Nada Elia - Confronting Apartheid (2012)

Nada Elia: Thank you very much, Nadine and Omar and everybody, Marie, everybody who was involved in bringing me here. Thank you very much. You know, I do crisscross the U.S. I'm based in Seattle and I travel all across the U.S. speaking about Palestine, but it's always most meaningful to me to be here in Canada for Israeli Apartheid Week because this is where Israeli Apartheid Week started. Israeli Apartheid Week started in Canada and has since blossomed to go to so many cities and countries around the world. At the University of Toronto eight years ago, a small student group organized a week-long series and didn't know what it was going to grow into. It is as a result of this one small student group initiative on one campus that today, in 2012, the count hasn't come in yet, so we don't know how many, but it is over 100 cities. Last year, because people are reporting as they organized Apartheid Week and then they reported to the national coordinators, So last year, in 2011, 97 cities participated in Israeli Apartheid Week, just starting from eight years ago, one campus. So I generally begin my Israeli Apartheid Week talk with a reminder of its humble, small origins, not because we don't know about these, but as a reminder of the role that a small group of people can do, the global reach that a small group of committed citizens in the Words of Margaret Mead, never doubt what a small group of committed citizens can do. Indeed, it's only a small group of people who can change the world. Because as we try to end apartheid, we are indeed trying to change the world. We are all, as people, getting involved and getting active and getting educated to end apartheid, and that is a global reach, and it's a global reach that started with a very small group eight years ago. So I'm assuming that most of you do know what Israeli Apartheid Week is, but I also would like to think that some of you are new to this, because the point of Israeli Apartheid Week is that it grows and grows and educates more people. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about Israeli Apartheid Week for the newcomers, and I do hope that there are newcomers here. When the first Israeli Apartheid Week was launched eight years ago, The organizers of the event debated for quite a while on what to name it. They thought, maybe we should call it Palestine Awareness Week. And then they thought, no, because Palestine Awareness Week points, the awareness becomes of Palestine rather than of Israel and Israel's violations of international law. Then they thought, well, maybe we should call it Israeli Occupation Week. And again, they thought, no, Israeli Occupation Week is not a strategic title because people Everyone is aware of the occupation. In fact, you know, Zionists, even Zionists say the occupation is the problem. Most Zionists, there are some who think that there's not enough occupation. But liberal Zionists do realize that the occupation is a problem. They are willing to discuss that. So whether we call it Palestine Awareness Week or Israeli Occupation Week, it is not pointing in the direction of what we need awareness of, namely the fact that Israel is an apartheid state. So they decided on calling it Israeli Apartheid Week because the apartheid system in Israel is what there is least awareness of. And it is what the world needs to become aware of in order to fix it. It's not end the occupation, which would only solve part of the problem. It's not Palestine awareness, you know, because the whole idea of Palestine is a land without a people for people without a land, that's long gone. So there was this attempt for the longest time to humanize the Palestinians, to have us tell our oral stories, our narratives, you know, we exist, we really, there was a people, we are refugees. None of that, you know. So not Palestine awareness, not Israeli occupation, but Israeli Apartheid Week. And that puts the focus on the reality of Israel's system. So eight years later, this is the eighth year of Israeli Apartheid Week, and this year the organizers have decided that the theme of this year's Israeli Apartheid Week, everywhere that it's organized in a hundred-some cities around the world, the theme is going to be one collective concept, which is BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. So I think it's really important as I begin to discuss both the term apartheid as well as the strategy BDS in order to understand what this is about. So most people associate apartheid with the system that was in South Africa from 1948 until 1994. However, we need to keep in mind that South Africa, sadly, does not have the monopoly on apartheid. Israel is very, very, very aggravated by the term apartheid. It's the one thing, you know, occupation, OK. But the term apartheid is extremely aggravating to Israel because it's a crime against humanity, basically, by both the International Criminal Court as well as the United Nations define apartheid as a crime against humanity. So Israel does not want to be portrayed as an apartheid state. And what Israel does in order to defend itself is it constantly points to differences between its system and South Africa. And indeed, there are differences. So Israel tells us things like, you know, but Palestinians can vote and blacks couldn't. Or always, we have two Palestinian members of Knessets. Those are not the criteria which determine whether a system qualifies as apartheid or not. The criteria are in the definition, which I am now going to get on the screen, the touch of a screen. And so it's very important to look at the criteria and see if the criteria, as in the definition, if these apply, then it is apartheid. Here's the definition of apartheid according to the United Nations General Assembly in 1973. Apartheid is inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. That is the definition of apartheid according to the United Nations General Assembly in 1973. It does not say you have to be identical to South Africa. It says inhuman acts committed for the purposes of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. We know that as Israel wants to be the Jewish state and privileges Jewish citizens over non-Jewish citizens, Israel has a whole system The whole infrastructure and everything about Israel, there are legal ways and non-legal ways that Israel discriminates against the non-Jewish