Pinkwashing: The Antisemitism and Erasure Behind This Bogus Claim

Like all fake activism for Palestine, it actually does tremendous harm to Palestinians as well as Israelis and Jews and only keeps the conflict going.

This post took so long that pride is now over, but the lies and double standards about Israel don’t stop now that it’s July.

Here’s a look at the accusations of “pinkwashing”, which is impossible to digest without looking at racism and erasure. This post delves into Slow Factory and Let’s Talk Palestine in particular, two disinformation accounts that hold Israel to one silly standard that erases queer Israelis and Jews of color while not holding literal terrorists like Hamas to the same standard. Pick a lane.

Like all fake activism for Palestine, it actually does tremendous harm to Palestinians as well as Israelis and Jews and only keeps the conflict going.

Pinkwashing Isn’t a Thing… …but accusations of it are racist & queerphobic.

Let’s look at leftist orgs and their blatant Double Standards on Israel—and how this endangers queer people, Jews, and everyone everywhere.

Some definitions:

Pinkwashing

The accusation that Israel (and Israel alone) leverages its queer community as a cudgel to distract from nefarious practices.

Genocide

Coined by a Jew after the Holocaust, “genocide” has a specific legal definition of mass extermination. Palestine meets no criteria, and Gaza is not a genocide. It’s the first widely watched war through social media, so people are mistaking the horrors of all wars with genocide.

Collective Liberation

“None of us are free until all of us are free,” wrote Emma Lazarus. Except she was a Zionist Jew and referencing the need for the State of Israel. Whoops! Like queer liberation, the term genocide, and anything else related to Jews, that quote gets weaponized against us. Collective Liberation is the idea that all oppression is tied together, until you tell queer people in the only nation for thousands of miles where Pride is even held that they can no longer celebrate it. Collective Liberation has a way of blaming Jews for all ills.

Double Standards

One of the 3 D’s of antisemitism and on full display in all of the above includes ignoring actual genocides, wars far worse than Gaza, and queer rights abuses in Palestine and beyond because it would make Israel look better.

Slow Factory: Pinkwashing is racist!

Also Slow Factory: “Exposing these whites”

The libel of Pinkwashing relies on painting Jews as white while ignoring the wrongs of the Arab world. Both are racist.

Most Israelis look like the author here, Afeefness. Most descend from people who lived alongside Arabs for centuries. Jews were ethnically cleansed from their homes without reparations, and are now called “white colonizers.”

This historical inaccuracy and obsession with Jewish features, lineage, and actions is a hallmark of antisemitism. Crying “pinkwashing” is the same; it’s a racist distraction from real issues—including Palestinian queerphobia & violence.

“Pinkwashing is racist” is part of a larger strategy: To absolve Hamas, Palestinians, and Arabs of any responsibility for their actions, past, present, and future.

Sadly, in doing so it blurs the lines between Hamas and innocent Palestinians, harming them.

• There’s a reason the people ranting about “pink-washing” also claim Hamas didn’t mass rape women (and men) on Oct 7.
• When you point out solid evidence, including video, they call that racist, too.

This is the racism of low expectations; Arabs can’t be guilty of rape or terror; either they have no other choice or Jews deserve it.

• The Free Palestine movement wants to “dismantle” / “decolonize” (genocide) Israel—and claims that Israelis, and Jews worldwide, deserve it for (checks notes) merely existing in Israel
• Under this paradigm, even self-defense against genocide is called genocide; Jews just shouldn’t live, they say. “By Any Means Necessary”

Pictured above: Slow Factory denies that Hamas raped victims on Oct 7, then dives into the fake story—since retracted by Al Jazeera—that IDF soldiers raped women at Al-Shifa hospital.

This should be no one’s guidance on queer issues.

The accusation of “Pinkwashing” relies on painting all Jews the same, politically, morally, and racially. This is racist and antisemitic, and clearly false.

Not all Israelis are their leadership. And some are just queer! And brown! And celebrate their hard-earned wins.

All of these are true at once: Israel IS a gay-friendly hub, Tel Aviv IS a socially progressive place, queer Israelis DO exist and celebrate their hard-earned wins, Israeli society IS diverse in thought, identity and political views. AND Israeli leadership doesn’t always represent its people, AND it has done bad things (none of which include genocide, by the way).

