New Documentary About Immigration in Greece: "Into the Fire: The Hidden Victims of Austerity in Greece"

Today, the documentary film "Into the Fire: The Hidden Victims of Austerity in Greece" is being released online. The producers of the film have reached out to people to post the video embedded on their blogs and websites simultaneously today. I have not watched the entire documentary yet, but from what I have seen, it looks amazing.

So, please watch and spread the word! The website for the documentary is here: http://intothefire.org/

Here's the video! There are subtitles available in several languages; just click the CC at the bottom.



Please share and spread the word!

~Saffo

Call For Proposals: Queering Anti-Imperialism: Stories of Queer Resistance Against Empire

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

Call For Proposals:
Queering Anti-Imperialism: Stories of Queer Resistance Against Empire

Queers have always been involved in anti-imperialist/ anti-colonial struggles— including both queer folks who have endured empire/ colonialism themselves as well as queer folks involved in solidarity campaigns. However, the stories of queers involved in combatting empire are often left untold. This both results in, and is fueled by, the false notion that anti-imperialism and queer liberation are “separate issues.” The result is that the complex ways in which gender and sexuality are intertwined with empire, militarism, and settler colonialism, often get ignored. This anthology, Queering Anti-Imperialism, will be dedicated to telling the stories of queer resistance against imperialism and colonialism, as well as queering the ways in which we think about empire.

The terms “empire” and “imperialism” refer to many different kinds of violent practices. We welcome proposals about queer people involved in campaigns against any of these kinds of practices. These practices can include, but are not limited to: settler colonialism, non-settler colonialism, war and militarism, US/ European cultural hegemony, globalization and neoliberalism, economic sanctions, gentrification, military occupation, US “aid” to repressive regimes, international “development” work, incursion on and destruction of communities by invasive NGOs as well as academic researchers and other “well-intentioned” outsiders, water and land privatization, resource extraction, ecological destruction, cultural assimilation, and “population control.”

We are interested in non-fiction pieces by queer writers involved in anti-imperial struggles. We are open to a variety of formats, including but not limited to: personal stories, critical essays, poetry, and other formats. Pieces may be more personal (focusing on ones’ own experiences) or analytic (focusing more broadly on gender and sexuality issues in anti-imperialist struggles.) Preference will be given to queer authors who are struggling against or have experienced imperialism or colonialism themselves, however queers who are heavily involved in solidarity work are also encouraged to submit. We especially encourage submissions from trans, intersex and gender non-conforming writers. Any proposal must meet the following criteria in order to be considered:

- The proposal must foreground experiences of queer people and/or focus on an analysis of gender and sexuality within anti-imperialist struggles
- The proposal must focus on anti-imperialist/ anti-colonial struggles.
- The proposal must be non-fiction.
- The author must either identify outside of western categories of gender and sexuality or they must identify somewhere under the queer, trans, or lgbti umbrellas. In other words, we are not seeking submissions from non-trans straight people.
- While we encourage proposals that take a critical, theoretical approach, the piece must be accessible to a general audience.

Possible topics could include (but are in no ways limited to):
- Race, empire, and gendered body policing
- Decolonizing “queer”/ the idea of “queer” as a western label/ “queer” identities outside the west
- Pinkwashing, homonationalism, and Israeli apartheid
- Gay gentrification and queer resistance
- Queerness and the colonized colonizer
- Queers of privilege doing solidarity work, and how this complicates notions of allyship
- Queerness and notions of family and belonging in diasporic communities
- (Trans)gender, militarism, and the police/ security state
- Indigenous resistance and western notions of gender and sexuality/ Indigenous notions of gender and sexuality
- Two-spirit resistance and queer settler colonialism
- “Single-issue” politics and LGBT complicity in empire
- Military violence, trauma, and healing in queer spaces
- Homonationalism and LGBT identification with the nation-state
- Gay “inclusion” in militarism
- Liberal/ NGO “saviors” and colonized queers
- Queer (in)visibility in anti-war and anti-colonial movements
- Sexual and bodily politics of colonialism and empire
- Queers and the impact of US leftists’ complicity with “anti-imperialist” repressive regimes (i.e. Iran, Syria)
- Iranian queers, economic sanctions, and the threat of war with the US/ Israel
- Queer perspectives on decolonizing the environmental movement
- Gender, sexuality and the nation-state, nationalism and national liberation discourse
- And, of course, queer perspectives on any of the above-mentioned forms of imperial violence

