Yet another reason to love Chumbawamba

Up behind the Bus-stop in the toilets off the streets
There are traces of a killing on the floor beneath your feet
Mixed up with the piss and beer are bloodstains on the floor
From the boy who got his head kicked in a night or two before

Homophobia
The worst disease

you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

Homophobia
The worst disease

you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

In the pubs, clubs and burgerbars breeding pens for pigs
Alcohol, testosterone and ignorance and fists
Packs of hunting animals roam across the town
They find an easy victim and they punch him to the ground

Homophobia
The worst disease
you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

Homophobia
The worst disease
you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

The siren of the ambulance, the deadpan of the cops
Chalk to mark the outline where the boy first droppes
Beware the holy trinity - church and state and law
For every death the virus gets more deadly then before

Homophobia
The worst disease
you can´t love who you want to love in times like these

Video here (includes some interview footage)

Pinkwashing and the Gay International

From Electronic Intifada

The International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization (IGLYO) announced this week that it will host its upcoming General Assembly in Israel with direct Israeli government financial sponsorship. Since March, activists have appealed to the IGLYO board of directors, but IGLYO clearly intend to violate the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

In their announcement, they acknowledge the dilemma of hosting their international events in Israel but deny that direct government sponsorship of their event interferes with their human rights mission.

IGLYO fundamentally disagrees with any violations of human rights and does not prioritise human rights or any particular group during any of our work. The concern has been raised that by hosting an event in Israel and accepting funding through government departments IGLYO support various political views of that government. IGLYO believe this to be untrue.

Although this event will be given some level of financial support by the Israeli government, this will in no way censor our debates and discussions.

The General Assembly will be hosted by Israeli Gay Youth (IGY). This organization

was established in 2002 … in order to provide social support net to LGBT and questioning teens. … IGY operates different leadership and outreach programs, designed to empower our teens, and train them to be the future leaders of not only the gay community, but the entire Israeli society.

Encouraging LGBT youth to serve in the military

On 12 December 2010 at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center (the IDC), two IGY leaders participated in a 5 member panel discussion about gender and sexual orientation in the Israeli army.

The purpose of the panel is to raise awareness of the issue of the difficulties and coping of gay and lesbian youth in the military framework in the IDF and to recruit volunteers who will serve as mentor/escorts for youths within the ‘mentor/escort before recruitment’ project, with the goal of allaying their concerns with regard to their military service.

IGY’s ongoing “empowerment group” to support young gay men provides yet another example of the organization’s effort promote military service among gay youth:

This group started out as a group for gay soldiers who were coping both with military service and with their early days as independent civilians, and later developed into a group that investigates the meaning of gay life in the adult world. Participants deal - among other things - with issues of becoming independent, meeting people, relationships, family, and more.

Palestinian Queers for BDS (PQBDS) noted these links between the Israeli military and Israeli Gay Youth when they wrote to IGLYO to ask them to reconsider the locale of the 2011 General Assembly.

IGY is one of the main LGBTQ youth organizations in Israel; unfortunately, not only is it complicit with Israel’s policies, but it also systematically promotes and proactively supports the same structures that oppress and discriminate against Palestinians. As we have already mentioned in our first letter, IGY works closely with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in recruiting young queers to the army – a clear proof that IGY is not only a gay organization, but a homonationalist one that plays an active role in maintaining the same oppressive political system that we are working hard to resist. IGY’s leadership proudly serves in the army, and organizationally recruits LGBTQ youth to serve openly in the IDF. Their “unique” program includes soldiers who work to support LGBT youth pre/during service.

PQBDS also notes that “a few of IGY’s leaders were part of the [IGLYO] committee that was in charge of taking this very unfortunate decision.” In fact, last year IGY and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted IGLYO board members on a trip to Tel Aviv Pride.

Pinkwashing is a failure

In recent years, Israel has promoted itself in Europe and North America as a haven for LGBT rights and freedoms. Israeli government ministries and NGOs are participating in this public relations and marketing effort. Activists have named this campaign “pinkwashing” because it’s a distraction from the fundamental problems of the Israeli occupation: ongoing and systematic violation of Palestinian human rights, and discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Now even the democratic revolutions in the Arab world are presented as a threat to LGBTQ people in the Arab world, but the pinkwashing critique is also catching on. A Gay Girl in Damascus writes:

We’ve gotten used to being used rhetorically by the advocates of war, occupation, dispossession, and apartheid as ‘evidence’ that the primitive sand-people don’t deserve anything other than killing by the enlightened children of the West; we’ve seen this story used to advocate murder of Afghan villagers, Palestinian refugees, Iraqis and so on. …

Which of course is crazy. And like any tool of oppression needs to be opposed.

Israel’s pinkwashing campaign has serious and apparent contradictions. Israel’s most vocal and enthusiastic base of support in the U.S. is the “religious right,” which has always opposed LGBTQ political causes. It’s hard to see how Israel can simultaneously promote itself as LGBTQ-friendly while enjoying financial and political support from these powerful friends in the United States who are so notoriously LGBTQ-hostile.

Thanks to Dena Shunra for providing translation.

By Benjamin Doherty

Read Benjamin's blog here: http://electronicintifada.net/blog/benjamin-doherty

Update:

Palestinian Queers for BDS has issued a Call for Action: Tell IGLYO to Get Out of Israel.