"Pinkwashing" Panel at UCLA

Hat tip Frontpage Magazine and Campus Watch

Cinnamon Stillwell and my friend and colleague Reut Cohen attended a recent event at UCLA which focused on the subject of "Pinkwashing" a desperation tag invented by the anti-Israeli lobby to take Israel to task for being tolerant of gays. Not that the anti-Israeli crowd has anything against gays, you know, it's just that they think Israel is taking unfair advantage because they (the Palestinians et al) persecute them and it's just not fair that Israel doesn't because....

Read the below article and you will appreciate how much this bunch ties itself into knots with their anti-Israel propaganda.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/cinnamon-stillwell-and-reut-r-cohen/pro-gay-and-anti-israel-pinkwashing-to-the-rescue/

“Pinkwashing: Gay Rights and Queer [sic] Indigeneities” 

This is a classic case of the anti-Israel crowd joining with the academic left  inventing one term and re-inventing what used to be an anti-homosexual epithet. And these idiots are academics . Here is the lead from their own announcement.

"Colonialism and dishonesty go hand in hand. Nineteenth and twentieth century colonial powers sought to justify their imperial designs through a myopic denunciation of the circumstances of women in the colonized societies. These imperial countries pretended to "save brown women from brown men," as they dispossessed and disenfranchised entire peoples. Twenty-first century colonialism has evolved to justify occupation and apartheid as a new and improved "civilizing mission," one that distinguishes itself as gay-friendly, while the downtrodden societies are represented as homophobic. On the other hand, Palestinian queer activism, and the grassroots Palestinian strategy of BDS, which seek to achieve equality for all people regardless of their ethnicity, sexuality, or religion, present the model for a queer state, which allows individual citizens to define themselves as they wish, without losing power, entitlement, or safety."

I would love to see how "queer activism" works in the West Bank and Gaza.

Here is an example of the reasoning powers of the appropriately-named Professor Nada Elia of Antioch University when it comes to gay Palestinians.

"A lot of queer Palestinians are suspected of being collaborators. There is some degree of truthfulness because Israel knows—every Palestinian is spied on somehow— if there is suspicion that a Palestinian is gay, they are arrested and then recruited. They threaten to ‘out them.’ This increases the homophobia. It’s aggravating the circumstances of gays in Palestine."

Of course. It all makes perfect sense.

And this:

"Stating up front that she prefers to be called a “scholar-activist,” Elia wasted no time...."

Nada Elia is Professor of Gender and Global Studies at Antioch University, Seattle.  She is the author of Trances, Dances, and Vociferations:  Agency and Resistance in Africana Women's Narratives, and has guest edited a special issue of Radical Philosophy Review on the Second Intifada.  Her essays on identity construction in the diaspora, and more recently on gender and militarism, have appeared in World Literature Today, the Journal of the National Women's Studies Association, Callaloo, Research in African Literatures, and more.

A scholar-activist, Nada chairs the anti-militarism/anti-occupation taskforce of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, and serves on the Organizing Committee of the US Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Hey Nada! How about I call you an "idiot"?