Queer Palestinians & The Power of Pinkwashing

So about a week ago, the official Twitter account for the state of Israel, at Israel, which, by the way, the fact that a country has its own social media platforms to speak on behalf of that country is bizarre to me.

You know, on the official Instagram account of the state of Israel, they have been going after specific celebrities who have stood in their support for Palestine over the last month, including a series of Instagram stories posted by Israel about Gigi Hadid, which resulted in Gigi Hadid's phone number getting leaked and her getting like hundreds and hundreds of death threats, which she ended up sharing a while later.

And I thought the whole thing is just so bizarre because what does the social media manager of the state of Israel expect from Gigi Hadid, who is a Palestinian woman?

But anyway, the official Twitter account for the state of Israel, at Israel, posted two photos earlier this week with the caption, the first ever pride flag raised in Gaza.

And I'm going to describe to you the two photos.

So the first one is an IDF soldier.

IDF is the Israeli Defense Force.

It's the Israeli military.

It's a male white IDF soldier standing in front of this huge tank.

and holding what is both an Israeli flag and a pride flag.

And then the other photo is this same soldier standing in what is presumably Gazan rubble after an airstrike that Israel administered onto Gaza, holding a rainbow pride flag that is written on in black marker and says, in the name of love.

These two images circulated the internet really quickly with an intense response.

The kind of Zionist social media activist Eve Barlow posted them on her Instagram with the caption, For the first time in history, pride flags flew in Gaza today.

The IDF is bringing democracy to the Palestinian people.

My condolences to all the queers for free Palestine, you're losing.

Over the last month, like so many people, I've had a lot of really strong emotions about everything that's happening in Gaza.

And the emotional reaction that these images of an IDF soldier holding a pride flag over rubble.

in a recently bombed Gaza really just brought something out of me that I did not recognize in myself.

Namely, confusion.

You know, I'm thinking, how can you bring pride to a place by decimating it?

How can Palestinians have democracy, according to Eve Barlow, if they're dead?

And as a gay person and as a Jew, I was just wondering, like, was this meant to be a win for people like me, for any gay person?

To use the pride flag, you know, something that was born out of oppression, to celebrate the visibility of a community that was systematically made invisible, to use it in the context of war, of conquest, of bombing homes and flattening communities and hospitals of thousands of dead Palestinian children.

Over the last month, I've had so many people from my personal life, people who I grew up with, people who have never once reached out to me to express concern about the state of queer rights or, you know, the free fall.

of trans rights in this country over the last few years have been reaching out to me to remind me that, you know, hey, you know, you would be murdered if you went to Gaza as a gay person.

And it's just weird because I live in the U.S.

and here in the U.S., over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in legislatures since the start of this year.

You have trans people in Florida who are starting Kickstarter campaigns so they can flee their home state because it's not safe to be trans there anymore.

The Republican Party has made their hatred for queer people and their conflation of queer people with pedophilia, which is very 1970s, by the way, a core pillar of their campaign messaging for 2024.

And I have no desire to compare the state of queer rights here versus those in Palestine or frankly anywhere else.

This is not the oppression Olympics.

And I, for one, am extraordinarily aware of my privilege living in a place like New York as a queer person.

But it does just make me wonder, right?

Like, are these people who are reaching out to me to remind me that for sure I'd be murdered if I went to Gaza as a gay person, are they really concerned about the hypothetical safety of me if I were to take a trip to Gaza?

Are they really concerned, more importantly, with the safety of actual Palestinian queer people who do live in Gaza?

Or is this homophobia being wielded as a tool, as a crutch in their argument for why I should feel okay with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from a land that they once called home.

This has all felt like such a distortion of values, values like queer liberation and Jewishness, values that I'm so familiar with because of who I am.

So I started reading some more.

And what I was witnessing play out in front of me, you know, the parading around of queer identities to essentially justify and sometimes glorify the ongoing massacre of Palestinians, started to make a lot more sense.

The basis for this episode is a book that I read called Israel, Palestine, and the Queer International, which was written by Sarah Shulman in 2012.

Sarah is a 65-year-old queer Jewish writer, academic, and activist.

And I actually asked her to be on this episode, and she couldn't because she's getting surgery, but she did respond to me.

And I absolutely fangirled because, you know, we all have those people who are celebrities to us specifically.

And that's kind of who Sarah Shulman is to me.

So thanks for responding, Sarah.

Anyway, the book is about this.

It's about the intersections of queer solidarity and the occupation and ongoing violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and dispelling the myth that these are entirely separate issues that are at odds with each other when actually they go hand in hand because as Sarah Shulman writes, justice is universal.

So before we get into the meat of the episode, I want to explain to you two concepts which are really, really important for understanding what we're going to talk about in this episode.

And those two concepts are homo-nationalism and pinkwashing.

These are two words that you might have heard of before and not quite totally know what they mean.

And I very much feel like homo-nationalism and pinkwashing fall into that category of like academic left-wing vocabulary that conservatives are definitely like, those are made-up words to describe problems that you're making up.

You know, it's very like homo nationalism, trans misogyny, they're just making shit up to complain.

But I think these words are actually extremely helpful to understand, especially right now.

And I'm going to try to distill a bunch of academia into like the easiest possible explanations of these concepts.

So I want to give you Sarah Shulman's definition of homo nationalism.

She wrote, homonationalism is where white gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and in some cases transsexuals, have won a full range of legal rights.

Through marriage, parenthood, and family, they become accepted and realigned with patriotic or nationalistic ideologies of their countries.

Instead of being being feared as the threat to family and nation that they were once seen to be, this new integration under the most normative of terms is held up as a symbol of that country's commitment to progress and modernity.

Some then identify with the racial and religious hegemony of their countries and join movements opposing immigration or racial and cultural difference.

They construct the other, often Muslims of Arab or South Asian, Turkish or African origin, as homophobic and fanatically heterosexual.

So that's pretty academic.

And basically, in my words, what that means is in a place like the United States, right, where gays have recently won certain very hard-fought victories in the realm of human rights that are specifically Western, right, like being able to marry, being able to serve in the military, we, and by we, I mean Western gays and white liberal allies, cling to those very specific wins and turn them into a symbol of what it means to be, say, American.