citizens in ways that completely disenfranchise them. Therefore, that definition... How do I get to the next screen? If you just show me how to move to the next one, then I'll know how to do the rest. There's a more recent definition of apartheid, which is the International Criminal Court in 2002. Obviously, as we look at this, it's practically one and the same. It's just that a different court has also decided, let's look at how we define apartheid. Apartheid, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 2002, Acts committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime. Again, when we look at what's going on in Israel, which wants to be a Jewish state privileging Jewish people with so many rules, so many laws that privilege Jews and disenfranchise Palestinians and take, I mean, extreme violations of the most basic inalienable human rights of the Palestinians. What we see is a whole country whose system, whose legal system is set up to privilege one racial group, the Jews, and oppress and maintain the oppression of the other group, Palestinians. So finding differences in systems, which is the Israeli defense line, finding differences in the systems to deny that they are manifestations of one and the same crime would mean, for example, I mean, by that logic, that only one genocide has ever happened in the history of the world. Because, for example, if we want to take the Nazi Holocaust as a model of genocide, well, there were gas chambers there. And that's the only genocide in which gas chambers were used. Therefore, there has been no Rwandan genocide, no Serbian genocide, no Armenian genocide. That's if we take that as our model. And we know that there have been other genocides. If we take, for example, on the other hand, if we want to take Sudan as a genocide, as a model of genocide, or Rwanda, the Tutsis and the Hutus, or Serbia, we know that In those three cases of genocide, there were orchestrated mass gang rapes of women. For example, in Rwanda, the soldiers were ordered as part of the war, seven soldiers would have to rape a woman, and that was basically a way of, A, ensuring that she gets HIV, that she gets infected with HIV, and also possibly killing her. I mean, gang rape, seven soldiers killing a woman. But it was intentional. And rape as a weapon of war has existed in many of the genocides. So if we want to say a genocide includes rape as a mass gang rape, orchestrated rape as a weapon of war, then the Nazi Holocaust was not genocide. This is the logic of looking at differences instead of looking at definitions. If we want to go by definitions, then what Israel is engaging in is apartheid. So I say that because there's a whole lot to be gained from understanding that it is apartheid, because we do have historical models of apartheid, and we have guidelines for how to end apartheid. The fact is there was apartheid in South Africa, and apartheid was defeated by the global movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions. And so we have apartheid now in Israel, and we can use that same model. So the Palestinians, having looked at their circumstances and looked at where else it happened, and they've looked at, for example, North America and saw, okay, so there's settler colonialism and how did the Native Americans respond? They looked at India, nonviolence. They looked at South Africa. They found that the greatest parallels were with the situation of South Africa where there was a settler colonial state engaging in apartheid. And that was defeated through the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. So they decided that we're going to also engage in that movement as a strategy to end apartheid. So the call for BDS was issued. Oh, I forgot to start my timer so I know when to stop and when to... Alright. The call for BDS was issued in 2005 and the call was issued by almost consensus of what we call the three pillars of the Palestinian people. And the three pillars of the Palestinian people are people within Israel, that is the Palestinian citizens of Israel who are second class citizens who do not have equal rights, as well as Palestinians within historic Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians in the diaspora, refugees outside. And the refugees outside are the majority of the Palestinian people today. The numbers range between either 65% or 70% of the entire population. So we are the majority. And all solutions until BDS were looking at the circumstances of only a part of the Palestinian people. We as a Palestinian people really feel the connections, really feel that we are one people and we wanted a solution that would address our circumstances wherever we happen to be, still within Israel or in the West Bank and Gaza or outside. You know, like for example, my example is I'm a Palestinian refugee who was born in Iraq and grew up in Lebanon, that doesn't make me any less Palestinian because I am Palestinian and I've been expelled and it's not a choice. So 170 civil society organizations from these three pillars of the Palestinian people and organizations that were, you know, none of them were like political leaders or political affiliations or whatever. things like the teachers unions, the ladies stitch and bitch, whatever those groups are called, bakers, school bus drivers, janitors, health care workers. These are the civil society organizations that came together and issued the call for BDS and called on the people to, am I there yet? My next. The boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, they said, OK, we're going to want to engage in boycott. We would like the world to support us by engaging in boycott, divestment, and sanctions. These are nonviolent punitive measures until Israel complies with international law by accomplishing these three things. Ending the occupation and dismantling the wall. two, granting full equality to Palestinian citizens of Israel, and three, respecting the right of return of Palestinian refugees. These are nonviolent punitive measures. They are a means to an end. They are a strategy. Once we accomplish this, and all three of them, basically all we are requiring is that Israel comply with international law. Ending the occupation, the occupation is illegal. Dismantling the wall, the wall has been declared illegal by the International Commission court of justice, granting full equality to the Palestinian citizens of