Yale University women’s center to host ‘pinkwashing’ in Palestine talk: ‘Obscenity’
A Yale University women’s student organization is hosting a conference next month on “pinkwashing” in Gaza — a controversial campaign that pro-Israel advocates have ripped as an “obscenity” because it accuses the Jewish state of touting its gay communities to distract from what’s unfolding in the besieged territory.
The Yale Women’s Center began broadcasting its three-day conference — titled “Pinkwashing and Feminism(s) in Palestine” — on social media earlier this week.
At least one of the four scheduled speakers, Ghadir Shafie, is a queer Palestinian activist who has a history of leveling pinkwashing accusations against Israel — especially in the wake of the Oct. 7 bloodshed at the hands of Hamas terrorists.
“The conference is worthless if they don’t talk about the brutality against women that occurred in Israel on Oct. 7,” Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, told The Post after news of the Yale event started circulating.
That, in itself, would be pinkwashing, according to Potasnik.
“It prevents them from talking about the shameful horror of Oct. 7 and instead talk about something else,” the rabbi added.
The main crux of the “pinkwashing” accusations, which have been circulating for roughly two decades, claims that Israel promotes its record on LGBTQ rights in an attempt to obscure the state’s occupation of Gaza — by insisting it is liberating queer communities.
Homosexuality is prohibited in Gaza, according to Human Dignity Trust, a UK-based non-profit that fights for LGBTQ rights.
It wasn’t immediately clear what Shafie, or the other guest speakers, planned to talk about during next month’s event at the Ivy League school.
Shafie, though, has the headline “Pinkwashing Genocide” plastered under a brief biography listed on the conference’s website.
In a recent interview with queer outlet Presentes Agency, Shafie claimed that pinkwashing was “really very dangerous” because Israel uses it to spread the “lie” that the country is a “gay paradise.”
“It also goes a step further to portray all Palestinians as backward, homophobic and therefore deserving of oppression — and creates this colonial superiority of Israelis over Palestinians,” Shafie said in the December interview.
The activist went on to argue that one of the more “horrible” images to come out of the conflict was an Israel Defense Forces soldier standing on a pile of rubble in Gaza showcasing a pride flag with the words “In the name of love” scrawled across it.
She claimed the message the image portrayed was that “‘we have to defeat Hamas because if Hamas knew I was gay, they would kill me too’.”
“Even this genocide is being pinkwashing by Israel, saying they will bring liberation, they will bring peace, openness and homosexuality, while in reality they are destroying whole families and neighborhoods and killing every sign of life,” Shafie told the outlet.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a former trustee of the City University of New York and a pro-Israel activist, dismissed the whole argument as a “double obscenity” — noting that Israel, too, was being falsely accused of genocide after Hamas waged war against the Jewish state.
“There’s a reason why there are gay Palestinians in Tel Aviv. Israel is a live and let live country,” Wiesenfeld told The Post.
By comparison, he said, openly gay couples walking the streets of Palestinian areas or most places in the Arab world are putting their lives in danger because of state-sponsored and religious repression.
“They would be painted pink, boiled in acid and thrown off the roof of buildings,” he added.
The Yale Women’s Center declined to comment when The Post asked about the talking points for its event, which is slated to take place between April 5-7.
The Post’s attempts to reach Shafie were unsuccessful.
Another guest speaker, Denison University Professor Isis Nusair, has the title “Gendered, Racialized, and Sexualized Torture by the Israeli Military in Gaza” under her bio.
Meanwhile, among the conference’s co-sponsors is Yalies4Palestine — a student-led group that faced backlash last year over a slew of online posts blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 “unfolding violence.”
