Anthony Keane
How the Israeli state’s superficial support of LGBTQ rights is being used to gloss over its human rights violations
Since the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, propaganda and the “fight against misunderstanding” has been a crucial part of Zionism, feeding into the activities of the state of Israel since its foundation almost half a century later (Kouts, 2016). In the years since its foundation, successive Israeli governments have been engaging in propaganda exercises, known as hasbara, in order to either defend its actions against its neighbours and the Palestinian people, or to legitimise itself on the world stage. This hasbara has been enacted to the point that the Israeli government’s modus operandi when it comes to propaganda can be, and has been, distilled to a simple formula – defining the terms of the issue, working with stereotypes, expect and factor for your opponent to make mistakes, control the narrative, cede no points, deny the truth, and play the victim (Zogby, 2009). Yet since 2006, the Israeli foreign ministry has engaged in a different course of action when it comes to promoting the state and hiding its actions in the occupied Palestinian territories – pinkwashing (Lazaroff, 2018).
Derived from whitewashing, the practice of glossing over any inconvenient facts that may prove damaging to an argument, the term ‘pinkwashing’ originally referred to corporations claiming to support breast cancer charities while simultaneously profiting from the disease (Carter, 2015). It later came to be used to point out corporations and entities seen to be cynically supporting queer causes to further their own interests, rather than those of the queer community. For example, it was used heavily when Serbia’s president appointed a lesbian woman as Prime Minister in 2017, a move which was viewed as giving a veneer of progressivism in the face of EU membership negotiations while covering up other human rights, media freedom, and democratic process issues in Serbia (McLaughlin, 2017). Another strong example of pinkwashing on a state level is the hijacking by the Irish government of the Irish grassroots marriage equality campaign, which called for, and then won, a national referendum to legalise same sex marriage in 2015. Following the success of the referendum, the Irish government was seen to be painting Ireland as a part of the world that was friendly to the queer cause, inviting gay people from the developed Western world to come and invest in Ireland, while simultaneously making it harder for migrant families to reunite with their relatives in the country (Luibhéid, 2018).
In the Israeli context, the use of pinkwashing is prevalent and has been so in the last 12 years. Since that time, Israel has seen an upsurge in LGBTQ tourists, in particular gay men, most notably in the coastal city of Tel Aviv. The city regularly features on lists of “most gay-friendly cities” (Dutton, 2019), even being labelled “The gayest city on Earth” in 2016 (Muther, 2016). While the city’s dual allure of being both a bustling metropolis and offering pristine beaches is alluded to when discussing its success (Hartman, 2012), it is worth mentioning that Tel Aviv stands out above other Israeli cities when it comes to LGBTQ visitors. This is seen most notably in contrast to Jerusalem, as Tel Aviv takes its tourism marketing into its own hands, a result of the Israeli government’s backtracking of openly marketing the country as a haven for LGBTQ travellers in 2008 (Harman, 2008).
This was a remarkable move given the country’s adherence to traditional Jewish values, known as the “Status Quo”, based on a letter from David Ben-Gurion which demarcated Saturdays as days off. This Status Quo is still part of the law when it comes to the likes of public transport and entertainment centres, and the governance of religion over aspects of life such as marriage (Cohen & Rynhold, 2005). Such is the value of the so-called “pink pound” (or in Israel’s case, the pink shekel) to Tel Aviv that the city spent $90 million in 2010 on gay tourism campaigns directly targeting young men in LGBTQ-friendly countries. The campaigns featured videos of handsome, well-muscled, and tanned men on pristine beaches, and dancing in packed and vibrant nightclubs. Other videos for the city included male and female same-sex couples enjoying the more cultural aspects of Tel Aviv (Schulman, 2011).
The aim of pinkwashing Israel is twofold. On the one hand, there is a financial aim. The Israeli tourism industry actively markets towards gay men, given that they are seen to have the most discretionary income (Schulman & Chavez, 2019). The other side of it is arguably to change the image of the country in the eyes of the world into a progressive, modern, and liberal haven in a region that is less accepting of queer rights. This is particularly true given that Israel otherwise makes international headlines for its military activities and human rights violations. One popular trope in this regard is portraying Israel’s relative embrace of queer rights next to the lack thereof by the Palestinian authorities (Puar, 2013).
