Like many things that I have seen, heard, and read about from the past six months — and 76 years — of genocide, the statement from Palestinian activist and poet Yaffa that every queer Palestinian they knew in Gaza had been killed by Israel since October 7th shattered me. The horrific hypocrisy of that being the reality while pinkwashing continues to be a popular zionist tool makes me sick. How does one move on after hearing that, especially knowing that there are people living it? How does one grapple with the death of Nex Benedict, an Indigenous gender-nonconforming teenager, or the passing of legislation banning life-saving gender affirming care? How does one process the atrocities occurring globally? I believe we can’t, nor should we — not when they are ongoing. Instead, we resist, and for queer people, I believe that that looks like refusing to be complicit in genocide. 

Pinkwashing is a term used to describe the utilization of queerness and queer rights by governments, corporations, and other influential entities to justify and/or deviate attention from issues that it is part of. Israel has utilized pinkwashing as a tool to “justify” its existence for decades, boldly claiming in an address to the U.S. Congress in 2011 that “in a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out.” I do not think that it is hard to see how this claim is a facet of settler colonialism and plays into white supremacist ideas of Black and brown nations being “backward.” In addition, this claim of Israel is also inaccurate. Similar to the United States, the state of Israel has attempted to co-opt queerness as a tool for its image, while allowing — and even advocating for — anti-queer attitudes to proliferate. While Israel’s Minister of Tourism seeks to promote Tel Aviv as a queer haven, anti-LGBTQ politicians are being given increasing sway in government. As a trans person in America, especially Ohio, this is familiar. However, even if Israel was authentic in its image of a queer paradise, that does not justify its existence nor absolve it of the atrocities that it has committed. We must ask “a queer paradise for who?” Certainly not queer Palestinians. If Israel wishes to posit itself as a haven for queer people, its treatment of queer Palestinians has made it clear that they are excluded from said haven. 

Israel has been known to blackmail queer and trans Palestinians for information, going as far as training members of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to memorize words for “gay” in Arabic in order to find targets to blackmail. This is in addition to the countless reports of mental, physical, and sexual abuse that Palestinians have endured at the hands of the IOF, regardless of sexuality or gender identity. Even while calling out the weaponization of pinkwashing, it is imperative that we do not single queerness out in our criticism of Israel; the violence of Israel and its occupation and ongoing genocide do not solely target queer Palestinians. Queer Palestinians are being murdered by Israel not because they are queer but because they are Palestinian, so that is where the focus of our solidarity must lie. Al Qaws, a Palestinian queer rights organization, articulates that “pinkwashing is the symptom, settler-colonialism is the root sickness.” Israel is indiscriminate about their violence against Palestinians, so we must be indiscriminate in our solidarity. Israel’s possible proximity to queerness does not absolve it of its existence as a violent, settler colonial, apartheid state. It is important for queer people, especially those in the belly of the imperial beast, to reject the equation of queer liberation and Israel. Our struggle for life is intertwined with that of all Palestinians, not those of their oppressors.  

This interconnectedness is not just theoretical, but material. It is lived. A prime example of this link is surveillance. Surveillance and documentation are critical tools for the apartheid regime of Israel, restricting Palestinian movement, and instilling fear. An example of this is Israel’s use of facial recognition technologies to monitor and surveil Palestinians. One of the consequences of this is that, if a Palestinian’s face is scanned and does not match with information in the databases, they are immediately flagged and could be denied the ability to move through the checkpoint and possibly subject to further targeting. This usage of surveillance and documentation as a means of oppression is reminiscent of an argument made by lawyer and writer Dean Spade in his work Normal Life. He writes about how documentation (passports, medical documents, driver’s licenses, etc.) works to mark trans people as “other,” specifically when there are discrepancies of gender markers and names across documentation. Spade writes about how the government has already begun to compare documentation across these databases with the intention of finding false information; I feel it is clear that, especially with increasing legislation that targets trans people, this is extremely dangerous. In my eyes, surveillance provides a shared point of struggle for Palestinians and trans people, as it functions as a tool of subjugation toward, violence against, and marking of both communities. By seeing our struggles as interconnected, we can better envision a future where we are all liberated.

Let me make it clear that I am in no way comparing the experiences of trans people in the United States to those of Palestinians living through genocide under Israeli apartheid. What I am trying to convey is the connections between our shared struggles and to highlight what I believe speaks to the idea that all fights for liberation are interconnected. In fighting for Palestinian liberation, we fight for our own liberation. However, that should not be the reason we do it. As queer people, it is critical that our solidarity is non-conditional; we must fight for the liberation of all oppressed peoples not because of how said people do or do not feel about queerness, but because it is an issue of humanity. Queer liberation will never be achieved without Palestinian liberation. Free Palestine.