Israel. There's an apartheid system. Apartheid is illegal. Respecting the right of return of Palestinian refugees, the right of return of Palestinian refugees is a right, and it is a right that has been recognized by the UN. It's a universal human right. All we're asking is for Israel to basically respect the law. And once it does, we will end the boycott. So just as with South Africa, the boycott was a comprehensive boycott. It was not a boycott only of the few products that were coming out of South Africa. I mean, I'm looking at mostly young people, so you don't remember that. But I hope you've studied something about the boycott of South Africa in the 80s primarily. And basically, the boycott was a comprehensive boycott. It was not only that we didn't buy products that said made in South Africa, imported from South Africa, it was a comprehensive boycott in that it was also academic and cultural. It was the kind of pressure that was put on South Africa as in this is not a normal state. We don't have normal relations with a state that is an apartheid state. So the boycott of South Africa worked to end apartheid because it was comprehensive, because it targeted more than the two products that used to come out of South Africa, which were primarily oranges and diamonds. Now diamonds, to this day, Israeli diamonds also are its hugest source of income that is not military. But still, boycotting only these is not enough. It has to be comprehensive, which is why we need the academic and cultural boycott. I am a professor. I totally believe in academic freedom, and yet I promote the academic boycott of Israel. Why? This is not double standards. We need to understand, A, that BDS is a means to an end, and B, that the academy, as it now functions, there is no academic freedom. The Israeli academy is extremely complicit in the occupation of in oppression. But also, I mean, what we need to understand is that the academy, most people think that the academy is like this free exchange of ideas that is somehow non-political. We need to understand how even here, the academy is very, very political, very politicized. If we look at politicians, the governments, mostly they consult Experts, and those experts are professors. I mean, we frequently are asked to provide analysis about developments, and we're interviewed, and we speak, but we do a whole lot more than that. Many of us, not many of us, but most politicians, most presidents, most political decision makers consult with scholars. and based on that expertise of the scholars, make political decisions. That's how intimate the relationship between the academy and politics is. And this is something that is not recognized when we speak about the academy as a free exchange of ideas. If President Obama wants to make a decision, he goes to professors of the Middle East. And generally there is no controversy around that. I mean, you know, With the hard sciences, we expect that research is going to lead something to something. But with politics, we don't necessarily make that connection. But the connection needs to be made because it is there. And because the universities are very, very intimately connected to the occupation. I want to speak specifically about Israel. There are within Israel, and to show... to document just how much. Within Israel, there are seven main universities. Israel is a relatively small country, so seven main research universities is quite big. I'm not counting the smaller universities. I'm not counting the non-research universities, and I'm not counting what would be the equivalent of community colleges. There are seven main universities in Israel, and every one of them is directly complicit in the occupation. The Israel Institute of Technology, for example, better known as the Technion, which is most famous for applied sciences, develops research and development projects with the Israeli military, including the remote control D9 bulldozer used by the Israeli military to demolish Palestinian homes. Most of us actually think the Caterpillar demolishes Palestinian homes, and the Caterpillar bulldozer does demolish Palestinian homes, but the Caterpillar bulldozer is actually equipped with a special blade, and that special blade that is equipped on those monstrous D9 bulldozers that Caterpillar builds, the blade itself that demolishes the homes is developed by the Technion. This is a university that develops the blade that demolishes Palestinian homes. The Technion has also developed the equipment to detect underground tunnels and that equipment is used by the Israeli military to enforce its siege on Gaza. Now, Gaza basically would not have survived without the tunnels. Basically, Gaza's siege is so, so, so strict, such a stranglehold on Gaza that Gaza does depend on the tunnels to bring in absolute basics for the survival of the people, and it's nothing but survival. And yes, they have dug underground tunnels. And the Technion has developed and offered the Israeli military the equipment to detect the Israeli tunnel, the underground tunnels. And then the Israeli military comes in and, you know, bombards and shuts down the tunnels, meaning actually makes the siege even worse. Let me see. The Wiseman Institute, which is another very prestigious research institution... has partnered with Elbit System to create an electro-optic science around the wall. Elbit is the builder of the separation wall. It's also the builder of the U.S.-Mexico wall. So a university has partnered with it and actually sends its students to the Elbit labs. Instead of having a lab on campus, it's like, okay, go do your lab training with Elbit. And Elbit is like a large, large Israeli defense facility. company that has built the wall. Those are some ways. I can go on. So for example, the engineering and architecture departments within Israeli universities are the ones that have designed the apartheid wall as well as the settlements. It's not like some real estate developer that decided, OK, I'm going to build settlements. Those can happen, but it's primarily engineering and architecture departments in universities in Israel that have the blueprints and the drawings for settlements. More. For example, Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University competed for a grant to establish a school for military medicine, training staff to specifically serve in the Israeli military. And I think it's really