This is a call for abstracts/ proposals. Please submit: (a) proposal/ abstract (max 800 words), plus (b) biographical statement (max 300 words), to queeringantiimperialism@gmail.com, by September 12th, 2012. We should be clear that we do not yet have a publishing deal, but we are in the process of assembling a manuscript to submit to publishers.

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

some songs i made

hey friends,

i finally got around to uploading to youtube some songs i made on garage band a couple years ago.

hope you enjoy.


part 1:



part 2:



part 3:



part 4:



here's the link to the playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL440823DB6D32D23A

omgz straight people

speaking the TRUTH to the oakland "public safety" committee

seriously, god bless this woman. so amazing. speaking the truth to the prision-industrial complex and the fucking joke of a so-called "democracy" in this fucking police state.



"i'm talking to you, please don't look away right now."

so much love to her and her family.

<3 <3 <3

youtube playlist

ummm, so i made a youtube playlist. it's an eastern mediterranean dance mix. (none of these videos are mine.) hope u enjoy.

MY BLOG HAS MOVED

hey everyone, if you're reading this, then obviously you have already found the new site, but for what it's worth... i dunno, maybe it will come up in search engines if people are searching...

http://saffolicious.blogspot.com IS NO MORE

i'm now at

http://saffosmash.blogspot.com/

thanks!

queer "inclusion," liberalism, and militarism

i made my first ever video! yay! watch it.

NorthSouthEastWest

I've beent thinking a lot about geographies lately, and what they invoke.

What does it mean to speak about "the west"? Is "the west" a geographical category? A racial category? A cultural category? A political category? What is the relationship between this kind of category— the orientalist geography of "east" and "west"— and other geographic categories? Are there some designations which simply refer to compass directions— devoid of any racial, cultural, political meaning? What about other geographies that have been mapped in terms of "east" and "west" which seem to be separate from the orientalist geography? What about "eastern Europe"? Is the word "west" that is contained in the phrase "western Europe" (as distinct from "eastern Europe") different from the "west" that is contained in the phrase "western civilization"? How does this east-west divide differ from the east-west geography of US expansionism and the colonial fantasy of the "wild West"? In the US settler imaginary, Europe is to the east, and yet it is also where western civilization comes from. To the west is "Indian country," and the narrative of manifest destiny contains within it a teleology of western civilization moving westward. This narrative is very different from European orientalism. (Can we call colonial representations of native people in North America "orientalist," or is it something different entirely?)

How does this play out in terms of other geographies? Cities, countries, continents, regions are constantly dissected into compas directions. "East side," "West side," "North Africa," "The South," "Eastern Mediterranean," "Southeast Asia," "North America," "South America," "Eastern China," "West Africa," "West Coast," etc. What, if anything, are these signifiers evoking? We map our entire world by compass directions. Parts of a city get labeled "east side" or "west end" or "northern (city name)," etc. It would be disingenuous to give, deterministically, too much meaning to these macroscopic racialized geographies of "the global North/South" or orientalism, such that any mention of geography is inherently a reference to these categories. When I say "walk north 2 blocks and east 4 blocks," I am not referencing these things. But sometimes these references, these city, state, regional, continental designations become intertwined with other geographic discourses in complex ways.

So what does it mean, then, to speak about the "Eastern Mediterranean"? Are we simply invoking a compass direction, or an orientalist divide between east and west? And yet, to speak about "the Mediterranean" (as in the Mediterranean sea, but also as in "that which is Mediterranean") is also to challenge some of these geographies. The Mediterranean is a sea which has been trisected into three continents— Europe, Africa, and Asia. Through these geographies of continents, the sea becomes, to borrow an artistic term, the negative space to the positive space of the land. We cannot speak of the Mediterranean as one region. In this light, speaking of "the Mediterranean" seems transgressive.

