Of all the critiques of Israel — and there are many; and many warranted — few feel more manufactured than claims of “pinkwashing.”
Haven’t heard of it? Rising from the fringes of the arcane and academic, “pinkwashing” posits that Israel — both formally and via its Jewish-American proxies — exploits its progressive record on gay rights to obscure its West Bank occupation and treatment of Arabs on both sides of the Green Line.
Accusations of pinkwashing have been used for years to keep Israeli LGBT groups out of major marches and festivals worldwide. In fact, pinkwashing almost prevented leading Jewish and Israeli organizations from hosting a reception at this week’s Creating Change Conference in Chicago — the annual gathering of the National LGBTQ Task Force, the largest pro-gay advocacy group in the nation.
The truth is that pinkwashing is little more than anti-Zionist jargon intended to deny Israel’s legitimate place — and voice — in the international community.
Much like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, pinkwashing conflates and confuses a host of complex geopolitical conditions to strip them of meaning while magnifying their potency. Petty and punitive, pinkwashing declares all Israelis responsible for their government’s actions — wholly incapable of independent thinking and thoroughly deserving of collective punishment.
As curious as it is spurious, pink-washing also demands a level of suspended disbelief almost unrivaled in the history of identity politics. Gone are historically accepted notions of diplomacy, foreign policy and national sovereignty. Instead, under pinkwashing, all Israeli efforts at promoting its image are treated as vehicles of propaganda and disinformation.
Which brings us back to Creating Change.
As expected, Creating Change is inclusive in the extreme — with everything from racial justice and Muslim prayer sessions to morning yoga and 12-step meetings on the roster.
But that inclusiveness ended when it came to A Wider Bridge and Jerusalem Open House — pro-Israel LGBT groups invited, then disinvited and finally reinvited to Creating Change. Slated to host a Shabbat Celebration at the Creating Change venue this Friday, the two groups were banned from the conference over the weekend following accusations of pinkwashing.
An outcry resulted and famous people protested — including Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and marriage-equality hero Robbie Kaplan — before Creating Change reversed its decision and asked A Wider Bridge and Jerusalem Open House to return.
The entire affair was the work of Dean Spade, an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law — and self-described “Jewish trans activist” — who helped lead the campaign to oust A Wider Bridge from the conference. Spade has an extensive paper trail of having Israeli groups banned from American LGBT events, including a particularly embarrassing 2012 incident that required a formal apology from the City of Seattle’s LGBT Commission.
This time, in place of contrition, Creating Change has invoked now-ubiquitous clichés such as “constructive dialogue” and “safe space” to defend both rejecting and re-welcoming A Wider Bridge. How a group’s banishment and then reinvitation could possibly both be done under the rubric of creating a safe space has gone unexplained.
Feckless and reckless, Creating Change has proven, yet again, that LGBT inclusiveness stops at Israel’s front door. In doing so, they’ve not only handed a victory to the extremist academy, but allowed theory and emotion to triumph over free speech, critical thinking and a true marketplace of ideas. This isn’t about Israelis or Arabs, Muslims or Jews — but a system that rewards fear, placates bullies and privileges shrieking and shrillness over intelligent discourse and reasoned debate.
The anti-intellectualism surrounding pinkwashing should serve as a warning sign to progressives. This is particularly true for pro-gay organizations, who as they demand tolerance, are themselves proving increasingly intolerant. Indeed, from radical feminists and pro-condom advocates to conservative pundits and now Israel supporters, major gay-rights groups are shunning and silencing important voices who fail to adhere to their narrow agenda.
The truth is that Israel does have some of the world’s most progressive LGBT policies and controls the West Bank through military occupation. One doesn’t “cancel out” the other — and no one in Israel is suggesting it should.
Like most examples of academic overindulgence, pinkwashing does little more than inflate the images (and egos) of its most ardent supporters. Coddled and rewarded by groups like the National LGBTQ Task Force, folks like Spade will continue to dominate discourses — such as Middle Eastern politics — that are clearly well above their pay grades.
As for Creating Change, they should be horrified by their weak-kneed about-face and sorry attempts to whitewash it away.