choke

You can watch this hate-filled goon talking shit if you want.
It's gone viral.
But... Oops!
It looks like every word is a lie.
"A YouTube video casting a flotilla headed to the Gaza Strip as anti-gay has been shown to be professionally made, and may be part of an orchestrated campaign with ties to the Israeli government.
"In the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the latest weapon — in public relations — is a video...."
Whodathunkit?
I guess the gay media are too busy enjoying their Israeli-government paid trips to Tel Aviv to even notice this.

Thursday, 23 June 2011

Israel/Palestine: More Pinkwash

Peter Tatchell released a statement on Monday condemning the decision of the International LGBTQ Youth and Student Organisation (IGLYO) to hold its General Assembly in Tel Aviv this December as "divisive, exclusionist, mistaken and regrettable..."
"Since human rights are universal, we cannot divorce LGBTI rights from the national rights of the Palestinian people. These are two aspects of the same struggle for universal human rights.
"It is true that on LGBTI rights Israel is, by far, the most progressive nation in the region. However, human rights should not be viewed from a gayist perspective. LGBTI rights do not trump all other human rights."
Admirable sentiments, of course.
There's a predictably silly piece in The Jewish Chronicle; 'Peter Tatchell under fire for gay meeting attack'.
The only gay media that have covered this appear to be some blogs and Midlands Zone.
Pink News and Pink Paper usually reprint any statement from Peter Tatchell pretty much verbatim.
How strange they have both decided to ignore this one...

• See also Que(e)rying the Israel-linked GayMiddleEast.com: a statement by Arab queers

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Tony Kushner: The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Zionism

"The trustees board of the City University of New York (CUNY) brought to an end an embarrassing row over freedom of expression by voting unanimously to award an honorary degree to the award-winning playwright Tony Kushner.
"A firestorm was ignited last week when a single trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, launched an attack on the Jewish playwright on the grounds that he was not sufficiently pro-Israel. The intervention blocked the award of the degree which would normally have been routine..." The Guardian.

Here's Tony Kushner's lengthy, impassioned, rational response to the original decision in The Jewish Week.
“This has been an incredibly ugly experience, that a great public university would make a decision based on slanderous mischaracterizations without giving the person in question a chance to be heard. I’m sickened that this is happening in New York City. Shocked, really.”
Kushner is not the only gay New Yorker to come under attack for daring to criticise Israel.
In March New York's LGBT Center cancelled a benefit gig organised by Israeli Apartheid Week after a row manufactured by gay Neo-Con cunt Michael Lucas.
Last year Queers Against Israeli Apartheid were banned from taking part in Pride Toronto.
Some things appear to be unsayable in north American Gayland.
Exhuming McCarthy...
And some things are unreportable in the UK - some gay journalists are too busy writing glowing reports about free holidays in Israel that were paid for by the Israeli government.
Just sayin'...

Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures has just opened off-Broadway to so-so reviews.
"Kushner’s talent for self-criticism is endearing, but what his wise, challenging and heartbroken play really needs is a tough editor" - LA Times

Here's Tony talking to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now today about CUNY and iHomo...


Transcript here.

Saturday, 12 February 2011

Egypt & Iran: Gay Rights & The Gay Right

Everyone's pleased about the fall of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, right?
Wrong.
Adocate columnist, porn "entrepreneur" and gay NeoCon, Michael Lucas, is gonna be really pissed off.
In his latest column, Democracy In Egypt A Myth?, Lucas writes;
"Hope, freedom, and democracy — these are three words that have little or nothing to do with what’s happening in Egypt at the moment. Yet utterly ignorant newscasters and liberal bloggers seem to equate the situation there to Tiananmen Square — where protesters two decades ago risked life and limb in a face-off with China’s authoritarian leaders. Of course, in China they lost.
"The frightening thing is that the protesters in Egypt are looking more and more likely to topple Egypt’s regime and replace it with something far worse. We, as gay people and Americans, shouldn’t be surprised by the horrors likely to come. We shouldn’t buy into the false and ignorant hopes of those on the left who falsely frame the events unfolding in Cairo and other cities in Egypt as a fight for human rights."
Something that no informed analyst of the situation in Egypt thinks, but there you go.
Indeed Khalid Zaid, a gay Egyptian man who's been granted asylum in the US, has written in reply on Gay.com;
"In 2001, after many years in Egypt I was granted asylum by the US following an arrest for suspicion of being gay. In Egypt, there simply are no human rights. Whoever thinks that there are such freedoms should actually move there rather than remotely label the aspirations of protesters as false or ignorant hopes! There is nothing frightening about an awakening that is long overdue.
"It will not be easy to predict the upcoming leadership in Egypt. Due to the complexity of the situation, it is presumptuous to assume that it will fall into the hands of radical Islamists...
"It's true that the first thing they [The Muslim Brotherhood] have promised to do is hold a referendum on Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Regardless of what anyone tells you, they are not part of a master plan to impose Sharia law on the entire Arab world."
"Inciting baseless panic about the creation of an Islamic, anti-gay, anti-Western regime is a reckless act stemming from fears over Israel's security and stability."
Michael Lucas has form on this sort of far-right scaremongering - he bends over backwards to defend every Zionist crime and has baldly stated;
"I hate Muslims... They have not contributed to civilization in any way, in any field — political thought, science, music, architecture, nothing for century after century. What do they produce? Carpets."
The gay right's championing of gay rights in the Middle East is a sadly familiar saw these days - seemingly unaware that right-wing politicians have always been the most vociferous opponents of gay rights in any country in the world.
The flipside are all those gushing "Don't mention the occupation" travel features about Israel in the gay media - Pinkwash, about trips paid for by the Israeli government.
In January New York's Gay City News ran a bizarre feature; 'Sanctions Must Respond to Iran’s Anti-Gay Genocide' by one Benjamin Weinthal.
(Gay City News regularly publishes nutty rants about Iran by Doug Ireland - who Weinthal quotes approvingly. He also joins in Ireland's attacks on Human Rights Watch - who he believes “continues to be driven by an anti-Israel bias").
Weinthal is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard, known as "The Neo-Con Bible", and a fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neo-conservative think tank.
Their policy on Iran? "Pursuit of even “tougher” sanctions, including measures intended to terminate non-U.S. purchases of Iranian oil. And, when that doesn’t work, we’ll give war another chance."
Presumably cause the last two have worked out so well.
It's shameful that the gay press regularly publishes such crude far Right propaganda.