important that we don't necessarily distinguish between civilian medicine and military medicine In the US, I think we don't distinguish. The soldiers come back, and they have PTSD, and we try to treat them. But in Israel, the distinction between civilian and military medicine is very important because Israel's military doctors have long been suspected of involvement in the torture of Palestinian prisoners. About 70% of all Palestinian prisoners are tortured in jail. Torture is actually legal in Israeli jails. I mean, you know, there was a time when they said, all countries torture in jail. I'm not saying that Israel is the only country that tortures in jail. I wish it were. No, all countries torture in jail. It's generally illegal. In Israel, there was a time when it was legal, then there was this big outcry, you can't do torture in jail, we are a civilized country and everything. So Israel decided to make torture in jails illegal because But there were so many loopholes because one of them was like, except in the case of a threat. All right. So as a result of the loopholes, an estimated 70% of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are tortured. And Israel's military medicine, the doctors who are military doctors, are suspected of being there in order to be complicit in the torture of Palestinian prisoners. That's what happens in Israeli universities. So when we call for an academic boycott, we are calling for a boycott of those institutions that are complicit in the tools of oppression, the methods of oppression, the implementation of oppression, of dispossession, of torture, of disenfranchisement, of home demolition. That's the academic boycott that we're calling for. It is not a boycott of individuals. It's a boycott of the institutions that are complicit. And it's important to know that, you know, to know the criteria and to know why we are boycotting. Because indeed, we do believe in academic freedom. But I don't know that I would call that academic freedom when it's basically the privilege of the oppressor. That's what we're dealing with. When we say we need to protect Israel's academic freedom, what we are protecting is the privilege of the oppressor. So the academy is not an ivory tower It is what I call the brain of the monster. It is where the ideology and the tools of occupation, dispossession, and violation of human rights are generated, and where the servants of occupation are rewarded while the victims are alienated. And by which I mean soldiers who serve in the Israeli army get, of course, scholarships to some of these universities. And it's not just, you know, so obviously... Jews serve in the army and non-Jews don't serve in the army. So Jews have that privilege in the universities in terms of scholarships. But then some universities specifically reward those soldiers who are known to have fought in like the ugliest battles, like Lebanon 2006, for example, the soldiers from that war get 80% scholarship. Gaza, the soldiers get 90% scholarship. You know, in the US, I think of it as like, you know, like Those who killed in Iraq get 60% scholarship, and those who killed in Afghanistan got 70%. I don't know how they calculate that, but they do. So that the soldiers of Gaza get 90% scholarship, and the soldiers of Lebanon 2006 get 80% scholarship. That's the kind of rewarding the criminals, basically. So how then do academics respond to that? We respond to that by saying, no, I'm not going to engage with you. I don't want to be part of this. I refuse to be joining forces and thinking that the Israeli academy is a perfectly okay ivory tower of intellectual exchange and freedom of thought and all of that, because it is not. So some of the things that we can do as academics who want to be engaging in the academic boycott is, for example, we have to not as academics, not accept the semester abroad because the semester abroad sends students to basically a very sanitized Israeli experience that does not introduce people to what's really going on. I mean, students who go clearly are not going to see that because that's not what Israel is going to project. So that's one way to engage in the academic boycott, for example, to refuse semester abroad projects Another way to engage in the academic boycott is to not engage in joint research because most universities, students who are paying lots and lots and lots of money think that maybe they're funding the university. Most universities are not funded by student tuition. Most universities get their money from research projects. And joint research projects, usually as a professor, as a scholar, as a researcher, when you write up a grant for a research project, most projects are actually more likely to get funded if they're joined between two universities. And because of the relationship dynamics, and now I'm speaking about the U.S., but I think it's very similar here in Canada, if you are writing up a grant for a research project between the U.S. and Israel, you're practically guaranteed to get your grant. And as you get your grant, the money goes to both your university and the one in Israel. So the academic boycott would mean don't apply for a joint grant with an Israeli academy. This is the kind of boycott that we're calling for. It's a boycott that goes to the complicit institutions, and it's a boycott of the institution, not of the individual. So how am I doing on time? Oh, did I start? When did I start? All right, so Israel's academic and cultural accomplishments, Israel is projecting its image as an academic, very accomplished academic center, as well as a very polished cultural center. And it's doing that in order to, and there's a major, major push on the part of Israel to project itself as this extremely sophisticated center academic and cultural country and it's doing that in order to distract from the apartheid policies and its violations of international law. So Israel is actually using a facade that it is intentionally projecting as it seeks to fix its image that has been tarnished because as the media has become a lot more democratic these days with, you know, I mean, basically there used to be much, much, much greater control of media and there was much more effective censorship. And now, with social media, with Facebook, with Twitter, with cell phones, with everything, there is documentation. And Israel's image has been tarnished. It has been so severely