Gays and Israel Apartheid Week...
Leonard Stern of the Ottawa Citizen looks at Israel Apartheid Week...
Of all the sponsors of Israeli Apartheid Week, the participation of gay and lesbian groups is most disheartening. Harvard University’s Alan Dershowitz tells an anecdote about the time he gave a speech and spotted an anti-Israel sign in the crowd, held aloft by a gay rights group. Dershowitz reminded the protesters that Israel is the one country in the Middle East where they’d be able to hold a gay rights sign in public and not be lynched.
Israel’s official government website celebrates Eytan Fox, one of the country’s best known filmmakers. Fox’s recent movie The Bubble, about a love affair between two men, Arab and Jew, won an award from the U.S.-based Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, for its sensitive depiction of gay people.
Films like that aren’t being made in Syria or Gaza. Gay Muslims have to flee to democratic countries if they want to come out. Israel itself recently took in a gay Palestinian from the West Bank town of Jenin. The man settled in Tel Aviv, moving in with his partner, an Israeli. Thousands of couples — Arab, Jewish, mixed — show up for the gay pride parade in Tel Aviv.
Yet back in Canada, gay student groups denounce Israel as their enemy. They aren’t protesting against the many Muslim countries where homosexuality is criminalized — where, as Der Spiegel recently reported, men suspected of being gay are found with their genitals amputated and anuses sealed with glue.
(When Israel last year suffered an isolated act of homophobic violence — a gunman shot up a gay nightclub — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly expressed his personal horror.)
posted by GayandRight @ 11:00 AM
12 Comments:
Instead of engaging with the issues at hand, Mr. Stern in his article “The dark side of a yearly ritual” focuses his criticism (six paragraphs in fact) on those who are supportive of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). From OPIRG, to Carleton’s Womyns Center, the Canadian Arab Federation to “gay and lesbian groups” Mr. Stern’s attacks on these groups, are misreprestative, and at times false. He reserves his hardest criticism for those who happen to be Queer. To Mr. Stern it is disheartening that some gays and lesbians are part of the quest for Palestinian human rights, because all of those queers just don’t seem to understand that Israel is a haven for homosexuals and celebrates LGBTQ culture, with parades and movies. Try doing that in Gaza, or Syria probes Mr. Stern. As queers, activists and academics this logic is not only insulting but flawed. We resist the idea that because there exists a place of relative safety for LGBTQ people in the Middle East, illegal occupation is justified. Mr. Stern fails to mention that Palestinian Queers are targets along side the rest of the population. We should be fighting homophobia everywhere, even in Muslim countries. However, Palestinian Queer groups have said the biggest threat to their organizing is the Israeli occupation, not homophobia, so that’s where we choose focus our energy. Occupation: not it our name.
"We resist the idea that because there exists a place of relative safety for LGBTQ people in the Middle East, illegal occupation is justified"
Why is Israel the only country in the Middle East that's "illegally occupying" territory?
Socialist madmen are mad wherever you find them.
Well, useful idiot shows what an idiot he truly is!
Palestinian queers are not 'targets' and they know they only place in the middle east they can be themselves is in Israel.
I'd like to see you fight homophobia in the muslim countries. Go ahead...and please have a gay pride march with your so-called Palestinian Queer groups in Ramallah.
Start there.
Indeed a useful idiot!
Why do you think Gaza is an Iranian enclave controlled by its proxy terrorist organization Hamas?
I remind you that Gaza was controlled by the Palestinian Authority until Israel withdrew from there and then was toppled by Hamas.
We dont want the same thing happening in the W. Bank , or do we??
Its very nice crying human rights without even thinking one step ahead as to the consequences of such unilateral withdrawals.
Any withdrawals should be done as a result of a peace settlement between the parties.
Because... Israel is the only country in the middle east who is illegally occupying another nation. Fact.
All Palestinians are Targets.. even queers.
Queer in Palestine "have said the biggest threat to their organizing is the Israeli occupation, not homophobia". We respect their opinions, they know what they are talking about, unlike a white gay from Ottawa.
Guest4096, when you say topple, you mean democratically elected right? How can we get peace with occupation? Settlements make it impossible to actually create peace.. Check international law, its illegal, sucks eh.
Check it out!
ottawa.apartheidweek.org
want to check out some hot israeli guys..
http://tinyurl.com/ykcangr
This useful idiot has the best and most truthful moniker I've seen in a long time.
But, I wish he would learn history.
The Israeli occupation is legal, actually. Israel was attacked from the west bank in the 1967 war (started by Egypt), and only occupied the west bank during the war. Israel actually warned King Hussein to not attack - and he ignored the warning.
Why you bring up the fact that I am white is hard to understand. What is really perplexing is that you believe that 'Israeli occupation' is the biggest threat to gay palestinians...when we know that the one place where gay Palestinians go to find refuge is Israel - a topic I blog on continually.
Peace can only happen when the Palestinians come to grips with living next to a Jewish state. They have been offered generous terms many times in the past - the last being the Olmert peace plan, which never even got a response from the Palestinians.
And, while Hamas was democratically elected, it still threw out the Palestinian Authority from Gaza. Two separate things.
Israel is a fully legitimate democratic country, unlike every other country in the Middle East.
Israel is the only country picked on by the leftists.
We all know why.
Quite an effective rebuttal of your argument, Fred, at least in the minds of OPIRG/ NDP activists - your views don't count and are irrelevant, coming as they are from a "white gay from Ottawa". The critique is revealing of a mindset - what is this self-hatred from the radical left - that the problem doesn't lie in your conservative mindset - that can be remedied with the appropriate reeducation camp - lectures in womyn's studies by Professor Thobani and such, but rather in your DNA. Much like original sin, little can be done short of eradication and repopulation of Canada, unless solutions lie in genetic reengineering. Herein lies the radical left's dilemna, unable to receive a mandate from those they seek to eradicate, they are driven towards minority actions of a revolutionary vanguard, window smashing and such when their ambitions don't rise higher.
"How can we get peace with occupation", not how can they - the Palestinians - get peace with occupation. Here the radical leftist seeks to indicate that despite his despised DNA, he's not just some "white guy from Ottawa", but there on the battlefront, declaring war against Israel.
Useful Idiot
"Israel is the only country in the middle east who is illegally occupying another nation"
Wrong , Israel liberated the W. Bank and Gaza from Jordanian and Egyptian occupation in 1967.
I remind you that Egypt gained control of Gaza and Jordan gained control of the W. Bank in the 1948 war.
Guess what?
The Palestinians werent offered any statehood by Egypt or Jordan in those territories but actually they were in the business of destroying the Pre 1967 border Israel.
"when you say topple, you mean democratically elected right?"
No , I mean like brutaly murdering PA officials and throwing them out of Gaza
"How can we get peace with occupation?"
Very simple , acknowledge the right of the Jewish people to a homeland of their own and sit down to partition the land to two states.
"Settlements make it impossible to actually create peace.. "
Wrong , there is no problem to make peace with the current settlements in place by land swapping.
There are numerous polls that suggest that the vast majority of
Israelis are in favor of a two state solution but that will never happen when Israelis feel threatened and delegitimized on a daily basis and when Iran feels it is its Islamic duty to meddle in Palestinian affairs and export its radical Islamic views to fuel the conflict with religous background
Whoops! The URL for Buycott Month is www.buycottmonth.com.
Sorry about that.
I find it incredible, amazing and very sad that ANY Gay or Lesbian would support any Arab or Muslim anti-Israel group.
Remember that homosexuality is punishable and regularly punished by death in Any Muslim country!!!!
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