“Pinkwashing refers to when a state or organisation appeals to LGBTQ+ rights in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices.”

— Decolonizing Palestine, Pinkwashing

Many of us in the Global North who grew up post 9/11 and the Invasion of Iraq are now reaching an age where we may critically look back on the rhetoric that was used to justify said invasion and subsequent NATO-backed conflicts in the Middle East, and apply those same criticisms to our current context.

According to Wikileaks’ analysis of classified CIA reports from March 2010, it was (and remains) explicit U.S state policy to exploit liberal values of feminism to frame the military occupation of Afghanistan as a ‘liberatory presence’ for the oppressed Afghan women. The image of the Afghan woman we are expected to believe in is just waiting to be emancipated and allowed to wear bikinis by big strong Uncle Sam.

Readers of Franz Fanon’s seminal “A dying Colonialism”, about the latter stages of the Algerian Revolution and its French colonial context, will recognise this tactic for having been employed in France’s justification of its colonisation of Algeria. Fanon writes: “The dominant administration solemnly undertook to defend this woman, pictured as humiliated, sequestered, cloistered” and “Still today, in 1959, the dream of a total domestication of Algerian society by means of "unveiled women aiding and sheltering the occupier" continues to haunt the colonial authorities." The expectation placed upon a Western public to make the immeasurable leap of logic that an occupying nation can contribute to the liberation of an oppressed population whilst simultaneously committing war crimes against them is nothing new.

The consequences of this rhetoric ripples to this day. France still polices the clothing of schoolgirls in the name of secularism without stopping to consider whether forcing someone to remove a veil is just as bad as forcing someone to put it on. The phenomenon of Pinkwashing can clearly be seen as a direct appropriation of this rhetoric in the Queer context.

Palestinian author and scholar Nada Elia writes: “Pinkwashing is the twenty-first century manifestation of the Zionist colonialist narrative of bringing civilisation to an otherwise backwards land - a narrative that sanitises the violence of occupation while erasing indigenous experience, struggle and resistance.”

Israel’s global reputation of modernity as the only democracy in the Middle East - despite the five million people living within the borders it controls who cannot vote in the government that controls them - makes cynical use of LGBTQ+ rights to maintain its benevolent image.

In 2005 a state PR campaign called Brand Israel was launched to market Israel to young Euro-American Liberals as “modern and relevant” rather than militaristic and religious. In 2009, the organisation StandWithUs joined this campaign with the explicit aim of using the LGBTQ+ community to improve Israel’s reputation as a supporter of queer rights, and to steer away focus on crimes against Palestinians. A rainbow ‘herring’ if you will.

Professor Jabish Puar writes: “Pinkwashing harnesses global gays as a new source of affiliation, recruiting liberal gays into a dirty bargaining of their own safety against the continued oppression of Palestinians.” This describes how Pinkwashing is used not only as a distraction, but also a justification.

Amidst the ongoing military onslaught on Gaza and brutal bombardment of an illegally blockaded population made up of 50% children, Israel’s official twitter posted a tweet with a soldier holding a rainbow flag in front of rubble, that said: “In the name of love” in English, Arabic and Hebrew. 

The tweet read: “The first ever pride flag raised in Gaza. Yoav Atzmoni who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community wanted to send a message of hope to the people of Gaza living under Hamas brutality. His intention was to raise the first pride flag in Gaza as a call for peace and freedom.”

The irony here is beyond satire. To claim you are bringing hope and challenging the oppression of Queer Palestinians whilst standing on the rubble of homes and lives and literal dead bodies brought about by your bombs – with pride – is an audacity I never thought I’d see.

There is irony however in Israel disregarding its own institutional homophobia. Despite its claims of standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, same sex and interfaith marriages are not allowed in Israel. A 2009 poll commissioned by Haaretz showed nearly half of Israelis consider homosexuality to be a perversion. This is in the context of an increasing Far Right majority in Israeli politics that has only gotten worse since 2009, as well as AIPAC’s unwavering support for Anti-Queer U.S politicians. Queer organisations like Kvisa Shkhora – a direct-action group of LGBTQ+ jewish people - call for social justice in Israel and resistance to the occupation of Palestine. They face frequent arrests and police brutality. One member of Kvisa Shkora recounts her experience of a demonstration against Efi Aitam, who was inciting Jews to kill Arabs: “We were demonstrating in Israel, and they brought four buses of soldiers armed from head to toe, against 20 lesbians.” She also recounts that after being arrested, a policewoman told them: “You know, we can shoot you and say that you were trying to assault us, and nobody would know.”

Despite this, there is an insidious ‘politics of gratitude’ used against Queer Palestinians. They are expected to be grateful for their colonisation in the face of their nation’s inherent Anti-Queerness. This erases the agency of Queer Palestinians and their allies to represent themselves and act upon their own interests. It also denies reality: being queer won't save you from the violence of Israeli Apartheid. Former organisation Queers Against Israeli Apartheid once said: “there is no pink door in the apartheid wall”. Furthermore, the Apartheid Regime’s security services have an extensive history of using Queer identities to blackmail Palestinians into collaborating with them. If that is a “pink door”, no one should be grateful for it.

It is important to reiterate that Palestinians don't need to be saints or Liberal angels to deserve human rights. Treating Palestinians as a monolith dehumanises them. To quote fabulous Instagram user Official Jake Gylenhalal: “you’re taking away our right to have any faults. And if we do, they’re used against us to justify our genocide. Whatever homophobia, transphobia, misogyny that we, as queer Palestinians are experiencing in our own communities, that's our battle to fight. That's our agency that you're assuming we don't have, just like any other queer person on this planet, navigating these phobias in our own worlds.”

Whilst attending a Pro-Palestine March in November 2023 for which over a million people attended, I spent a portion of my time walking nearby a group of people holding a rainbow flag. At one point a young man came up and expressed discontent with the flag, saying that it would offend many of the people marching. The group explained to him that their intention was to support Queer Palestinians, and that they did not care if he didn't support them – they supported him anyway. I told him that Israel expects us to support them because they claim to support us, but we're here to counter their narrative. The young man walked away and the situation did not escalate. Later on, I was walking nearby the banner held by the organisation Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants. An older Hijabi woman approached the group and helped them carry their banner whilst having a conversation with them about her Queer children. No one-group is a monolith and no amount of homophobia in a group would ever justify their genocide. It pains me immeasurably that this even needs to be said.