tarnished that Israel has created the Brand Israel campaign in order to fix its image. And one of the things that it's doing in order to fix its image is showing its beautiful academic face and showing its beautiful cultural face. But by doing By doing that, it is distracting from its apartheid policies. The image has been tarnished by Israel's policies that are in violation of international law. But Israel is not fixing its policies. It is fixing its image. And it's fixing its image by showing, you know, like all of the birthright Israel come here and come spend the year in Israel and also with the cultural boycott. So Israel has decided, as a result of the fact that its image has been tarnished through efforts such as Israeli Apartheid Week, Israel has decided that it's going to create this campaign called the Brand Israel Campaign. And the Brand Israel Campaign is an official propaganda campaign that is funded by Israel's three most powerful ministries, the Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Finance Ministry. And those three ministries have come together and decided we need to do something about Israel's image. We need to do something about Israel's image. And they are fixing the image, not the policies that tarnished the image. So what they did is they're sending well-known, oh, I have that. Ari Mikkel, who is the Israeli deputy general for cultural affairs, decided that we're going to distract from all of this. We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits. This way you show Israel's prettier face so we are not thought of purely in the context of war. So clearly an intentional campaign to bring into the world, to send what they call cultural ambassadors abroad. Let us send people so we are not thought of primarily in the context of war. So one of the early converts to this idea of rebranding Israel was Hillel, the Jewish campus university. And the executive vice president of Hillel, Wayne Firestone, explained, he said, Israel, the campaign would portray Israel as a place where there are cool, hip people. So again, when we speak about why we are doing an academic boycott, I've tried to explain why we're doing an academic boycott. Why are we doing a cultural boycott? Because Israel is sending cultural ambassadors in order to distract attention from its apartheid policies. And so we see all these people coming here in order to basically show the pretty face of Israel. And it's very, very challenging to engage in that cultural boycott because keep in mind that when Israel sends cultural ambassadors, of course it's not going to send the nasty, ugly, violent Hebron settlers. I mean, that's what it wants to distract from. So it does send those artists who are indeed extremely nice tokens. For example, Idan Rachel. He comes to... Seattle, at least twice a year. Very, very hip, cool person. He's got long dreads. He sings reggae. He plays with the Ethiopian Jewish, the young refugees. He sings about the beauty of tolerance and multiculturalism, holding hands and kumbaya. He's a very, very sweet guy. I've actually talked to him. I met him once outside. We were picketing outside his... the concert hall where he was playing, and he came out and he's like, why are you picketing? I said, I'm picketing because you're a cultural ambassador. He's like, but come in and listen to my music. I said, I don't listen to your music. I know that you're part of your propaganda tool. So we need to keep in mind that we are not boycotting the art of the artist. We are boycotting the funding of that art. That's a very important distinction because the art of the artist When Israel sends cultural ambassadors, it's likely to be, indeed, the finest art that it has. But it is sending them as cultural ambassadors to distract from the apartheid policies. So we don't boycott the art of the artist. We boycott the funding of that art. If someone is here as a cultural ambassador, and they actually have their designated cultural ambassadors, if someone is here as a cultural ambassador, sponsored by the Israeli ministry, sponsored by the Israeli consulate, sponsored by the Israeli Cultural Affairs, then they are a cultural ambassador, and those are the ones we boycott. And again, I keep telling you that, you know, I keep telling people who organize this, it's challenging because we're boycotting the good stuff. But of course we're going to boycott the good stuff. I mean, we're boycotting for a reason, and it's political. We don't boycott because it's bad stuff. You know, I have a skincare, for example, we're I hope that you're all familiar. Like, I don't boycott it because, you know, I've been using it for 10 days now and I still have wrinkles, so I'm going to boycott it. No. You know, I mean, that's ridiculous to think of we boycott bad stuff. We boycott stuff that is propaganda, even if it's, you know. So... So keep in mind that Israel is sending all these cultural ambassadors in order to fix its image, and it's sending those cultural ambassadors to a specifically targeted audience, an audience that actually wants to see the cool stuff. Israel's market is the liberal, progressive people because... the conservatives are already on their side. The fundamentalists are already on their side. What they are losing, which they had for the longest time, is the progressives. I mean, the beauty, the success of BDS is that indeed it has shifted the discourse. It used to be that within the progressive left, as it was known, the progressive left, the progressive left was very, very Zionist. And now, thanks to BDS, thanks to the education, thanks to everything we've been talking about, within that, it has shifted. So this is what Israel is targeting with its Brand Israel campaign, not the fundamentalists. They're already on Israel's side. They're already more Zionist than the, I mean, you know, like the largest number of Zionists in the U.S. are not Jewish. They're the Christian Zionists. We think Zionism is a Jewish movement. It's also Christian. They're already on that side. So who does Israel want to target then? The progressives. So this brings me to the gay market because the gay market is supposed to be progressive. So the driving concept behind the Brand Israel campaign is that Israel will win supporters if it is seen as relevant and modern and rather than as a place of fighting and religion. The target audience then must come from the more