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 adaily calculation of how to survive, but it is still easier than the persecutionthey say they suffered in the more traditional communities in the West Bank andGaza Strip.“Anwar”—who like other Palestinian homosexuals interviewed by Reuters goes byan assumed name—fled the West Bank after his brothers and father suspected hewas gay and beat him senseless.Rani said he was tortured by Palestinian police who wanted him to spy onother homosexuals—a charge authorities at his Gaza hometown denied. He escapedon a work visa to Israel before a Palestinian uprising for statehood eruptedthree 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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