Every time one thinks it is impossible for Israel haters to come out with a more bizarre justification for hating Israel, someone comes up with an even more bizarre justification.
Today’s exhibit is City University of New York Professor Sara Schulman, who is feverishly anti-Israeli to the extent of advocating the boycott of Israeli universities based on the standard Islamist-Leftist accusation of Israeli Apartheid.
Schulman is a gay rights activist who obviously faces a problem when it comes to hating Israel. Just about every country which hates Israel also hates gays. Israel is an island of gay tolerance and acceptance in a sea of hate. Here’s a Reuter’s story from 2003 about the problem in Palestinian communities:
For gay Palestinian runaways such as Rani, life on the street in Israel is a
daily calculation of how to survive, but it is still easier than the persecution
they say they suffered in the more traditional communities in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip.“Anwar”—who like other Palestinian homosexuals interviewed by Reuters goes by
an assumed name—fled the West Bank after his brothers and father suspected he
was gay and beat him senseless.Rani said he was tortured by Palestinian police who wanted him to spy on
other homosexuals—a charge authorities at his Gaza hometown denied. He escaped
on a work visa to Israel before a Palestinian uprising for statehood erupted
three years ago.
Here’s a small taste of how Hamas views gays:
“You in the West do not live like human beings. You do not even live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?” Hamas leader in Gaza Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar tells Reuters.
So Schulman preaches a theory which turns reality on its head. Writing in The New York Times, Schulman accuses Israel of Pinkwashing, namely using its gay-tolerant policies as a propaganda tool to oppress Palestinians:
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….
This message is being articulated at the highest levels. In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress that the Middle East was “a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted.”
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..
Jeffrey Goldberg reprints this e-mail he received from one of his readers:
… If the Left is not willing acknowledge the tangible differences between Israel’s treatment of its gay citizens and the persecution gay and lesbians face in many of the neighboring countries, and to throw its support to Israel, then it is risking seeing those hard-won gains evaporate.
She should be careful what she wishes for.
The pinkwashing charge did not originate with Schulman; it is a standard theme of the anti-Israeli Boycott Divestment Sanction movement.
Elder of Ziyon puts it well:
To these sick people, it is literally impossible for Israel or Israelis to do anything admirable outside the context of the conflict. The conflict is everything. To them, Israel itself is defined by its own desire to rid itself of Arabs. Any counter-proof is readily dismissed as nothing more than PR. The concept that most Israelis are just trying to live their lives like everyone else, and that they might even be nice, normal, relatable people, must be combated. If Israelis are perceived by the world as human beings, their message of Israeli criminality gets diluted – and that must be fought. Anything that could blunt the demonization of the Jewish state is by definition as evil as the Jewish state itself is.
The pinkwashing charge is a perfect example of the depravity of the Islamist-Leftist Anti-Israel Coalition, in which Western leftists and in this case gay activists, willingly side with people who would kill them or at least beat them if not for the fact that they are joined together in hatred of Israel.
We see it on boats headed for Gaza, at stone throwings at the Israel security barrier, and almost everywhere the movement to deligitimize Israel is active.
And now we see it on the pages of The New York Times.
Update: It gets worse, now Israel is tanish-pinkwashing.
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Comments
There’s been a distinct rise in anti-Semitism on the left, and I see it in my pro-Palestinian friends. It’s virulent. It’s disturbing, and, given their lifestyles, and all that they once professed to stand for, their support of Islam/Muslim/Sharia is so bizarre it is incomprehensible.
Screw her and the horse she came in on.
She would like that if you’re a woman. If you’re a man, just look at her and she will cry rape … unless you’re an Arab from the Arab-occupied “West Bank” and Gaza.
For the record, I’m a male.
Reading stuff like this reminds me of that excellent scene in Die Hard, when the useful idiot thinks he can make nice with the “terrorist” Hans, who promptly shoots him in the head.
If the enemy of your enemy is your friend, what happens when you win the war and no longer have a common enemy? What happens is, you’re hanged by the neck with piano wire (which is what they do to gays in Iran).
[…] Prof Jacobson […]
[…] “Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’.” (At Memeorandum.)William’s post is here: “The demented Israeli “pinkwashing” charge.” Read it all the link. I have nothing but contempt for people like Schulman, whose essay is […]
The left has been antisemitic since its birth from Karl Marx/
Fredrich Engels, to Adolph Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc.
The current crop of leftist antisemites, proves that all human rights are disposable in the cause of antisemitism, and antiwestern agenda. And if I were a judge where gays were arguing for expansion of constitutional rights, I would turn this argument on its head. Constitutional rights only are conferred for universal values, if gays do not support gay rights in muslim or third world countries because that would be cultural imperialism, then such rights cannot be extended as constitutional rights in this country. States may grant or restrict such rights, depending upon the cultural/social views, without implicating any deeper values. If gays and feminists want to be useful idiots to islamofascists, they just discredit themselves as thoroughly as their OWS poopstock thugs.
Wow – when I’ve thought I’ve heard every argument line for why we need to stand against same-sex marriage, you add a new line. After reading this, I took some time to think about this one and let it settle in. Again, thanks, job well done.
Why did the Israeli chicken cross the road?
To pinkwash the other side.
Israel touting itself as a vacation spot for gays? This comes under the heading of “some people never learn, do they?” Eh, guys, Sodom and Gomorrah wasn’t about poor hospitality. Okay?
Yes, actually, it was. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that the Cities of the Plain were destroyed for homosexuality. Even the attempted rape of the angels (which was about violence, not sex) was irrelevant to their destruction, because it didn’t happen until after sentence had already been passed on them.
Israel is also one of the most environmentally friendly societies on the face of this ravaged earth.
Will an accusation of ‘green-washing” be forthcoming from some other Jew-hating Jew sometime soon I wonder?
And Israel is also a most raucous democracy!
Rainbow-washing perhaps?
And after all the colours have been used up to cover the cynical hypocrisy of the Jewish State can we simply go back to addressing the whitewashing of Muslim atrocities by the Jew-York Times!
That would be NEW if not NEWS!
Really, this is a piece with the Left’s dismissal of Herman Cain … “the GOP only supports Cain in order to hide their racism”
No one that dissents from Left dogma does it via legitimate, reasonable disagreement. Therefore, The Other is evil and even what looks to be “good” comes from evil motives.
Reminds of the Israeli grad student (female for what it’s worth) who insisted that the fact that Israeli soldiers did not rape Arab women was proof—PROOF—that Israelis were racists.
These people sure are creative!!