But we have to be careful here.

To simply erase these dissections is to erase a tremendous amount of difference, and to make colonialism invisible. These discursive geographies have, in certain instances, and not without a tremendous amount of incompleteness, willed themselves into being. Certainly people do inhabit— in a literal and figurative sense— "North Africa," the "Middle East," and "Southern Europe." These geographies have made themselves real through centuries of colonial violence. However we also must not forget that, in their willing-into-being, these geographies were always incomplete, contingent, and contradictory. A tremendous number of subjectivities have existed, and continue to exist, which do not fit this mapping. To hesitantly embrace the category of "the Mediterranean," then, is to contingently, and with reservation, rewrite the mapping of this corner of the earth, while not forgetting that other mappings have existed and continue to exist.

"The Mediterranean" also troubles some of the ways in which the colonial has been narrated. Two canonical moments in the theorizing of the colonial are: 1492, and the British colonization of India. Both of these encounters are narrated through tremendous difference between the colonizer and the colonized. In the case of the Americas, there had been little if any interaction between Europeans and Native peoples in the Americas. There was tremendous cultural difference, and there was also tremendous geographical difference/distance. While England and India did, in the large scale, have more historical continuity than Europe and the Americas in 1492, there was still tremendous difference and distance. The story of colonialism has often been told as the story of the colony and the colonial power as discrete and separated by thousands of miles. In the case of "the Mediterranean," this distance is not so great, and these places have thousands of years of interconnected histories. Narrating how difference was produced and violence was enacted between people who were neighbors, provides all sorts of difficulties.

To return then, to the question of the "Eastern Mediterranean," as part of a larger category of "the Mediterranean," this is all the more conflicted. After all, the origins of the East-West binary may, in part, trace some of their genealogies back to the fragmentation of the Roman empire. And yet, many places which we may map as part of the "Eastern Mediterranean," have since been mapped as part of "Europe" and the "West." I am thinking here of Greece and the Balkans. How has Greece made itself western, and when, why, and how did this happen? How does this continental divide play out in various places now part of the Greek nation-state?

These are some of the questions I am thinking about...

Pinkwashing, Colonialism, and Transphobia

(please feel free to distribute this so long as a link is provided back to the original blog post.)

Pinkwashing, Colonialism, and Transphobia

"I would like to see what people would do to that tall boy george look alike if he [sic] went to Gaza city dressed like that."

 "All those poor innocent Hamas who never hurt no-one; their kids they brought along to watch them fight. ... People who'd lynch your queer ass. Don't forget that."

"The greatest irony is that fagot [sic] at the end of your video would have his [sic] throat sliced if he  [sic] took two steps into Gaza."

" what are you?? if your [sic] not a male or a female, perhaps something in between?? then can you explain to me your ridiculous & ignorant hate against the only country in the Middle-East that someone like you could live a peaceful life, almost without prejudice, having the law on your side, and also having the same rights as a male or female heterosexual??? because darling, someone like you would be strung up by yr pigtails and stoned to death, tortured or imprisoned, in any of those 'peace loving' 'democratic' 'non-judgemental' Muslim countries that surround Israel!!" (Notice the "almost" in "almost without prejudice.")

 -- All things that have been said about me and my work in the BDS movement. Just the tip of the iceberg.

Translation: What these people are really saying: "I want to kill you because you are queer. But queer people are safe in Israel so how dare you be critical." Oh, the irony...

Pinkwashing is a Way of Displacing/ Projecting Ones' Own Queerphobia onto Colonized People.

So lately I've been feeling the need to speak up about my experiences as a radical queer transgender transfeminine person in the BDS (Free Palestine) movement. But first I think I need to explain a little bit  about transgender identity. I want to talk a little bit about my experiences with other anti-Zionists as well as the way that Zionists target queers. After that I need to explain some background on what pinkwashing is. And then I will get to the meat of how pinkwashing is racist, queerphobic, and transphobic.