liberal and secular social groups rather than religious fundamentalists since these are already solidly in the Zionist camp. It's within this context of rebranding Israel that pinkwashing must be understood as an official strategy also to distract from Israel's apartheid policies. Pinkwashing is the campaign to use queer rights in order to show Israel as civilized, as the one civilized haven for gays in the otherwise homophobic Middle East. And it's very much, you know, it's an essentially racist colonialist impulse. I'm going to read one definition of Israeli pinkwashing, you know, or of the campaign. Israeli pinkwashing is a potent method through which the terms of Israeli occupation of Palestine are reiterated. Israel is civilized, Palestinians are barbaric, homophobic, uncivilized, suicide bombing fanatics. Pinkwashing produces Israel as the only gay-friendly country in an otherwise hostile region. This has manifold effects. A, it denies Israeli homophobic oppression of its own gays and lesbians, of which there is plenty, and I can tell you about it, and it also recruits often unwittingly gays and lesbians of other countries into a collusion with Israeli violence towards Palestine. So pinkwashing harnesses global gays as a new source of affiliation, recruiting liberal gays into a dirty bargaining of their own safety against the continued oppression of Palestinians who are then considered, of course, gay unfriendly. The strategy of pinkwashing also works to invisibilize the presence of numerous Palestinian gay and lesbian organizations. For example, PQBDS, Palestinian Queers for BDS, which is an extremely active Palestinian queer organization. That gets completely dismissed. Pinkwashing creates this Israel is gay-friendly and all of the Arab world is gay-unfriendly. And there's no queer activism in the Arab world. And yet, we know that there are numerous Arab LGBT organizations that have long negotiated the personal and the political spheres of sexual identity under occupation and apartheid. Israel may be gay-friendly for its tourists. Actually, it is gay-friendly for its tourists because it needs them. It needs them financially, and it needs them for its branding. However, Israel... That does not mean that Israel is gay-friendly, because if you're not Jewish or a tourist, then Israel is not friendly to you. By denying the Palestinians queer or not their most basic inalienable human rights, Israel remains above all the greatest purveyor of institutionalized violence and oppression for all Palestinians, regardless of our sexuality. So queer Palestinians have to engage in a struggle against homophobia within our own culture, as indeed queers of all nationalities do. I don't know that there are many cultures that are not homophobic, that do not have significant homophobia, but also we negotiate homophobia within our own culture, but we also have to negotiate against Israel's colonization, occupation, and apartheid. So it's like being a white woman or a woman of color. That's very, very, very simplified. The 1948 Nakba did not spare queer Palestinians whose basic rights and civil liberties are suppressed just like those of all Palestinians. Israel discriminates against all Palestinians regardless of sexuality within Israel proper where there's a system of apartheid where they have been second class citizens for over 63 years, within the West Bank where they have lived under brutal military occupation for 44 years, and within the Gaza Strip where they have been subjected to a genocidal siege after decades of occupation, and in the global diaspora, where they are denied their UN-recognized right of return. So when you say Israel is gay-friendly, you are privileging some gays over others. That's completely against the very idea of queer, because queer activism is an activism of inclusion, of transgressing boundaries, of not believing in binaries anymore. It's not an us and them, it's not are you homo or heterosexual. Queer transcends all of this. So queer activism must be against this differentiation that says, okay, we will have some, you know, the queers with rights and the queers with no rights. So pinkwashing distracts from Israel's violence against queer Palestinians and as such it reproduces an aspect of settler colonialist discourse which is the erasure of the indigenous experience. In this case, the erasure of the queer native experience of displacement, dispossession, and disenfranchisement. So when you hear that Israel is gay friendly, please stop and ask yourself which gays it is friendly towards. Israel is gay friendly for Jewish gays and for European tourists. This is a very exclusivist friendship And as such, it's not really a friendship as much as a strategic alliance. And I can tell you a whole lot about the strategic alliance because, I mean, most of the people behind pinkwashing are homophobic. They're not even doing it because they are gay-friendly. I have this right here. So, for example, QAIA, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which is the group from Toronto, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid's participation in the Toronto Pride Parade in 2008 was challenged by two groups, and one of them, one of the groups, so the Canadian Jewish Congress, the co-president is Rabbi Reuven Balka, and he's the one who challenged this and he opposed the participation of choir in Pride Toronto, but he also sits on the advisory board of NARTH, which is US-based. He's Canadian, but he sits on the advisory board of this US-based committee, NARTH, which is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality is an organization that believes that homosexuality is a psychological condition that can be cured through conversion therapy. If you talk enough to a gay person, you can cure them of their homosexuality. So these are the people behind pinkwashing. When we see how they are associated with some of the most homophobic organizations, clearly they're not into pinkwashing because they are actually gay friendly. They're into pinkwashing because because Israel is a, because, where is my quote? Because of this, you know, this. Joel Lyon, Israel's Counsel for Media Affairs in New York City said, gays are actually one of our target markets. You know, we're trying to reach out to people, we're trying to be attractive to people, and gays are one of our target markets. So we see that Israel is using