Although this narrative has now formed part of the Israeli state’s official message, the pinkwashing of Israel has also been adopted by the private sector. The hugely successful Tel Aviv Pride has been transformed, like most Pride events, from a community-based political expression to a corporate entity, bringing in roughly $40 million in 2017 (Melnitcki, 2017). Abroad, Israeli model Eliad Cohen has promoted his “Arisa” and “Papa” parties globally, taking them to the largest gay scenes in the world such as those in New York, Los Angeles, and Madrid, always linking them back to the warm sands and hot men of Tel Aviv. This did not go unnoticed by the Israeli tourism authorities, and a number of his parties in Brazil were supported by the Israeli consulate-general in São Paulo (Doherty, 2012).
“From this litany of instances of pinkwashing, can it be said that it is having the desired effect for Israel? The answer seems to be yes.”
The culture of pinkwashing among the Israeli LGBTQ community even extends to the adult entertainment industry. In 2009, the American-Israeli porn tycoon Michael Lucas shot Men of Israel, a feature-length pornographic movie featuring solely Jewish actors. Lucas stated that his prime motivation for creating the movie was to change the perception of Israel on a global scale, turning it from “a war-torn nation” into “resorts…beautiful beaches…amazing architecture” (Lucas, 2009). The movie has since become a bizarre analogy for Israeli pinkwashing in that it portrays the country as a modern, tolerant, and beautiful land full of attractive and sexual men, glossing over the fact that it was filmed in a Palestinian village that was depopulated by invading Israeli troops in 1948 (Blumenthal, 2013).
From this litany of instances of pinkwashing, can it be said that it is having the desired effect for Israel? The answer seems to be yes. In 2018 alone, over a quarter of a million people attended Tel Aviv Pride, with many coming from all around the world (Amir, 2018). Testimony from attendees at previous Tel Aviv Pride events seem to show how the pinkwashing is changing the perceptions of Israel among the global LGBTQ community (Cohen, 2016). One of the largest indicators of the success of Israeli pinkwashing is the continued investment in it; if it were failing, it would not be receiving any further public or private funding. After winning in 2018, Israel hosted the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, one of the largest LGBT events globally (Freyne, 2017), and allocated a budget of roughly €35 million for the event, a significant step up from previous years (€23 million, €15 million, and €14 million in 2018, 2017, and 2016 respectively). This included an appearance by the gay icon and pop diva Madonna, costing upwards of 1.5 million US Dollars (DW News, 2019), as well as a performance by Idan Raichel, a defender of IDF torture methods (Hershkovitz, 2013).
“In spite of the appearance of a queer-tolerant society, Israel still remains a place where homophobia runs rampant.”
Despite the glamour of the Eurovision, the sunny beach life of Tel Aviv, and the much-vaunted tolerance and acceptance of Israel towards the queer community, queer people of Palestinian origin face a much tougher time than their Israeli counterparts. Everyday discrimination against Palestinians is exacerbated among queer Palestinians in queer spaces in Israel. Queer Palestinians include both those who live inside the ‘green line’ (i.e., hold Israeli citizenship), and Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem. Their sexuality is even the subject of ridicule at the myriad of checkpoints that Palestinians must go through across the West Bank, while the Tel Aviv-based app Atraf, a hub for all things queer in the city, serves to work against Arab queer people, as users can list their religion on their profiles. Anything outside of “Jewish” reads as “Arab” to Israeli users, leading to ostracisation and otherisation on an app designed to unite queer people (Ritchie, 2015).
In spite of the appearance of a queer-tolerant society, Israel still remains a place where homophobia runs rampant. Israel’s pinkwashing campaign has two aims: one, to financially benefit those who invest in this practice, and indeed any Israeli business involved in the wider Israeli tourism industry (Schulman, 2011) and secondly, to distract from the human rights abuses and military actions of the Israeli state in Palestine (Puar, 2013). This practice has taken many forms, from investing directly in queer tourism (Doherty, 2012), to heavily subsidising the hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest (DW News, 2019), to the creation of nationalist gay porn (Lucas, 2009). However, in Israel both racism within the queer community (Ritchie, 2015) and homophobia within Israeli society run rampant (Beaumont, 2015). It seems that at the end of the Israeli rainbow, there is a pot of gold as empty and as hollow as the public face of “gay Israel”.
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