Queers Resisting Zionism: On Authority and Accountability Beyond Homonationalism
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/7738/queers-resisting-zionism_on-authority-and-accounta
Pinkwashing is more than a branding campaign that queer Americans can congratulate themselves for opposing. The conventional depiction of pinkwashing as an attempt to divert attention away from the occupation is simplistic and one-dimensional. In Palestine, pinkwashing is part of the ongoing Nakba. Both Zionism and pinkwashing depend on a notion of the prior destruction and continued negation of Palestine and Palestinian belonging. This is the case whether one interprets Zionism as homophobic, gay-friendly, or—in its popular narrative form—as having followed a historical trajectory from an originary homophobia toward ever-increasing tolerance. Zionism must be understood as a historically specific, racialized process through which different discourses of sexuality emerge that bolster, rather than undermine, Zionist ideology.
In this context, pinkwashing is a tactic of Zionism and an influential discourse of sexuality that has emerged within it. As PQBDS/alQaws consistently point out, the disavowal and erasure of (queer) Palestinian bodies and subjectivities constitute pinkwashing. This invisibility of Palestinian bodies and images is matched only by a hypervisibility when they do appear. Palestinians are seen only as “backward” or “threatening,” while queer Palestinians only become legible as either “gay” or “victims of culture.” Invisibility and hypervisibility are results of the ongoing erasure of Palestinian belonging.