And so our identities as queer or queer friendly get wrapped up in our national identity as Americans or British people or any other Westerner, hence homo-nationalist.

So we start to frame these white Western countries as fundamentally progressive and we identify with that while contrasting those feelings with Muslim majority brown countries which we view as barbaric, uncivilized, and homophobic.

And I say Muslim countries because homo-nationalism is almost always applied this way.

It's a racialized viewpoint because it's only ever applied to Muslim homophobia and not, say, Christian homophobia, which is also extremely well documented.

Sarah Shulman wrote, quote, anti-Muslim racists can express some concern for the well-being of gays only when the homophobia is Islamic and not, for example, Catholic.

And Muslim homophobia is considered far more destructive than Jewish, Hindu, or Christian homophobia.

And by extension, the U.S.

war crimes against Arabs and Muslims are ignored.

Now, as a white American gay person, I recognize these feelings in myself, which is why these words jumped out at me, because I have been that person, you know, reading the list of countries where homosexuality is criminalized and subconsciously letting that justify my own internalized racism, which is bad because you can't racism away homophobia.

Because all of these struggles are interconnected.

And when I started reading about this, I felt embarrassed.

Maybe you feel embarrassed right now, but I think that discomfort is part of the process, is a necessary part of the process of evolving your thinking.

All right, are you still with me?

Now we're going to get into pinkwashing.

So some people think homo-nationalism and pinkwashing are the same thing, but there's sort of a fine difference, which I do think is an important one.

Homo-nationalism is an attitude, right?

Pinkwashing is when a government exploits homo-nationalistic ideas through policy, legislation, and marketing.

So, back to Sarah Schulman.

She wrote, while homo-nationalism is a product of white culture and emerges unconsciously whenever white gay people and their admirers assimilate into racist power structures, it is not deliberate government policy.

However, nowhere has homo nationalism been more consciously harnessed by governments than in Israel, where the maneuvering of gay rights to support racist agendas evolves strategically from marketing impulses.

So, essentially, pinkwashing is when governments are like, hey, we can exploit the homo-nationalist ideas that our citizens have and turn that into legislation that projects onto the world a modern, civilized, gay-friendly view of our country that may be true to an extent, but that also might aid in covering up these otherwise very flagrant and obvious human rights abuses that we're committing.

So Ayal Gross, who is an Israeli law professor at the University of Tel Aviv, wrote that, quote, gay rights have essentially become a public relations tool in Israel, even though conservative and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic.

And so you might be asking, like, doesn't the United States do that too?

And back to Sarah Shulman for a second, she would say yes.

In an article she wrote for the New York Times, she added, quote, in Israel, gay soldiers and the relative openness of Tel Aviv are incomplete indicators of human rights.

Just as in America, the expansion of gay rights in some states does not offset human rights violations like mass incarceration.

The long-sought realization of some rights for some gays should not blind us to the struggles against racism in Europe and in the United States, or to the Palestinians' insistence on a land to call home.

Syed Atshan, a Palestinian anthropologist, said that pinkwashing relies on four basic pillars of logic.

One, highlighting gay rights in Israel while ignoring Israeli homophobia.

Two, highlighting Palestinian homophobia while ignoring any agency of queer people in Palestine.

3.

Juxtaposing these contrasting queer experiences in Israeli and Palestinian societies as civilizational discourse aimed at highlighting the superior humanity of Israel and the sub-humanity of Palestine.

And 4.

Representing Israel as a gay haven for Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals in order to attract tourism and other forms of solidarity and support.

Okay, that was a lot, but I do think that homo-nationalism and pinkwashing are really important concepts to understand so that we can, first of all, better address them in ourselves and also see them when they're showing up in this moment in the world and also to better digest the conversations we are about to have.

Real quick, before we continue, this podcast takes a lot of work and I am so grateful for our sponsors who make it possible.

This episode is sponsored by Blue Land.

Blue Land is on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials to be better for you and the planet.

So the idea behind Blue Land is simple.

Instead of buying your mirror cleaner or multipurpose cleaner or hand soap over and over and over again, you just buy one of Blue Land's forever bottles, which are very chic, by the way.

and you fill it with water and drop in your cleaning solution tablet and bam, you have your cleaning solution.

And when you run out, all you have to do is pop in a refill tablet and those tablets start for as low as $2.25.

So they're really sustainable and also very friendly on your wallet.

And even friendly on your wallet, because this holiday season, Blue Land is having its best sale sale of the year so you can save and shop sustainably for your friends, your family, even yourself.

To take advantage of Blue Land's best sale of the year for up to 30% off your order.

So, a huge thanks to Blue Land for sponsoring this episode.

If you want to take advantage of their best sale of the year for up to 30% off your order, go to blue land.com/slash fruity.

Again, that is blue land.com/slash fruity.

That's blue land.com/slash fruity.

So, today we we are joined by Mo Debach, who is a gay Palestinian American.

He has family in Gaza.

His parents are both from Gaza.

He has a personal tie to Gaza and to this moment,

which I will let him tell you more about.

Mo, welcome to A Bit Fruity and thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Matt.

Of course.

So where were you born and raised?

So I was actually born and raised in New York, out in Bay Ridge.

It's a huge Muslim and Arab community.

My mom had just moved to New York to have an arranged marriage with my dad

from Gaza herself.

She'd only been in the country about six months.

And both of your parents are from Gaza?

Yeah, so he moved.

My dad moved over here after he went to college in Turkey.

So in his mid-20s or so.

And my mom moved over when she was 19.

She was the first of her family to ever go to the U.S.

It was her first time being on an airplane.

Honestly, when I look back at it and reflect on it, I think it's just so brave of her to do that and to meet a man she'd never, and to marry a man she'd never met before.

She was escorted by his parents.

You talked about how you lived in Gaza for a period of your childhood.

Do you, how old were you during that?

And do you remember much?

You've done your research.

I love that.

I have.

I stalked you on Instagram before we started this.

No, that's awesome.

You dug deep.

So I used to visit.

I've only been to Gaza.

I've never been to other parts of Palestine or Israel.

And I lived there for about a year or so when I was four.

And I vaguely remember it then.

When I was there,

my grandma was living there.

I had two aunts, a lot of my mom's cousins.