The following introduction will start with an intro to trans identity, and then an intro to BDS and the movement for Palestinian liberation. If you are already familiar with either of these topics you might want to skip ahead to the main part of the post— the section called "Pinkwashing."

Introduction

I am transgender. Fucking deal with it.

Part of being a member of a group that is marginalized almost to the point of invisibility is that I am constantly put in this position of, at best, having to explain myself, or at worst, having my existence and my self-identity violently attacked, as in some of the above quotes. While I protest the fact of even having to explain myself— because having to explain oneself ultimately means having to justify one's own existence— I would prefer to do it here, and now, to hopefully reduce the number of times that I am forcefully confronted by somebody else's ignorance.

There are plenty of good transgender 101 resources out there and I don't really want to repeat them right now, and honestly, I don't really like trying to explain my existence to people. (This one is really good.) But basically, trans (or transgender; I use them interchangeably) is an umbrella term for anyone who does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. There are millions of us all over the world. We have existed across time, across cultures, throughout the world. And we will continue to exist. Many cultures have traditions of non-binary gender identities. Some of the people who identify with these identities might also identify with the word "trans," while many do not. There is tremendous cultural and historical diversity within all the experiences that might fit under this word "trans."

In other words, we have always been here, and we will continue to be here. So get fucking used to it.

Disrespecting somebody's gender identity is disrespecting that person. Disrespecting a transgender person's gender identity is disrespecting all transgender people. Hence, it is transphobic. So, call somebody "he" if they identify as a "he." Call a person "she" if they identify as a "she." Call them "ze" if they identify as a "ze." "They" if they identify as a "they." Etc. There are plenty of resources out there on how to respect transgender people. Do your reading and learn about our community.

There are some trans people who were assigned a "woman" identity at birth and identify as men. They are men. No, they are not "women who became men." Calling them "women who became men" means calling them "women" and that invalidates their gender identity, and hence is transphobic. The same is true for transgender women. Respect how people identify, do not question or disrespect that identity. Disrespecting that person's identity IS disrespecting that person, and disrespecting ALL trans people.

Some transgender people identify very solidly as men or women. Some don't. Like I said, we are a tremendously diverse community. If you are unsure of how to address a person, the best thing to do is politely ask what their pronoun preference is. If it is a large group, it might be best to ask someone other than the person themself, so they don't feel put on the spot. And avoid making assumptions. Again, this is not a thorough guide to respecting transgender people, but these are a few good rules of thumb.

In other words, not only are the above comments fucked up for a LOT of reasons, but calling me "he" when I identify as a "she" IS AN ATTACK ON ALL TRANSGENDER PEOPLE.  As for me, I am a transgender woman. I also identify as third gender. I identify both inside and outside the gender binary. I go by "she." Do NOT call me a "man" or a "boy" or "he."

The fact that the people quoted above are coming from a point of trying to position Israel as some sort of queer-friendly haven (which it's not), makes it especially ironic if you make an attack on transgender people as part of your argument.

Don't Demand Explanations

While all this may sound harsh, it is important for people with privilege to respect the anger of the oppressed. If you approach me respectfully, I will return that respect. I am not an angry person. I am not a mean person. But I will fight like hell to defend my community and to work in solidarity with other oppressed communities.

Do NOT approach me demanding explanations or asking invasive questions. It is none of your business if I am seeing a doctor to transition medically or take hormones. You wouldn't want a total stranger coming up to you and asking you about your genitals or any medical conditions you have, so why should a trans person not be treated the same?

With that said, if your heart is in the right place, I am not an unapproachable person. Maybe we can be friends and work together in the struggle. Disrespect me, and you will feel the fierceness of one pissed off transgirl; approach me with respect, and you may find that I am willing to share a great deal with you.

