JERUSALEM—Let’s dispense with the charge of “pinkwashing” that has been leveled against Israel. The word has come to stand for the claim that Israel officials use the nation’s relatively progressive stance on gay rights as a tool to distract journalists and public attention from its treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Some Israel supporters do indeed push the nation’s culture of tolerance to the forefront—the Anti-Defamation League, for example, has produced ads promoting Israel as a humane environment for people of all sexualities. But the concerns that pinkwashing has become an effective smokescreen obscuring the Israeli occupation are inflated.
Israel is considered by some to be a “‘Mecca’ for gay Palestinians,” who are often persecuted in their own communities, Michael Luongo wrote earlier this month in GlobalPost. But, he added, “Rights advocates say the good press is actually a mask covering Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in general.” A 2011 New York Times op-ed by Sarah Schulman defined such efforts as pinkwashing—“a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.” She quoted Aeyal Gross, a professor of law at Tel Aviv University, who argues that “gay rights have essentially become a public-relations tool” for Israel.
Israel indeed hosts vibrant gay pride parades (even through sacred Jerusalem), welcomes gay military service, and courts gay tourists. A rainbow patch on a tourist’s backpack in Jerusalem’s Old City will elicit more yawns than sneers. A May profile of Tel Aviv on 60 Minutes noted that it* was rated the most gay-friendly city, according to one survey. And gay Palestinians living in Israel are among those who benefit from this tolerance.
But there is scarce evidence of a unified campaign to use a tolerant social culture as a red herring. And in any event, Israel hardly has a PR machine capable of keeping journalists from highlighting its military occupation. The arguments about it are too vehement. As Peter Beinart, the former editor of The New Republic and an American Jew, argued in his recent book, The Crisis of Zionism, “Israel doesn’t have a public relations problem, it has a moral problem.”
Schulman’s op-ed cited as evidence for attempts at pinkwashing the fact that Tel Aviv launched a 2010 campaign to brand itself as a destination for gay tourists. But many tourist hubs around the world, from Key West to Bangkok, court gay visitors.
Israel saw a gay pride parade June 8 with over 30,000 marchers. The day after the Tel Aviv demonstration The New York Times’ Isabel Kershner filed a report not on that parade, but a smaller march in Jerusalem denouncing racism against Ethiopian Jews. All government mouthpieces congratulate themselves for their country’s humane policies, and in doing likewise Israeli spokespersons are the rule, not the exception. It is difficult to argue that such boasting is successfully used to obscure Israel’s most controversial policies.
*Correction: The sentence originally referred to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital city, which is incorrect; Jerusalem is the capital.
Justin D. Martin is a journalism professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. Follow him on Twitter: @Justin_D_Martin