My entire dad's side of the family is there.

We had our own apartment there as well.

We were just surrounded by a lot of family.

But even back back then, you know, it's kind of like the ongoing

situation that housing is in Gaza have always faced.

So, electricity being out some days or for a few hours of the few hours out of the day,

but that's just a general way of being.

And so, people are used to it.

Really, they're just so thankful to be alive and to be around

one another.

The more I've only been back one other time since then, and it was when I was about 11 or 12 when my grandma was passing away.

And that was really challenging because we have to, you know, you can't get there that quickly.

You have to fly into Egypt, into a rural airport, drive to the border, wait at the checkpoint, go through another checkpoint.

And then it was just really tough.

She passed away in her 60s and she just due to health complications.

And it's just such a shame because I think The weird thing is, or the funny thing is growing up, I always thought people in their 60s were on the verge of death.

I thought that just looked, I thought that meant you were old because both my grandmas died at such young ages, but it was really just due to their act, due to their access to health care.

And during that time, I'm trying to remember what year it was.

I think it was around 2003.

I missed it.

Somehow I slept through it, but a tower was bombed while we were in town then too.

I remember waking up and just...

the silence being really deafening in my grandma's apartment.

I could tell like something was off.

And I just asked, I was like, hey guys, like, what's what's up?

Like, I'm really confused.

And they filled me in.

They were really confused that I had slept through it.

But that was, that's just like normal day-to-day life there.

Granted, it's not always happening as consistently as it's happening right now.

We're seeing hundreds of bombs a day.

But

yeah, every few months.

And it goes in waves.

That's just what the people there have always been subjected to.

Wow.

But I have really,

really, really positive memories of being there as a kid, despite just some of the challenges of being there.

I think it's because the resilience is really embodied in everyone there, in Palestinian people there, but also in the diaspora, I'd say, in my in my mom, in my friends' families who have had to,

who have either just moved away when they have the opportunity or those that were displaced years and years and years ago.

And I think that's just something so special about the people there.

And I'll tell you a bit more about my family that's still on the ground and who I'm in touch with later on when we get to it, but just how their continued resilience, despite what's been going on in the past few weeks, continues to show.

Yeah, I was actually just going to get to it.

You have a large extended family living in Gaza still, right?

Yes.

Well, the numbers are, you know, are shifting.

So both my parents are from there.

My dad's side is the Debagh side.

That's my last name.

My mom's side is Abu Saif is their last name.

And getting updates from either side of the family has been really tricky just because of access to electricity,

to Wi-Fi, etc.

You hear about it every day.

So since October 15th, that was when the first reported casualties happened on my mom's side of the family.

Till now, we are at 49 members of the Abuse family that have been killed thus far.

So that includes mainly my mom's cousins and their children and their grandchildren.

We haven't yet heard of any

deaths of our immediate first cousins or my mom's sisters.

So we we actually heard from my mom's sister today.

This morning, she made it, they've been in the north this entire time, which has been really

stressful for us just because it's where the ground invasion is actively happening right now.

But we heard that she made it to Rafah.

So she's by the Egypt border.

Not sure how she made it there.

The messages come in sparingly.

She did say in her last note that her access to Wi-Fi is a really long walk.

So

we probably won't hear from her unless we call her on international calls, which we've been trying to do.

It's worth every penny.

But it depends on if her phone is either charged or on.

So fortunately for now, at least my mom's immediate siblings and our first cousins are okay on that side of the family.

On my dad's, we're not as close anymore.

My dad passed away over 10 years ago, and I'm just not as tight with that family.

I have a second cousin I'm in touch with.

I heard from him today through WhatsApp.

And that's the thing.

You don't want to bother these people by like draining their phone battery and just messaging them unless you can put together something really concise, just to be mindful of their time, energy, and also just access to these resources.

So Sammy, who I know you're familiar with.

Yeah.

In 2021,

during what felt like the last kind of huge escalation of violence, of Israel bombing Gaza that the whole world was hearing about.

constantly, you posted about your cousin named Sammy, who was displaced from their home, which was destroyed.

And so do you know where your cousin is now?

Yeah, so that war was pretty bad.

That was May 2021.

And I wasn't as close to Sammy before that war.

We just started talking a lot more just to keep in touch and keep up with what was happening on the ground because this was before we had

the voices that are currently kind of reporting on everything happening because like Plestia, like Mataz, for example, like Bissan.

I'm not sure where he is right now.

He hasn't clarified.

I asked him.

I received a text from him this morning, which was the first time I've heard from him in over two weeks.

And he said it was 8 a.m.

our time, so mid-afternoon.

There's

here, the situation is very dangerous.

Oh, and he writes to me in English because he wants me to understand it, despite the fact that I'm very capable of translating.

I can also read Arabic, but he wants to make sure that I'm able to understand what's happening.

The situation is very dangerous.

We're surrounded by tanks and soldiers.

There's no internet, no food, and even little little drinking water, and navigation is not suitable for water.

The family is sick from the smell of death.

And that's all he said.

So he didn't really indicate

any signs of being in a better situation anytime soon.

If he's with, if the soldiers and tanks are around, that means he's in the north.

I just don't know in which part.

I don't know if he's hiding or if he's safe enough to, you know,

exist amongst them and get access to Wi-Fi, it's really unclear.

So I wrote him back just waiting to learn more.

But again, it's like, you want to be mindful because him sharing the updates with me, I can only do so much, right?

Like I want him to be able to maybe reach his family on the ground that's still remaining.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So

how do you, and I guess also, I mean, your mother, like 49 members of your extended family, how do you even make sense of that?

Have you made sense of that?

Yeah, it's really tough because, you know, we're seeing a lot of messaging that's like, these are real people.

They're not just numbers.

But when it gets, when the numbers keep increasing like that, like,

you kind of start losing sight of the individual humans.

But what's been helpful to me and what really kind of gutted me was

it's also like a game of telephone.

My uncles live in Saudi and they have access to or have the contact information for more members of the extended family that I've never met.

So they get kind of that information piecemeal, but they've started sharing the names of all of all our family members that have been killed, that have been martyred.

And so those lists will come to me in Arabic and I want to, you know, read through them and translate them to English so I can have my own list to

really reflect on and memorialize these people.