Zionism and Apartheid

What is Zionism? Zionism is the belief in support for the state of Israel and its ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the land of Palestine. It is the belief that Jewish people (usually white, Ashkenazi Jewish people) have the right to move to the land of Palestine and claim it for themselves— at the expense of the people who were already living there.  Zionists believe in the creation and maintenance of an exclusively Jewish nation-state, at the expense of Palestinians. This means the erasure of Palestinian history. It also means maintaining the category of "Jew" and "Arab" as two distinct, mutually exclusive categories. (Zionism erases Palestinian/Arab history and identity in the land of Palestine as well as the histories and identities of Jewish Arabs across the world.) Zionism is Jewish nationalism. It is a Jewish version of Manifest Destiny.

"Apartheid" is a legal term established by the United Nations during the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment, in 1973. Again, it is a legal term, with a legal definition. Any state can commit apartheid, and be in violation of international law. Yes, the term was based on the experience of apartheid in South Africa, but it was generalized by the UN into a legal term that can apply to any state. Israel meets that definition because of its racist treatment of Palestinians. You can read more on this here.

The BDS movement is a global movement, led by Palestinians, for people to Boycott, Divest from, and place Sanctions against Israel and the corporations that profit off the occupation, until Israel meets the following demands:

1. End the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall in the West Bank.
2. Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
3. Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

You can read more on the movement here.

About Me

As I mentioned, I am a transgender woman who identifies both inside and outside of the gender binary. Sometimes I prefer the term "third gender." I always go by "she." Respect that. I am also the daughter of a war refugee. My mother had her home town of Port Said, Egypt, bombed and invaded by England, France, and Israel during what is now called the "Suez Crisis." We are not Arab; we are not Palestinian. I cannot speak to the experiences of Palestinians or Egyptians— however, I can say that my life has been tied to the region in many complicated ways. In preparation for their invasion of Egypt which would result in my mother becoming a refuge, the Israeli military massacred Palestinians on the Israel-Jordan border in what would come to be called the Kafr Qasim massacre. So yes, when I hear people use the trauma I have experienced as a queer and trans person used to try and justify Israel's crimes against Palestinians, I do take that personally. It makes me invisible. But more importantly, it makes queer and trans Palestinians invisible.

Pinkwashing

What is Pinkwashing?

So, what is pinkwashing? Well, you saw some of it in the above quotes. Pinkwashing is act of justifying Israel's colonization of Palestine and apartheid subjugation of Palestinian people by saying that Israel is a queer-positive haven, or that Palestinians are queerphobic. The argument goes something like this: "Israel is a safe haven for LGBT people in the middle east, therefore LGBT people should support Israel, regardless of the crimes it commits against Palestinians." OR, something like this, "Palestinians are queerphobic, therefore this justifies Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians."

We have been hearing these arguments a lot lately. This is not a coincidence. Israel has been spending millions of dollars a year on propaganda, as part of its rebranding campaign "Brand Israel." Zionists have been selling the image that Israel is a modern, progressive, democratic country surrounded by a sea of backwardness. Part of its message has been that Israel is a haven for queers, Palestinians are homophobic, queer Palestinians are silently suffering, or fleeing to Tel Aviv, or even coopting the struggles of Iranian queers to justify Israeli apartheid. (After all, Zionists love to displace blame for their occupation by talking about human rights abuses in Iran.) This campaign has also attempted to sell Israel as an "environmentally friendly" state. (We call this "greenwashing." For more on pinkwashing, bluewashing, and greenwashing, make sure to check out the website israelilaundry.org.) All of these pinkwashing discourses depend on the silence of actual queer Palestinians. Fortunately for Zionists, Israeli apartheid already works to silence many Palestinians— making it easier for them to claim to speak in the name of queer Palestinians.