all of these of showing itself as a beautiful place, as an attractive place, as a gay-friendly place, but all of these are being used in order to distract from its apartheid, which is why we need to engage in boycott, because boycott is the only thing that's actually going to A, get us away from the propaganda, and B, address the situation on the ground. So we know that there's a lot of pinkwashing going on here. I'm going to speak about the U.S., but I assume that it's the same in Canada. Talks by queers, Israeli queers, even a few token Arab queers who come to speak on campuses, speak on community centers, and tell us all about the wonders of being queer in Israel. That's the pinkwashing campaign, which just like the examples that I gave of Idan Rachel or the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra and all of these like the finest and the best, but what they're doing is they're actually doing propaganda. So that's what's happening here. But back in Israel, there's also something going on there. So I'm going to be telling you about one film called The Men of Israel, which is pinkwashing from within Israel. So Michael Lucas, who's a gay porn superstar, He's a staunch Zionist. He once owned a travel agency and he's also very, very involved in pink washing. He has a special interest in projecting Israel as a gay tourist destination. I mean, he's like, he's basically, he was a travel agent. He now is a gay porn actor and he also has a film company and he's trying to actually create porn movies in order to attract people into Israel. So he made Men of Israel, and he said about it, Men of Israel filmed in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and And inside, no, this is not what he said. I'm going to tell you his quotes soon. Men of Israel, it was filmed in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and inside the cordoned off ruins of a Palestinian village, which viewers have identified as Lifta. Anyone who has been there and knows the village have immediately identified it as Lifta. This movie, Men of Israel, I'm going to show you some slightly censored pictures of it, has been considered the pornographic stimulus plan for Israel. The film's official website, I've gone on the website, and they also sell the calendars. My photos are from the calendar. They have a wall calendar, 12 pictures of those actors in the movie. The official website homepage of the film says, The global media has created an image of Israel as a war-torn nation whose streets are lined with destroyed debris and crumbling ruins. Publicly broadcasted footage is always filmed in either Gaza or the West Bank, regardless of whether or not the story has a pro or anti-Israel angle. Never are we shown Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Red Sea, the Dead Sea Resorts, the beautiful beaches, the amazing architecture, and the embracing culture that allows all its citizens to thrive. For this reason, other than showcasing the raw sexual prowess of Israel men, Lucas has completed Men of Israel as a bold move to promote Israeli culture and tourism. So this is from the website. But with this focus away from religion and history and politics, that focus is a diversion that underlines all of Brand Israel's initiatives It's actually taken to extremes in pinkwashing because it's like zooming in on the one supposedly liberal gay scene in Israel, which is basically Tel Aviv. Lucas described men of Israel as, and this is again his words in an interview, it's free PR for Israel and it's much better than the PR they're getting on the news. He also added in that one interview, nobody goes to Israel for Golda Meir, I'm so sorry. Gay people and straight people want beautiful beaches, beautiful nature, beautiful men and women, good food, good hotels. Israel shouldn't be mistaken about why people go there. They need me. So not Golda Meir, but the beautiful beaches. So he's focusing on Israel's beauty and he's also completely rewriting the settler colonial country's past. So in the Video that's promoting the film, Lucas stated, we went to an abandoned village just north of Jerusalem. It was a beautiful ancient township that had been deserted centuries ago. However, that didn't stop our guys from mounting each other and trying to repopulate it. Biology may not be the lesson of the day, but these men shot their seeds all over the village. So I want to reread one part of that quote from Lucas. It was a beautiful ancient township that had been deserted centuries ago. That town actually had not been deserted centuries ago. It was the village of Lifta which had been ethnically cleansed in 1948. Oh, this is the choir. I'm trying to rush because I've been speaking for a lot. This is queers against Israeli apartheid, and their motto is, pride is for all, tear down the wall, and also no pride in apartheid. This is men of Israel. So this is from the calendar. But the wall behind them, that's one of the Palestinian homes. So basically, it's filmed in the village that had been ethnically cleansed in 1948, in April 1948, a month before the creation of the State of Israel. And it's not an ancient town, a beautiful ancient township that had been deserted centuries ago. It's a Palestinian village whose population had been expelled in 1948. This is one other picture, also taken from the calendar. Again, look beyond the man. Look at the walls. That's the home. Yes, if you can, look. Take your eyes away from that amazing beauty and look at the, I mean, basically. He's making a calendar in this supposedly abandoned township that had been deserted centuries ago, and he doesn't even recognize that this is actually Lifta. He's saying, biology may not be the lesson of the day, But these men shot all their seeds all over it, trying to repopulate it. So it's not just biology that he's flunking, as well as history. But if you want to repopulate the village, then let the Palestinians come back. Because the Palestinians are refugees. Some of them are living only minutes away from that home, where now there's pornography being shot as a stimulus plan for Israel. The people are refugees, and this is cordoned off, and the Palestinians are not allowed in, and Lucas claims that this is abandoned, has been abandoned for centuries, and is making a film that is propaganda for gays, basically. This is what gays can do in Israel. Come to Israel. Everything that I've read