Thanks to the IGLYO Out of Israel campaign and the massive support it got, the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization (IGLYO) and Israeli Gay Youth (IGY) announced that they would no longer hold IGLYO’s General Assembly in Tel Aviv, Israel. This marks the very first victory for queer-powered BDS!
However, in their joint statement, the two partners also announced that IGY’s International LGBTQ Youth Leader’s Summit, originally planned as a side event at the GA, is still set to be held in Tel Aviv in December 2011.
As we are nearing the deadline of application to the summit, LGBTQ youth leaders are being told that the event will include conversations with queer Palestinians and address “hot issues” and “political tensions” in Israel – their apparent “compromise” to the anger of queer BDS activists. Despite the announcement that IGY will hold conversations with queer Palestinians, no Palestinian queer group has actually received an invitation.
Tell IGY that Israeli occupation cannot be reduced to a “hot issue” or “political tension”.
Using the language of human rights to promote a youth leadership summit in Tel Aviv without addressing the realities of Israeli occupation is misleading and makes them complicit in pinkwashing. As queers, it is our responsibility to respond to pinkwashing tactics – the use gay rights to promote Israel as liberal and gay-friendly, and diverting attention from human rights violations, checkpoint humiliations, demolition of houses, illegal land occupation, and discriminatory laws against Palestinians citizen of Israel. When organizing LGBTQ events in Israel, these facts cannot be swept under the rug. These facts are everywhere: In the daily lives of Palestinians living in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and around the world, in Israeli citizens, in the land, trees, houses, food, institutions, checkpoints, separation walls, and in the siege of Gaza. IGY’s LGBTQ Youth Summit, organized in Israel, is settling for a depoliticized language of human rights, for “political tensions” and “hot topics”, and is failing to address and contain the realities of everyday occupation. Is this really a surprise?
JUST HEARD ABOUT THIS? Understand the situation, read more about Pinkwash and Boycott. Get yourself informed on these issues and develop a comprehensive understanding of this campaign. Spread the word about this campaign within your community. Share it with your social networks. Get in touch with us for tips on how to create and widen community-based discussions on pinkwashing and boycott.
CONSIDERING APPLYING? Take a minute to learn more about Palestinian, Israeli and international queer social justice movements that support the Palestinian call for BDS and stand against pinkwashing. Justice is not negotiable; there is no neutrality in occupation.
NOT ATTENDING? KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS? Challenge participants you may know by raising these queer-powered concerns against Pinkwash and for BDS. Spread awareness in your community on Pinkwash and the Israeli occupation. Raise awareness on queer activism and how it can help bring social justice. Bring attention to the global BDS movement. Share with us why you are not attending the LGBTQ Youth Leaders Summit and why you think others shouldn’t either.
USE MAINSTREAM AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA If you have access to media platforms, use them. The more attention this campaign receives, the more people are reached. USE SOCIAL MEDIA. Share the campaign on Facebook. Tweet. USE YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE. Add us to your website or blogroll. Link to us.
TAKE AN ALTERNATIVE TOUR WITH US Read what we have to say about about the summit’s program by taking a virtual tour instead. Discover alternative narratives on issues and places that the summit will not tell you about. Learn, explore and investigate what has been left out.
Does your group endorse our campaign? Send us a note and statement here and we’ll post it on this page.
Queers in Amsterdam/Queeristan
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
We call all those attending the LGBTQ Youth Leaders Summit to reconsider their participation. We ask you to refuse to let your minds, bodies, and struggles be instrumentalized in Pinkwash.
Below, share with the world why you choose not to attend the LGBTQ Youth Leaders Summit and why you think others shouldn’t either:
Amazing campaign, so happy to see the new site up!
LGBTQ youth leaders, please do not go to the summit and respect the Palestinian people’s call for boycott. It worked in South Africa, it will work in Israel.
LGBTQ youth leaders, Israel uses gay culture, it uses our voices to promote itself as liberal and hide Apartheid. Do you want to be part of that? In neutrality, you are taking sides and it is the side of the oppressor. Stand with Palestine. Don’t go to Israel.
end PINKWASHING now.
It’s beyond me that IGY would even consider organizing such an event without even mentioning occupation. How typical of LGBT organizations. How can they not see that there is no such thing as a gay bubble and that creating these bubbles is very very very counter-anything-useful-for-any-movement! These things should be obvious in any type of organizing by now. Ridiculous.
In your lead item: Queers: Lead Revolutions, Do Not Support Occupation, among other Israeli human rights violations you list “discriminatory laws against Palestinians citizen of Israel”.
Verification or otherwise of this claim may not be relevant to the other issues raised but can you please itemise or list those laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens or, for that matter, any other minirity citizens of Israel.
Dannykid, the laws are available easily through a simple google search. Here are some examples among many others:
HTTP://GOO.GL/VS6EE
HTTP://GOO.GL/UAZGN
HTTP://GOO.GL/W7K1W