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AloeVera

(3,743 posts)
4. Pinkwashing a genocide.
Tue Sep 16, 2025, 12:28 PM
Tuesday

With respect, perhaps your trans friend objected to what he saw as an attempt to "pinkwash" the genocide?

An excerpt from an excellent article on this:

Those images from Gaza are part of a long-running international campaign that critics call “pinkwashing”because they say it aims to bolster the Israeli state by linking it with queerness, presenting it as an explicit counterpart to a Palestinian identity depicted as exclusively and violently homophobic.

It exploits global support for LGBTQ+ rights to further an Israeli ultranationalist political agenda and legitimise the oppression of Palestinians, said Sa’ed Atshan, chair of the department of peace and conflict studies at Swarthmore College and author of Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique.

This messaging was driven not by genuine enthusiasm for LGBTQ+ rights from a government that includes a self-proclaimed “fascist homophobe” as finance minister, he said, but was deployed strategically for political ends.


More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/16/queer-palestinians-lgbtq-israel-pride-flags-gaza-conflict-pink-washing

It's a fairly transparent propaganda technique. I'm shocked so many fall for it. Many LGBTQ+ folk and supporters, including me, see it as a violation and cynical exploitation of the rights they fought so hard for. By a state that denies the human rights of an entire people yet boasts about its "liberalism" so that it can continue to inflict horrors on masses of human beings.

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