to you are quotes from Lucas. He's a very staunch Zionist, He totally wants to promote Israel as gay friendly, but what he's doing is a complete violation of Palestinian human rights. So, all right, I am going to move away from this. I've been speaking for almost an hour. Okay, so I am going to, like, try and cut it short because I want to allow for lots of Q&A. I discussed pinkwashing because it is the 21st century manifestation of Orientalism. Orientalism is this colonialist impulse to judge a country by how it treats its women. In the old days, it was like, we go into these countries and they treat their women bad, therefore, we can occupy them because treating the whole people bad isn't bad. It's just treating the women bad that's bad. Today, with pinkwashing, Israel is trying to judge the Arab world by how it treats its gays. I do want us to look at how Israel treats women. As an occupying power, Israel is responsible for the treatment of the people it occupies. I mean, that's international law. It seems like Israel doesn't really care much about international law, but that is our standard, international law. And by international law, Israel is responsible for the treatment of the people that it occupies. So if you want to judge a country by how it treats its women, let's look at how Israel treats its women. So I actually do want to speak a little about the experiences of Palestinian women. And yes, it is true. We are very oppressed. We are very, very oppressed. We have no freedom of movement. We can't travel. We can't go to school. For years, we've had to hold schools and our classes in schools, in mosques, even under trees for up to four years at a time. very severely punished for voting. We have no access to health care. We can't even really choose what to eat because our diet is determined for us by someone else. But our oppressor is not Islamic fundamentalism. Our oppressor is Israel. Every one of those rights of ours that is violated is violated not by Muslim men, but by Israel. The reason we can't travel is Israel. The reason we can't go places is Israel. The reason we have no access to health care is Israel. It is not Islamic fundamentalism. Our oppressor is not Islamic fundamentalism. Our greater oppressor, the reason we can't go to schools. I mean, for a while during the Intifada, if women held classes in a home, the home would be demolished. That's why. They started holding classes in mosques and churches because they thought Israel is not going to demolish mosques and churches. Who is denying us the right to education? It is not Islamic fundamentalism. Women at checkpoints who give birth at checkpoints, who sometimes lose their baby at checkpoints because they can't get to adequate health care. That's not Islamic fundamentalism. That's Israel. So if we want to judge a country by how it treats its women, let's look at how Israel treats its women. The statement is by Samuel Shomali, who is actually part of Al-Kaws. Al-Kaws is a Palestinian queer organization. As he put it, and I think this quote is so nice that I created a photo to go with it, there's no magic pink door in the apartheid wall. Israel is not gay-friendly to Palestinians. Apartheid still blocks us from our rights. I want to show you now some images of violence against Palestinian women. This is at a checkpoint. These are women at a checkpoint. I call this violence against women. I call this violence against women. These are settlers, Israeli settlers, pulling a woman's scarf and kicking her. I call this violence against women. This is Hannah Shalaby who is in administrative detention. for the, I don't know how, it's been 16 days, and this is not the first time. And that's her mother. And now they're both on a, they're fasting. They're on a hunger strike. And this is violence against women too, uprooting this woman's olive tree. Why don't we think of that when we think of violence against women? And still we persist, and still we resist, and still we reach out for solidarity so that we can make the shift from being complicit, because by not denouncing this, you are complicit. Through your silence, through your support of the system, make the shift from being complicit to becoming an ally. And you can become an ally through BDS. The tide has turned. BDS has proven to the world that Palestinians are indeed engaged in non-violent resistance. BDS is non-violent. There's nothing violent about it. And it has been so successful that no one is asking us now, where is your Gandhi? Because we have proven that we have not one, not a hundred, but a hundred thousand Gandhis. Our strategy is non-violent and it's working. We are speaking truth to power. We are showing Israel for what it is and we are working on changing that. And just as South Africa is Depended on global solidarity to end South African apartheid, we depend on you to end Israeli apartheid. The solution is within everyone's reach. And not the least of the successes of BDS is that indeed it has shifted the discourse about Israel. No one is asking us to denounce terrorism anymore because they know better. There was a time only a few years ago when every time a Palestinian was invited to speak, reporters, journalists would interview us, and the first question that they would ask would be that offensive question which always put us on the defensive, always having to dissociate ourselves from the actions of a few, do you denounce terrorism? Now, nobody asks us that anymore. So I do want to conclude by asking myself that question and answering it. Do I denounce terrorism? You bet I do. I denounce white phosphorus raining down on a besieged start civilian refugee population. I denounce tanks demolishing homes. I denounce helicopters dropping bombs on houses where a family is sitting down to dinner. I denounce Tel Aviv being considered a safe haven only after it has been ethnically cleansed of its indigenous population. I denounce administrative detention I denounce separate roads for Jews and Palestinians. I denounce checkpoints that prevent students from going to classes, the dying from reaching hospitals, and mothers from hugging their children. This is the state terrorism that I denounce and I am fighting it with nonviolent resistance and I'm asking you to join me. It took global solidarity to end apartheid in South Africa. It's going to take global solidarity to end apartheid in Israel and we can do it.