And so I remember being on the train two weeks ago, I was going to a dinner for members of the Muslim and Arab communities in creative spaces.

It was really, it's been really nice kind of reconnecting with the culture and meeting new people that just get it.

And on the train, I was doing those translations.

And as you go through each line and read, you know, each individual's full name, and

it really kind of sets in like that, like just like the sheer impact of what this is, right?

Like you're reading, my cousin Hatim, Awad Abu Saif, the wife of my cousin Huda, Mustafa Abu Saif, their children, Muhammad, like, you know, it starts to just become very, very real.

And

yeah, that really killed me on that train ride.

And it's not about me at all.

And that's something I was saying to you earlier.

Like, it's just, you then start feeling bad that or kind of guilty.

It's the survivor's guilt of it all.

Right.

Right.

It's like, how can I be so upset about this?

I'm on my way to a dinner.

Right.

And it's like, you kind of feel guilty about not the mourning aspect of it, but for feeling kind of weak and helpless over it.

When Biden made those statements about,

when multiple governing bodies made those statements about the lists being inaccurate because Hamas controls

everything about Ladder, including the Ministry of Health, I turned to those documents that ended up being released by the Gaza Ministry of Health to look up some of these names.

That was my first time getting access to any kind of documentation of these deaths before the family group chat started going off with full-on lists.

And that was really, really hard to see because, again, it's not like they're they're more than just numbers.

And that painted a very, very real picture for all of us.

So in the theme of what we're talking about more specifically today, which is homo nationalism and pink washing and this projected idea of what gay life is like for Palestinians versus what it actually is and the context of it and all of that stuff.

I want to return to your cousin Sammy, who lives in Gaza, who you have a relationship with at this point.

Like presumably he knows that you're gay.

Yeah,

I don't really hide it on the internet.

So

my cousins, my cousins there that I'm connected to on social, and my cousins, you know, that live in other parts of the world, mostly in the Middle East or in Turkey,

all are well aware and have never

expressed anything negative about it.

And I think from my cousins, from Sammy, I've gotten nothing but support for the life I'm leading.

He hasn't specifically said, I support you as a gay person, necessarily, but he's happy to see that I'm happy,

which

just feels really special to me.

But yeah, that's been the extent of

those conversations.

We're really keeping most of the

conversation focused on their overall health and safety.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that totally makes sense.

And for what it's worth, I mean, it sounds like that exchange is also the description of like most white American Christian queer people with with their families, you know, on the good side, that their families are like fine with it, but they don't talk about it for the most part.

I want to talk about pink washing.

Can we talk about pink washing?

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it.

So, Sarah Shulman, who is a Jewish queer writer, she wrote in the New York Times an article about pink washing where she describes it as a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians' human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.

And so pinkwashing to me, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, because you have been presumably aware of the pinkwashing that Israel does as a marketing tool for their own global image.

But to me, it's like a look over there sort of thing where they assume that every kind of Western country will judge how progressive or how advanced any other country is based on, space solely on where that country stands on gay rights, which is really interesting because then Israel can say, look, well, we have pride parades.

And if that's the only measurement of advancement that you're using to judge another country's progress, then you will ignore the fact that they treat Palestinians in an incredibly inhumane way, that you will ignore the fact that racism between Jews and Arabs, between different kinds of Jews, is like an extraordinarily prevalent problem in Israel.

And also, also, even if you just ignored the way that Israel treats Palestinians and those human rights abuses, like Israel's government is extraordinarily right-wing in its own right.

And so it feels like the whole progressiveness of Israel, right?

This like Tel Aviv being a haven for gay people, it feels like it's all like an inch deep.

So, Mo, like, when did you first become aware of pinkwashing?

And, like, how does it show up in your life?

How has it shown up in your life or the way that people form assumptions about your life?

I think

I first became aware of it or first started really paying attention to it might have been in 2021 because it really comes out when the Israeli government wants to suppress and influence, suppress

support for Palestinian people from the gay community and influence, you know.

that train of thought and that support.

And as a proud queer person, as someone who has really found community here in New York and as an adult, it's just been really disappointing to see that because it's so targeted to our community.

And it's so, you said it perfectly, the look over there tactic, it's really meant to distract, but it's also meant to really divide.

And like parts of it are also intended to pit Palestinians against.

supporting its own people.

A lot of that messaging, you know, says like, and I've received a bunch of comments on, I did a video for them a couple weeks ago, and a lot of comments from people I don't know could be bots are telling me, like, oh, look, it's an American Palestinian.

I bet he wouldn't go to Palestine.

I bet he wouldn't go to Gaza.

Or I'd like to see him go wave a rainbow flag in Gaza.

And that's just so offensive because I would go do those things, right?

Or I would go do, or I would go be myself in Gaza, right?

I'm going to respect the cultural norms there, just like I would,

you know, in any other conservative country.

Or, you know, I might be a bit more cautious, just like I would in certain parts of the US South.

Right.

But to

use those as

tactics against me and influencing like where my support lies is just,

if it's, it's so messed up.

And I can't believe that like you have a governmental body behind it and that puts money behind it too.

I've also seen some folks post things like, oh, you've been to Tel Tel Aviv Pride.

Where's your support for Israel now?

And it's like, these people didn't necessarily go to Tel Aviv Pride to support Israel to begin with.

Some gays are just on the circuit.

And it's not fair to suggest that because they've gone somewhere to party, that they're going to unequivocally support.

the host of that party, right?

And it's just, it's such a weird way to influence.

Yeah, I've had a great time in Miami before.

Exactly.

I've I've had great times in Miami before.

I'm not endorsing Ron DeSantis.

That's such a great example.

I mean, but it is such an interesting thing, though, right?

Because the tone of those comments that you'll receive, right?

The, why don't you go to Gaza and wave a flag there?

Or let's see what happens if you go to Gaza or don't you know what happens to your type of people in Gaza?

Like, not only is the tone of that, like, this

very racialized, you know, it's perpetuating this very racialized vision of Arabs, of Palestinians, of brown people as being like barbaric in contrast to like the cosmopolitan, sexy, progressive white Israeli.

But it's using that vision as justification for like whatever's going on there, they deserve it because they look at how they treat their own people.