Ask yourself:

• Why don’t these groups hold Palestinians to the same standards?
• Why are they pathologically incapable of condemning Palestinian queerphobia, violence, and policy?
• Why is the queer community of Israel the ONLY ONE that shouldn’t be celebrated? How is (queer) Israeli existence inherently violent?
• Why should the only openly queer community in the Middle East be condemned?

At right: Sometimes a tourism campaign is just that, and has nothing to do with Palestine.

In accusing Israel of racism and queer erasure, these pages engage in precisely what they seek to condemn.

Let’s dive in to debunk this Let’s Talk Palestine post.

Israel isn’t a colonizer. Israel is the home nation of the Jews. Jews aren’t European.

The portrayal of Israel as a violent colonizer is paired with the portrayal of Palestine as innocent of every crime ever, and “resistance is justified.”

It’s not “supremacist” to decry the Palestinian society as regressive and intolerant. The same society kills their queer people and attempts to genocide the entire nation of Israel, which is a “violent oppression” “act of purification”:

No one is trying to “purify” Palestine. Its population grows rapidly. Israel does not impose religion or culture on Palestine.

Do they only care about queer people in Palestine?

Israeli queer people ARE liberated. Yet when they celebrate this fact, you call it “Pinkwashing.” Make up your mind.

Between the real queer Israeli liberation and only mentioning queer Palestinian rights to condemn Israel, it’s clear these organizations and “activists” don’t care about queer Israelis OR Palestinians.

No one is claiming that because Palestine is queerphobic, it should be destroyed. Literally no one.

The most extreme of the extremists in Israel right now are far-right homophobes. Do you really believe they condemn queerphobia in Palestine?

Progressive Israelis exist. They protest tirelessly. And they worked tirelessly for queer liberation in Israel.

But wait, there’s more! Israel (and the “pinkwashing” accusation”) are to blame for Palestinian queer oppression?

Queer Israelis celebrating pride helps queer liberation. Promoting this as a positive social achievement in a Middle Eastern society is what progressive success looks like.

It’s telling that we only hear about Palestinian queer rights when it’s about Israel somehow. Again, queer Palestinians are murdered by their own people: crickets.

Queer Americans faced this for decades. It didn’t erase their wins & their pride.

Did the Second Intifada help queer Palestinians? No, but the wall (built to stop the Second Intifada) saved queer Israelis.

Stop bombing Jews maybe? Start by condemning Oct 7.

In this very deck, LTP says, with no irony and no mention of Israelis killed Oct 7, queer and otherwise: “But how are queer Palestinians going to fight for equal rights as queers if they’ll be killed by airstrikes or starved as Palestinians?”

Lastly, LTP gets their basic facts about not just “genocide” and the war wrong, but about legal rights for queer Israelis, all wrapped in a “whataboutism” point.

Same-sex marriage is legally recognized in Israel; it can not be performed there yet.

Meanwhile, same-sex couples aren’t recognized AT ALL in Palestine. Legal recognition, even under an inconvenience that can be worked around, is not the same as being jailed or murdered.

Gay couples can indeed adopt. Multiple court cases in Israel have secured this right.

Jewish queers fought for their rights. The words here accuse them of being racist settlers and occupiers. THIS weaponizes them.

Takeaways from the bogus “Pinkwashing” claim:

1. Palestine activists believe Jews and Israel can’t do anything right, but Hamas and Palestine can do no wrong.

Why it’s antisemitism: Jews are the scapegoats for society.

Even the good that Jews do, like fighting for queer liberation, is considered evil. The racism of low expectations harms Palestinians by continued acceptance of terror leadership.

2. While claiming to fight racism, Palestine activists are being racist and portraying Israelis as white colonizers.

Why it’s antisemitism: Jews have been considered non-white everywhere we have lived until very recently. Most Israelis are not white, and calling them “colonizers” and their queer activism colonial “Pinkwashing” is racist.

3. While claiming to fight for Palestine and accusing Israel of killing queer Palestinians, Palestine activists are calling for the destruction of Tel Aviv, Israel, and queer Israelis.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t support Hamas, call for the dismantling of Israel, and claim to support peace and queer liberation. Hamas endangers us all, including queer Arabs, Muslims, Christians, and all others in Israel.

The hypocrisy of calling “pinkwashing” violent while also simping for Hamas is wild.