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Israel: A Free Holiday in Other Peoples' Misery


Benjamin Cohen is the founding publisher of Pink News.
He rarely writes for the site now, but this week filed a "travel" piece; "Tel Aviv - Bursting With Pride".
"Four nights in Tel Aviv, for the city’s LGBT pride celebrations has changed me in a way no holiday ever has before," Cohen gushes. "My attitudes and perceptions of Israel have changed dramatically and it’s also changed the way that I reconcile my sexuality with my religion..."
Cohen lovingly describes Tel Aviv's restaurants and gay bars, its nightclubs, a beach party and of course the Pride parade.
The political situation - meaning the tragedy of Palestine - is briefly mentioned, then disregarded as an irrelevance; "For all that you might disagree with that Israel does in regards to the peace process, it has an enviable record on gay rights and it's described by many as an oasis of tolerance and acceptance in a region of virulent homophobia that unfortunately still involves the execution of gays including teenagers" (sic).
Meaning that Israel treats Israeli lesbians and gay men okay, so who cares what it does to the Palestinians.
This process has been dubbed "Pinkwash".
Cohen admits elsewhere he was one of a number of journalists "the Israeli government has invited" - and this is the line and the lie that the Israeli thug state was hoping its guests would spin.
There is no such thing as a free holiday.
Here are some words that didn't feature in Benjamin Cohen's article; arabs, flotilla, Gaza, massacre, occupation, Palestinian, Palestinians, West Bank.
The word "arab" appears twice; describing Jaffa as Tel Aviv's "arab neighbour".
"Palestine" is mentioned once - it "was the first place that the Jewish immigrations to what was then Palestine saw when they began to move to the region from Europe in 19th century." (Emphasis added).
It is acknowledged that Israel is a military state, maintained by a conscription army, but only cause some of those Israeli Defence Force boys are so hot; "I was probably one of just a handful of men at the club who kept their shirt on all night- it’s quite hard to compete with the buffed up bodies of Israeli gays fresh from three years in the army!"
But Benjamin Cohen was enjoying a holiday - why ruin it with mentioning how the Israeli government he was a guest of is responsible for so many other people's misery?
Why indeed?
Apart from a companion piece dated June 11th, 'Tel Aviv Pride Kicks Off', Cohen has written only two other pieces for Pink News in 2010.
The last article he wrote in 2009 was titled; "Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw criticised for Sri Lankan holiday."
Cohen quotes James Ross from Human Rights Watch who said "the minister should publicly condemn President Mahinda Rajapaksa's clampdown on Tamils."
Ross urged Ben Bradshaw to "travel around, all over the country, and then publicly express his disapproval of the fact that there are still tens of thousands of Sri Lankans who cannot do the same thing because they are being held in detention centres."
Perhaps then Benjamin Cohen should also have travelled all over Israel/Palestine, to the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and then publicly expressed his disapproval of the fact that there are over 6 million Palestinians currently living as refugees.
Just a thought...

Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Israel/Palestine: Pride Against Injustice


After Pride Toronto banned the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from taking part last month, comes news that Madrid Pride have told an official delegation from Tel Aviv they are not welcome because authorities in the city have not condemned the raid on the Free Gaza Flotilla.
But whereas Pride Toronto said they didn't want politics to rain on their parade, Madrid Pride made their decision as they still see Pride as a political event.
Antonio Poveda, of Spain's Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transexuals and Bisexuals, told El Mundo newspaper; "After what has happened, and as human rights campaigners, it seemed barbaric to us to have them taking part. We don't just defend our own little patch."
A report on Guardian Unlimited today does not mention that the delegation was official and organised in conjunction with the Israeli Tourist Board, who were to have a Tel Aviv themed party, and a bus bearing the slogan "TLV Love Embassy".
This makes it seems like a hysterical over reaction by pro-Palestinians against innocent and politically neutral "Tel Aviv residents".
It wasn't.
In an article in The Jewish Chronicle on Monday, Shai Deutsch, the Israel Gay and Lesbian Association's Tourism chief is quoted as saying; “There is no doubt that our presence there, together with the European campaign will contribute to a significant increase in gay tourism in Tel Aviv this coming winter.”
It's part of a broader campaign - both economic and political - to try and improve the image abroad of the Israeli thug-state.
This process has been dubbed "pinkwash".
El Mundo and The Guardian also quote Eytan Schwartz, a spokesperson for Tel Aviv.
In the interests of balance Schwartz got 165 words on GU to Poveda's 26.
Schwartz said; "We invited the organisers of the gay pride event in Madrid to join a march this Friday in Tel Aviv, the only place in the Middle East where you can be gay in public."
Really?
In August 2009, a gunman killed two people at the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association Centre. The killer has not been found.
In 2005, an ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed three participants in the Jerusalem gay pride parade. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that "several bombs [have been] set off to protest Jerusalem Gay Pride parades in previous years."