And it's just really interesting because I have no desire to like directly compare the state of queerness and queer life and queer people in Palestine to that in the U.S.

or anywhere else, because I think a lot of times we get caught up in trying to judge different nations and different views on gay rights by a Western standard, which is really hard to apply across the board.

Like in the West, we view the pinnacle of gay rights as having achieved gay marriage, but that's not what it means in a lot of places to live freely as a queer person is not to get married.

It's just crazy to me because you could very easily look at the state of queer rights in certain parts of the United States and view them rightfully as barbaric.

Like the revoking of trans kids' access to health care,

of trans kids' ability to use restrooms, of frankly, an increasing number of bills and popular mainstream conservative ideas around the United States to restrict queer people's ability to work anywhere in the public sector without being humiliated online.

And it's just weird because I've never seen any of these people use that as justification for why we should, for example, blow up Florida.

Yeah, totally.

Actually,

on November 3rd, the UN Human Rights Committee criticized the U.S.

over its anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

So the new report cited numerous human and civil rights abuses.

They reported concern over unchecked anti-LGBTQ discrimination by state governments.

They've called out the laws that ban and in some instances criminalize gender-affirming healthcare for transgender persons and that limit the discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, like the don't say gay law in Florida.

And so if the UN,

it's crazy because the UN is calling out what's happening here in the U.S.

It's calling out Israel for what it's doing.

And we're just rejecting all of that.

Something that's been really challenging throughout all of this is just the dehumanization of Palestinians in general.

And that weighs on me because that's my identity and it's, you know, I have family there.

And so we're seeing like the conversation from Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, say

there's a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.

That's basically the civilized and the barbaric.

And, you know, of course, the barbarians don't have,

you know, queer people are suppressed in Gaza, so they're not important.

And we should be fighting that.

And it justifies everything that we're doing.

I think a couple of days ago we saw an IDF soldier raising a rainbow flag.

That's what I'm starting this episode with.

Oh, it's analyzing that image.

But feel free to talk about it.

That image of the IDF soldier on the ground in Gaza waving the rainbow flag.

It's just crazy to think like that feels like a success and that they've done something.

It's like the bullets, the bombs, like they've probably killed queer people.

So to just wave that as if you've done something to improve the lives of queer people in Palestine, Mbeza specifically, is just

so delusional.

Something that I've learned and that I've like internalized honestly for the first time through researching for this episode is just that like this idea that you can win rights for, you know, for example, Palestinian queer people by colonizing them, by displacing them from their homes.

It sounds absurd, but that's literally the ideology running through so much of this argument online and in the media is that, you know, it's like setting the rainbow Israeli flag amidst the rubble, which is what that IDF soldier did.

And it's like, we're finally bringing a pride flag to Gaza.

And it's like, this is what we mean when we say that all forms of oppression are interconnected and that you cannot bring certain forms of justice without others.

Liberation for some people is not liberation.

It just makes

no sense.

When you put it all out in front of you, like the idea that all of our liberation is interconnected as queer people, as Palestinians, as human beings, freedom from occupation, freedom from homophobia, freedom from racism, freedom from transphobia, all of these things are literally connected to one another.

And we can't have one at the expense of another.

That's not how freedom works.

Mo, have you heard of this thing called Brand Israel?

I have.

Yeah, it's really fascinating.

Brand Israel.

Okay.

So, for the listener who presumably doesn't know what this is, because I didn't until I started researching for this episode, this was the moment where I, when I learned what Brand Israel was, that I felt like I was wearing a tinfoil hat.

Like, I felt like a conspiracy theorist.

I felt like

I was like, I don't know.

I felt like I was like doing like QAnon or something that I was just like making shit up because this sounds so bizarre and so hard to believe, but it's real and it's extremely out there.

So Brand Israel is a public relations campaign.

It's a marketing campaign that

continues to be run by the Israeli government.

It started in 2005.

And the whole idea of Brand Israel was to improve the image of the state of Israel.

The goal of the campaign, this is from its Wikipedia page, the goal of the campaign is to establish Israel as a cosmopolitan, progressive, westernized and democratic society, contrasting it with the Islamic, homophobic, and regressive surrounding nations.

And that's really important, that it's not just about Israel being a great place, it's about contrasting it with all of its surrounding countries, chiefly Palestine,

being, you know, the opposite of everything it aspires to be.

And this is an extraordinarily well-funded marketing campaign, which, by the way, it was inspired by American marketing executives who in 2003 were like, we need the, you know, the image of Israel is fully associated with war and with apartheid and with ethnic cleansing.

And we need to do something to get that image to be something else.

And so it has had funding in the tens of millions of dollars.

And

I wanted to like,

I wanted to look at some images that have been produced by this kind of like grand marketing campaign, which has stretched on since 2005 through now

with you, Mo, if that's okay.

Yeah, sure.

So I don't, I just, I was looking at some of these and it's like, when you realize you're, it's the kind of thing that when you realize you're looking at propaganda, it's just like, whoa,

this is wild.

In 2007, Brand Israel did a campaign in Maxim magazine, which is like a Playboy adjacent, you know.

And they basically did this very long kind of photo shoot spread story in Maxim

about female soldiers of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, which is the Israeli military, which is, you know, enforces the regime that oppresses Palestinians.

Maxim is an American men's magazine, by the way.

And the purpose of this photo shoot was to show Israel in a context that was something other than war, which is ironic because they're just showing female soldiers, but this time like in bikinis.

And the headline of this spread was, quote, they're drop-dead gorgeous and can take apart an Uzi in seconds.

Are the women of the Israeli Defense Forces the world's sexiest soldiers?

So I'm like, okay, what were the photos?

This is one of the images.

Do you want to describe what's going on here?

Yeah, that is really, really wild.

So you have, they said this is an IDF soldier.

Yeah, do you know specifically who that is?

It's Gal Gadot.

Is it Gal Gadot?

It's Gal Godot.

It's Gal Gadot.

I think it's, is it Gal Gadot or Gal Godot?

I always thought it was Godot.

It really doesn't matter with her, but she's in a bikini.

She's in a bikini with heels on, lying on the edge of a rooftop, and then you see the city in the background.

This is so odd because it's so misogynistic too.

