Bennett ’16: Pinkwashing is a poor reason to reject the Mock event

[King_David]

Last week, a petition began circulating online that demanded the acclaimed trans activist Janet Mock disassociate her lecture from its sponsors, Moral Voices and Brown/RISD Hillel. Among other accusations, the petition charges Hillel, and by extension, Israel, of “pinkwashing” the Israel-Palestine conflict. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, anti-Israel activists accuse Israel of showcasing its exemplary protection of LGBTQ+ rights as a means of deflecting attention from its conduct in the occupied territories of the West Bank. As a result, anti-Israel activists both on our campus and nationwide frequently boycott and protest events with LGBTQ+-identifying Israeli or Jewish speakers. As a gay, Jewish and Zionist Brown student, I find this pinkwashing argument weak, offensive and obfuscatory.

One reason that the petition likely chose to make this pinkwashing argument is that its authors cannot indict Israel’s treatment of its LGBTQ+ citizens. Same-sex sexual activity was decriminalized in Israel four years before the occupation began in 1967 and was formally legalized 15 years before the U.S. Supreme Court did the same. Gay and trans citizens of Israel have had full rights to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces without hiding their identities since 1993. Israel remains the only country in Asia where same-sex marriage is recognized. Pinkwashing smears are indicative of anti-Israel activists’ pursuit of demonizing Israel in every respect; if a topic can’t be used to critique the Jewish state, it may as well never be discussed.

This pinkwashing argument is also incredibly offensive. Used as a cudgel to eliminate the discussion of LGBTQ+ rights when analyzing the Middle East, it erases gay Jews and Israelis by denying this minority within a minority spaces to explore their intersectional identities. Students who petitioned against Mock demonstrated their belief that Hillel should not be a forum for discussing LGBTQ+ identities or rights in any context because of the spectre of pinkwashing the Arab-Israeli conflict, as Mock’s speaking engagement wasn’t related to Israel or the Middle East in the slightest. These students’ vision of Hillel’s role on campus precludes LGBTQ+ activism in a world where little attention is paid to human rights abuses against LGBTQ+ people in the Arab world both on campus and in the Middle East. How can these activists, many Middle Eastern themselves, dismiss my rights and those of gay Arabs and Jews as a distraction from more important issues when gay people across the Middle East are regularly executed, castrated and tortured? Even if I weren’t Jewish, as an out gay man there is not a country in the Middle East where I would be safe aside from Israel. LGBTQ+ rights may not be of the utmost importance to the predominantly straight activists who are obsessively focused on undermining Israel and Jewish support groups on campus, but they are to the thousands of Palestinian Arabs, Egyptians and Iranians, among others, who have sought asylum in Israel from their bigoted, murderous governments.


http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016/03/18/bennett-16-pinkwashing-is-a-poor-reason-to-reject-the-mock-event/

[leftynyc]

1. Go Ms. Mock

Poor babies don't like being reminded that Israel is the only country in the neighborhood that wont kill them for loving whoever they wish. pinkwashing is a disgusting term and shows nothing but disdain for our LGBT friends.

[ericson00]

2. amazing how the term "pinkwashing" was only invented

to attack Israel

[leftynyc]

4. Anything that reminds

people how much more like the US Israel is in terms of civil and human rights must be attacked. We're not supposed to be reminded of the repulsive laws on the books their neighbors have. Not getting killed for being gay is just the beginning of that.

[Little Tich]

3. This may seem like nitpicking, but how do we really know that Janet Mock cancelled her speech due to

the petition from change.org?

I couldn't find any info on her motives for cancelling the speech anywhere...