Pinkwashing is racist for many reasons. This is extremely important— and we should recognize pinkwashing as an attack on all Palestinians and, by extension, Muslim and Arab people. And, by extension, this is an attack on all people of color. I'm not going to go into tremendous depth about that right now because it has been explained better and more thoroughly in several sources. (For more on why pinkwashing is racist, check out this site, this site, and this site.) Briefly, however, I want to point out that Israel only selectively grants rights to (cisgender) gay people who are Jewish. Queer Palestinians are not made "safe" by Israel's bombing of the Gaza strip, daily humiliation at West Bank, land confiscation and home demolition. Queer Palestinian groups have spoken out in response to Pinkwashing to remind us that it does not matter to queer Palestinians if the Israeli soldier at the checkpoint is gay or not; it matters that he's there at all! There is no magic door through the apartheid wall that allows queer Palestinians to enter the "gay friendly" apartheid state. Furthremore, Palestinians, and, by extension, all colonized people, are being labeled inherently queerphobic. This is racist. (Let's not forget how the US claimed to be invading Afghanistan to "liberate women," or how the British empire used the practice of widow immolation in India to justify their colonization.) (Be sure to check out Palestinian Queers for BDS.)

Why Pinkwashing is Queerphobic

Let's take a look at some of those quotes above. Do you think those people like queer people? It's obvious that many of these people are virulently homophobic and transphobic. Obviously they disrespected me and made barely veiled threats of violence against me and my community. But what's really profound is the act of projection. Through pinkwashing, queerphobic Zionists actually project their queerphobia onto Palestinians. This is a way of not only demonizing Palestinians in order to justify Israeli apartheid, but it is a way of escaping accountability for their own virulent queerphobia. I think it was both Frantz Fanon and Edward Said who talked about the ways in which the colonizer uses the colonized as a mirror, a way in which one builds an understanding of oneself through projecting all that one wishes not to be, onto those they oppress. Colonizers project their own insecurities, their own failures, onto those they colonize. In this case, Palestinians become the image of all that is backwards for Zionists. Zionists project and create an image of themselves and the state of Israel as the antithesis of all the ugliness they have projected onto Palestinians. Hence, they can position themselves as my "savior" even while they threaten violence against me.

They are essentially saying to me: "Isn't it good enough that we allow gay marriage in Israel and I'm refraining from killing you right now even though I think you're a hideous freak? You should stay in your place, be content with the marginal advances that LGBT people have made in Israel, and not say anything." Implicit in offering some token queer-positive aspects of Israel, is the threat that these advances could be taken away if queer people speak out against the occupation. This is a threat of violence against Palestinians (queer and non-queer), queer Israelis, and queer allies of Palestine across the board.

In the quotes that these people uttered towards me, it was not them that they imagined committing violence against me; it's Palestinians. They are displacing their disdain for me onto the people they are colonizing. Palestinians become a release valve for them to project their own queerphobic fantasies. In order for this to work, queer Palestinians need to remain silenced. Fortunately for these Zionists, Palestinians across the board are often silenced by apartheid— so Zionists can often feel free to claim to speak on their behalf. The spectre of Palestinian queerphobia becomes an ideological tool that Zionists can wield against any queer people who dare criticize anything that Israel does.

Hence, Pinkwashing serves as a way for queerphobic Zionists to escape accountability. This seems especially obvious when we consider that many groups who are heavily invested in selling this pinkwashing propaganda have close ties with rightwing queerphobic Christian fundamentalist organizations. For example, the group Bnai Brith, which has become heavily Zionist since the 70s, also has ties with NARTH— National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality—, a group that believes that homosexuality is a "disease" that can be "cured." (Check out the Toronto-based Queers Against Israeli Apartheid's info on this here. Scroll down to the section "LGBT TRACK RECORD...")

Pinkwashing's Fallout

Ironically, if there's anything I have to say to Zionist Pinkwashers it's in some ways, thank you. Thank you for allowing queer liberation a place on the agenda of the Palestinian solidarity movement, and Palestine solidarity on the agenda of queer communities everywhere. Part of the fallout has been that, more and more, spaces and opportunities have been created for connections to be drawn between queer liberation and Palestinian liberation.