Oh, it's Maxim, so that makes sense, but it's really odd to be talking about a country's defense forces in this way or depicting them in this way.

I mean,

it's crazy.

And there are like tons and tons of these photos.

I mean, this was like a really large-scale photo shoot with all of these like hot IDF soldiers.

And it's absurd to look at, right?

Like the absurdity is so plain and simple, but it's so dark.

Separate from Brandon Israel, because they still, the state of Israel still employs the same tactics in different ways, mainly through social media, I'd say, especially their Twitter,

the Taylor Swift bodyguard thing.

Yes.

So wait, do you want to describe that?

Yeah.

So basically, it's a photo of Taylor Swift at a concert and her bodyguard escorting her.

And I forget the name of the bodyguard,

but

he was

called to, you know, go to war, called back to Israel.

He was an Israeli guy.

Yes.

And so the tweet was

basically like telling Swifties to pray for this bodyguard and how Taylor Swift will never have a bodyguard ever like him again and how hot he is.

And the thing about this tweet is that it didn't name him properly.

And the other thing is he wasn't even her actual like full-time bodyguard.

He was just for that one specific show.

Right.

So it's really like sexualizing and idolizing soldiers to the general public.

It's such a, yeah, it's really, really bizarre.

I've never seen anything like it.

Yeah.

They were like, look at this hunky, sexy Taylor Swift bodyguard.

Like, Swifties, this is your call to arms to stand with Israel.

And yeah, I mean, the guy wasn't even Taylor Swift's bodyguard.

He was like, it was like some stadium and he was the bodyguard like at that stadium who happened to be caught in one screenshot from like a CCTV footage video where he was standing next to her.

And it's so interesting because, yeah, like you said, I mean, the ongoing efforts of brand Israel now through social media, then through Maxim, it reminds me of like, it's like the darkest version of that meme.

You know, that meme, it's the guy with the skateboard and he's like, how do you do, fellow kids?

It's like the darkest possible version of that of like some like adult war criminal being like, how do you do, Swifties?

Time to commit some war crimes in the name of Taylor Swift.

Exactly.

It's really fucking bizarre.

I think just on that note, like the whole social media strategy has been so bizarre to watch.

And I'm really, really glad that a lot of young Americans, and I'm seeing it a lot on TikTok, are seeing right through it, right?

Like, why are we doing get ready with me's to go to the front lines?

Why indeed?

Why are you going?

I mean, like a full beat to go to the front lines sounds cool in theory, but it's just such a weird thing for a government to be promoting through its soldiers.

It creates this like crazy dichotomy of like beautiful and civilized and glamorous versus barbaric and

um what is it, children of darkness, yeah, and uh of the jungle.

And I'm really, really, really grateful that like social media is

there are some good and a lot of good and bad to social media, but like it's allowing people to see right through this stuff in real time rather than just relying on what gets printed in the newspapers or on our in our you know on mainstream media

because it's truly, truly,

I keep using the word bizarre.

That's exactly what it is.

It also feels really desperate.

It is extremely bizarre and it's so desperate.

And it feels like their understanding of what the youths on social media want is so shallow.

Like if I was

brand, like the social media manager for brand Israel.

I feel like, like you said, it's like they're literally doing like, get ready with me, hot soldier goes to the front lines.

I think they want like Twitter, savvy Gen Z people to just be like, hell yeah, she's getting, she's serving to serve.

Exactly.

But it's like, we all know that what they're getting ready to do is commit war crimes.

And I don't even say that in a cutesy, like war crimes, like they're committing by the definition as created by the United Nations, war crimes.

They are committing collective punishment.

They are doing war crimes.

I don't care what

eyeliner they're wearing or like the story of their gay flag that they're planting in the rubble.

I don't care.

You're committing war crimes.

Another thing that Brand Israel did in 2010, Brand Israel launched a month-long festival in San Francisco called Out in Israel.

A month long.

That is crazy.

Yeah, it was like a month-long kind of like tour that happened around San Francisco to promote kind of this LGBTQ friendly vision of Israel to Californians, basically.

And again, the aim was to create a media narrative, an American media narrative for Israel that was less about war.

But also it was to counter something which had just happened in Israel not long before, which was a shooting

at a gay center in Tel Aviv where LGBTQ youth were meeting, which resulted in two deaths and 15 injuries.

And so they were like, oh, we had a homophobic shooting.

at an LGBT center in Tel Aviv.

Now we have to go around to the rest of the world and remind them how gay friendly we are.

And it's like, it's so transparent.

I think that was the shocking thing to me when I was researching all of this, especially about brand Israel and its enduring efforts to launder Israel's image as a state that commits war crimes regularly.

Is when you look at all of this in succession, when you look at the events, the anti-gay shooting followed by a very clear campaign to market Israel as like a sexy, gay place to visit.

It's so transparent.

And this is where I have to be like, Matt, like, you're not wearing a tin hat.

You're not going crazy.

Like, this is really what's happening, which is part of why I'm making this episode, because once you're aware that so much of this image of Israel as a place that we should all support, because it's so progressive on human rights, allegedly, because it's so cosmopolitan, that is something that you can pay marketing executives to create for you, whether you're a brand, whether you're Lockheed Martin, whether you're a country with a marketing budget, which by the way, pays off because when thousands and thousands of people travel every year to Tel Aviv Pride, that is money that's going into the Israeli economy.

So Israel isn't just doing this, by the way, listeners.

Israel isn't just doing this to look and feel good on the global stage.

They are seeing returns on this.

This is an investment that they are seeing returns on.

But it has, as you've noted, I mean, like people are more and more seeing through it, and especially with the advent of social media and criticisms of brand Israel and of pink washing in general coming to light.

The tide is turning.

So in 2016, the Israeli government, and we've seen this a lot with celebrities, they'll offer these celebrities vacations.

Basically, so celebrities will post and be like, I'm at the beach in Israel.

Like, you know, look at this perfect utopian place.

They offered trips to Leo DiCaprio, Sylvester Stallone, Mark Rylance, Kate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, Matt Damon, and Kate Winslet.

And then, and the trips were valued at $55,000 each, which, you know, for these celebrities is nothing, but also it's a lot of money that they were being comped.

