For decades, Zionist propagandists have juggled separate media narratives for different Western audiences. For Western liberals, they have showcased how “progressive” and “queer-friendly” they are — particularly in Tel-Aviv. For a more conservative audience, they have emphasized, in the orthodox tradition of Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl, that Israel is a sole bastion of Western civilization and a bulwark against a tide of oriental barbarism. Each appeals to different values, but promotes the same, central idea that Israel is good and justified in any and all actions taken on its Arab enemies. We can surmise that in the days where news media was primarily televised or printed — where, in other words, it was easier to keep conflicting narratives self-contained — it must’ve been easier to get away with this. Today, however, public opinion is not only more intensely polarized, but decentralized media platforms have made it much easier to see the absurdity of Zionist propaganda as their attempts to appease conflicting groups appear side-by-side. Consequently, people are increasingly seeing through their distortions and lies. Among one such distortion is precisely the idea that Israel is a progressive safe-haven for LGBT people.
One hardly needs to look further than Israel’s certified twitter page posting a chauvinistic skit presenting Western queers as shallow, naive, and “racist-fluid” (sic) for the great crime of expressing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. They publicly lashed out against us because they know their pinkwashing efforts are failing, and therefore need to rally the support of anti-queer chauvinists instead, who are equally willing to support the genocide of the Palestinians. And of course, it is already common knowledge that the IDF blackmails queer Palestinians into acting as informants — though, as AlQaws is apt to point out:
While it is sometimes true that Israel succeeds in using sexuality as a lever to coerce some Palestinians into becoming collaborators, this is not the primary way in which collaboration is enlisted, nor is it the only option for living a viable queer life in Palestine.
alQaws Statement re: media response to Israel’s blackmailing of gay Palestinians, 2014.
And,
This isolation of sexuality as a discrete site of oppression bolsters mainstream LGBT rights discourses which, historically, make this oppression legible only through the frame of purported Palestinian “homophobia” and Israeli “tolerance.” In this sense, singling out homosexuality strengthens pinkwashing and, in particular, the specific and false pinkwashing narrative of the queer Palestinian who must remain closeted within their community.
Ibid.
Israel’s official propagandists backing away from pinkwashing and pro-LGBT narratives may not exclusively be a consequence of mass support for the Palestinian resistance among Western queers; mass resentment against progressivism and LGBT people has also been building internally within Israel itself. Look no further than Israel’s “Noam” party, a far-right party (even by Israel’s own colonial standards) founded in 2019 for the express purpose of advancing policies restricting the rights of queer people and repressing them from public life. The party’s platform, here machine-translated from Hebrew, sounds remarkably like American Christofascists:
The attempts to say that there is no definition – there is no man and no woman, there is no form for the family, there is a 1st and 2nd parent, but a father and a mother is already [passé], they are a very sad joke of a culture that dismantles and destroys the foundation in the name of Precedence’ values are fake. The people of Israel, who taught the whole world how to preserve family values, must raise the flag of normality and say the simple statement: only father and mother = family… Our IDF has been infiltrated by foreign spirits who are re-educating our commanders and putting liberal and feminist concepts into their minds.
Against LGBT people and reformers: the new party that threatens to bite the votes of the right, 2019
Although the party remains fairly marginal, they do have a seat in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament). Furthermore, the Jerusalem Post recently reported that: “Israel’s cabinet approved the decision to transfer the Education Ministry unit responsible for external programs to the Prime Minister’s Office, where they will be subordinate to Noam leader MK Avi Maoz on Sunday.” What this means is that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, awarded this unit to Maoz, despite (or perhaps because?) of his notorious homophobia and misogyny, which includes calling LGBT people “perverts and pedophiles,” keeping a blacklist of LGBT Israelis, and promising to abolish pride parades. Unsurprisingly, Western media has kept silent on this development in the Zionist apartheid regime.
Perhaps the liberal Zionists will object to us characterizing Israel as homophobic on the basis of its most chauvinist and reactionary members. Perhaps these very Zionists should take a quick peek in the mirror, lest they develop a semblance of self-awareness.
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