On the other hand, part of the fallout that needs to be considered, however, is the very tricky situation we are often put into in trying to talk about queer liberation and Palestinian liberation. Queerphobia exists anywhere. But under a discourse of pinkwashing, it becomes incredibly difficult to speak to queerphobia that exists in Palestine or in the Palestine solidarity movement. It is not my place to speak to the experiences of queer Palestinians; but I can speculate that any kind of work they do to address queerphobia in their own communities is now fraught with all sorts of political dangers. I can speak to my own experience that within the Palestine solidarity movement: pinkwashing has put us in a place where it can be very difficult for those of us who have experienced trauma on the basis of our gender identities or sexual orientations to speak to these experiences without finding ourselves coopted by an imperialist agenda. We must however, recognize this as part of the violence of colonialism. If queer Palestinians feel that they must bite their tongues about queerphobia that they face out of fear that it will be used to justify violence against them and other Palestinians— then this is a form of queerphobic violence that is performed by Zionist pinkwashing. A similar situation goes for queers in the solidarity movement. Again, I hesitate to say any of this because I do not wish to speak for queer Palestinians— this is merely speculation.

On the other hand, as I mentioned, the response to pinkwashing has been the rise of a previously unprecedented presence of solidarity organizing. I have literally heard people old enough to be my grandparents, who have dedicated themselves to Palestine solidarity since way before I was born, tell me after workshops on pinkwashing: "I have never heard this before." This solidarity organizing has been, in many ways, a breath of fresh air into a movement which, for decades, had seemed to be going nowhere.

Conclusion

Moving Forward

Zionism, since its creation, has been a colonial project based on identity politics. Zionism was formulated in the 19th century in the language of national liberation for an oppressed group. For this reason, many of us on the left have had tremendous difficulty speaking out against Israel's crimes against Palestinians. The label of "anti-semitism" has been used to silence anyone who dares criticize Israel. More and more, as Jewish groups across the world have begun speaking out against Zionism, it should come as no surprise that Zionists have tried to coopt the struggles of another oppressed group to justify apartheid. Indeed, for years Zionists have been speaking in the name of not only Jewish people everywhere, but also groups that are oppressed within Israel. The struggles of Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews— who are also exploited and marginalized within white, Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli society— have been used to justify apartheid. The struggles of Sudanese refugees— who are also oppressed by tremendous racism within Israel— are also used to justify apartheid. Even the earth from which Palestinians are being dispossessed for the sake of grotesque suburbia-like settlements in the West Bank— even earth itself is being coopted as Zionists try to sell Israel as an "environmentally friendly" state. We should not be surprised, then, to see Zionists exploiting the vulnerability of queer people— particularly queer Palestinians— to justify apartheid. 

If you are looking for some sort of formula on how to move forward, then prepare to be disappointed. The politics of building solidarity are incredibly difficult and complicated. There are many awkward moments. Sometimes even in our solidarity efforts we find our struggles pitted against each other. Often times I hesitate even to say anything, since the Palestine solidarity movement has so often been dominated by people who aren't Palestinian. I do not want to reenact that colonialism within the movement. I hope this introduction into both Palestinian liberation and queer/trans liberation will prove useful for people who are interested in building these networks of solidarity. It only makes sense for oppressed people across the board to build solidarity with each other. I am convinced that, as difficult and painful as it may be, the spaces for solidarity inadvertently opened up by pinkwashing may play a crucial role in dismantling Zionism as well as queer and trans oppression.

Links

Here are some links that are worth checking out. Many of them have also been linked in the above text.

Queer Palestinian Sites

Palestinian Queers for BDS

Al Qaws- Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society

Aswat- Aswat, Palestinian Lesbian Women

Queer Solidarity Sites

(Queer groups in solidarity with Palestine, but whose members aren't necessarily Palestinian)

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, Toronto
- be sure to check out their FAQ.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, New York

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT), SF Bay Area

Palestinian & Palestinian Solidarity Groups & Information Sources

Itisapartheid.org- Great source of information on Israeli Apartheid— why Israel meets the definition of an apartheid state

Bdsmovement.net- Central source for everything BDS related

Electronicintifada.net- Great sources of news about Palestine

Israelilaundry.org- Information on Pinkwashing, Greenwashing, Bluewashing!

General Queer and Trans Stuff

Not your mom's trans 101- my favorite introduction to trans identity that's out there.