And there was like pretty swift backlash, and none of the celebrities went, which I just thought was interesting.

None.

That's amazing.

I didn't know that.

I do think like a lot of other celebrities have gone, though, on these branded trips.

For sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think

I was doing quick search on Brandon Israel too, and I saw like

2016 or 2017, they announced the winning team of the Super Bowl was going to get a trip to Israel.

But then more than half of them pulled out.

and like put out this big letter and they had like, you know, the support of activists like Angela Davis speak out to help influence their decision.

So I think when we look at when we look at these examples and when we look at how people are engaging now, it's important to really lead by example with and be really conscious of, even as like an everyday person, like how you're consuming, whether it's purchases you make,

the movies you support, the trips you decide to go on, like Tel Aviv Pride looks lit.

Like that looks fun.

Beautiful people.

It's

my

but I can't go there because I can't support that economy.

I can't.

if I'm going to spend all this money to fly all the way to Tel Aviv, I need to just go to Gaza.

I need to find a way to get there.

Like that's where my heart is.

And those are the people that I need to really be spending my time with and supporting.

But also like it's hard for me to go to a place like Tel Aviv because

my grandparents are from Yaffa and they were displaced,

you know, after the Nakba.

They were not from Gaza originally.

And I think that's really important for a lot of people to understand is most of the folks there are refugees to begin with.

And it's happening all over again we've seen photos of um there's an elderly woman's photo that just went viral or video of her doing the walk from the north to the south and she's already done this

um

and i think like we all have such a responsibility as not as just queer people but as consumers and people that have influence regardless of your following you can have 300 followers you can have 3 million to really show where you stand.

And I think if you really care about these human rights, show it, right?

Because you can't say you care for human rights while also not condemning the fact that we're bombing those very same humans and destroying their homes with our tax dollars as American citizens.

Yeah, that's another thing is, I mean, so many people are insisting that it's not my place to talk about this or, you know, I'm not involved enough to talk about this.

And I'm not here to legislate who should talk about what.

But I will say on a very basic level, if your tax dollars are funding something, you have a right to talk about it.

That's my belief.

I think it's also really unfair for folks to say, like, well, if you're going to, you know, not support Israel and support the Palestinian people, then you need to give this up.

And why aren't you speaking out against this?

And why aren't you speaking out against that?

And the

what aboutism?

Is that how you say it?

What aboutism?

Yeah.

What about ism?

It's just like such a deflection tool.

And it's like, well, those things are wrong too.

But like, am I asking you to get on here and not only condemn Hamas, but condemn X, Y, and Z?

Like, let's just focus on this issue at hand, right?

It just, it takes away from the point you're trying to make and the one I'm trying to make to begin with.

And I feel like that's been really discouraging too, like these tactics of not only shaming people, but getting them to

be silenced because they don't have all the answers or,

you know, making them feel like they haven't done all the research.

It's not complicated.

It's pretty simple.

You either stand for humanity or you don't.

You either care about human rights or you don't.

And if you care about queer rights, then you need to first and foremost care about the lives of these people.

They can't have rights if they're dead.

Yeah.

Or if their family, and if their families are dead, I don't think their concerns are,

you know,

being able to wave a pride flag when they don't have a house to wave it from.

It's really, really beautifully put.

So you've probably seen this like, I feel like queers for Palestine has become like a meme for a lot of the internet, especially the right-wing internet.

And the basic idea is that at a lot of the protests for Palestinian liberation that have been showing up around the world and especially in the US, there have been, at any number of them, there have been queer people, usually queer Americans, holding posters, you know, queers for Palestine, queers in solidarity with Palestine.

And these photos have been turned into memes.

Like, I don't know know if you've seen this, Mo, but like, people have collaged them with images of chickens holding up a sign that says chickens for KFC

or like cows for burgers or whatever.

And the idea being that, you know, how could you be a queer for Palestine?

Queer

rights are completely at odds with Palestinian rights and Palestinian liberation.

And

I've seen that image, the chickens for KFC thing, over and over and over again.

And what's amazing is that every person who shares it on Twitter, every person who replies to all of my tweets with it, thinks that they're like breaking new ground or showing me something that I haven't seen before.

But

what do you make of that, of that whole argument?

Yeah, so I actually hadn't seen the image before I started seeing it in the comments on posts on Instagram and

some on my own posts.

And I thought it was just such a narrow way to look at this, right?

It's like,

I think what's frustrating about

the chickens for

KFC, you know, angle is that like, you're suggesting that like we shouldn't care about human rights because if we live in that society, we wouldn't have the rights that were afforded here, which, you know, those are slowly being pulled away from us.

So it's, it's really unfair that like we're being told not to care.

Basically, I'm just saying like human rights at their core should matter to all of us, regardless of whether or not the rights you have to exist in the free way that you're privileged to have here in the U.S.

might not be granted.

If you

actually supported queer people and you cared about queer rights and liberation, you would really be advocating for human rights to begin with.

The other thing, the other point I want to make is that as a queer person, you don't have to support the Palestinian people just because of

the queer part of your identity.

You can just, you can support them and care for them just as fellow human beings.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, I care about

various different communities that don't reflect who I am, whether it's racially, sexuality-wise, political party, sometimes, right?

Just because we need to have more care for one another.

And I think that's the root of a lot of all of these issues.

There is a lot of hate and a lot of hate being spread and division.

Yeah.

And it just does nothing to help the situation.

In fact, it just, all it does is continue to pit groups against one another and to dehumanize one over the other.

It's very

colonialist.

Yeah.

I mean, I just want to say, like, when I first saw the banner saying queers for Palestine, There was a

knee-jerk reaction I had, which was to question the legitimacy of something like that, right?

Like a part of me, look,

I'm a white American gay and I was grown in the era of homonationalism and which I've had to unlearn.

And, you know,

a part of me has long bought into this idea of like, how, how could I, as a queer person, support justice for people

who don't care about me or who I've been told don't care about me.

And I no longer feel conflicted at all about my position on this.

I am absolutely, as it were, a queer for Palestine.

And I really don't like these sort of like the hand-wringing that's being done by conservatives, by conservative gays, by conservative white gays about how surely I must be dumb to hold that position.

I must be stupid.

I must be unaware of how they, of how horribly they treat gay people.

I'm not unaware of any of those things.

What I am aware of is the fact that all forms of oppression are interconnected, that you cannot bomb people's homes and displace them permanently and cut off their water and kill them in the name of human rights.

You can't do it in the name of gay rights because none of those rights will exist if that's the method that you're taking to achieve them.

That's not how human rights are fought for.

Liberation is

all or nothing.

And

you can't liberate some at the expense of others.

And

that was the end of my tangent.

Yeah, something I really love about what you've said in one of your most recent Instagram posts is why does everyone suddenly want to remind me that Gaza is not a safe space to be queer?

Is it out of genuine concern for the well-being of queer people?

Or is it a wielding of homophobia as a tool to justify the mass slaughter of Palestinians?

And it definitely feels like the latter.

Because, like you just said, if there is a genuine concern for the well-being of queer people and the future of queer people, of queer Palestinians, you wouldn't be obliterating them.

The other thing you said was there's a big difference between pointing out issues in a society in order to actually help the society versus portray it as savage and deserving of the violent oppression we've been seeing for weeks on end, for decades on end, honestly.

And so, when someone, you know, chimes in in to tell us, you know, we're we look dumb, we're chickens for KFC to be advocating for Palestinian lives.

Um, you're basically supporting what's happening to those Palestinian people, the violence that's against them.

And you're saying that we shouldn't be standing up, we of all people have no right to.

And I think the reason why Queer Ser Palestine exists, um,

like that movement itself, um, is because of the multi-million dollar campaign that's been going on for decades now

to brand Israel as a haven because of the pink washing that's happening.

That's why we have an obligation as queer people to say, like, no, you can't do this, like, like, not in our name, really.

Like, this is

you're, you're, you're selling a false narrative to people that, like, might not have an awareness of what's actually going on.

And thank God, more and more people are starting to do their own research.

They have access to the information, to voices on the ground.

Otherwise, you really would feel that Palestinians,

their lives are just unworthy because they're such a barbaric group of people that just want you dead.

And that's just simply not true.

Yeah.

So to close out, Mo, as a queer person, as a Palestinian, As someone with family in Gaza, what do you want people, especially people in Western countries, especially people in the U.S., what do you want them to know about Palestine, about Palestinians?

What are people getting wrong?

Not all people are getting it wrong, I will say, but I think the people that still haven't called out, you know, what the Israeli government's doing, the war crimes that are taking place every minute of every day,

the over 10,000 lives that have been lost in a span of weeks, this message is for them.

It's that Palestinians deserve life.

We're all human.

And it's not because, especially when we're talking in the context of queer liberation and Palestinian liberation, it's not because of their proximity to these colonial models of liberal humanity, right?

Because they're not where we are as a society.

And like I said, like what's slowly kind of being undone, all the progress we've made in this country, which really that's, if you care about queer rights, put all your might into fighting that, put all your might into combating what's going on in Florida into countless states across the country, rather than suppressing us as a group of people saying no against what's happening to Palestinians in our name.

I want to say that human rights should never be conditional, right?

You know,

it's messed up and it's unfair to suggest because

a society isn't as quote unquote advanced or as liberal as ours is that those people are undeserving of basic human rights, resources, safety.

And then I'll close it out by saying queer liberation is Palestinian liberation.

I said this in my video for them.

I say this to anyone that wants to have a conversation about this because

you can't have queer liberation in Palestine without a liberated Palestine

and with Palestinians in Gaza.

So if you're losing them, you're losing all of us.

Yeah.

Sorry.

That was kind of long-winded.

No, that was perfect.

Mo, thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks for having me.

So to round out today's show, I want to read you two quick little things.

The first one is a quote from an article published by Al-Kaz.

Al-Kaz, which in Arabic means the rainbow, is a Palestinian organization working to build LGBTQ communities and promote new ideas about gender and sexual diversity in the media and in everyday Palestinian life.

Bet you didn't know that such an organization existed.

I didn't, but it it has since 2007.

Anyway, they published an article written by Hanin Meiki and Jason Ritchie in 2009 where they wrote, quote, as in most societies, homophobia is a problem in Palestinian society.

But there is not some organized, widespread campaign of violence against gay and lesbian Palestinians.

Of course, there are occasional acts of violence, and the social norms and mores about gender and sexuality that give rise to such violence create a climate in which many queer Palestinians cannot live their lives openly and honestly.

But at the same time, there are many openly gay and lesbian Palestinians, and they are actively engaged in changing the status quo in Palestinian society by promoting respect for sexual and gender diversity.

The second thing I want to read to you is a newly published statement by an Instagram account called Queers in Palestine, which is anonymously run by a group that describes themselves as workers, students, farmers, and parents who are all queer Palestinians.

So here's an excerpt from their statement.

We refuse the instrumentalization of our queerness, our bodies, and the violence we face as queer people to demonize and dehumanize our communities, especially in service of imperial and genocidal acts.

We refuse that Palestinian sexuality and Palestinian attitudes towards diverse sexualities become parameters for assigning humanity to any colonized society.

We deserve life because we are human.

with the multitude of our imperfections and not because of our proximity to colonial modes of liberal humanity.

We refuse colonial colonial and imperialist tactics that seek to alienate us from our society and alienate our society from us on the basis of our queerness.

We are fighting interconnected systems of oppression, including patriarchy and capitalism, and our dreams of autonomy, community, and liberation are inherently tied to our desire for self-determination.

No queer liberation can be achieved with settler colonialization, and no queer solidarity can be fostered if it stands blind to the racialized, capitalist, fascist, and imperial structures that dominate us.

So, that's our show today.

I want to give you, the listener, a huge thank you if you've made it this far, or, you know, even if you haven't made it this far.

Thanks.

Anyway, I want to give a huge thank you to Mo for so generously joining us and giving us his story and his viewpoint during a time which I can only imagine has been incredibly painful.

and distressing for him.

And yeah, you know, don't be afraid to change your attitudes upon learning new information.

And don't be afraid to challenge yourself.

That's something that I've had to do a lot in my life in the last month.

And don't be afraid to stand in your truth if you know that you're doing the right thing.

And with that, I will say I love you.

Thank you for listening.

And until next time, stay fruity.