Stanford: Pinkwashing apartheid

Sherry Wolf is a public speaker, writer, socialist and Palestine solidarity activist with Adalah-NY.

She is also author of "Sexuality and Socialism" and served on the Executive Committee of the 250,000-strong National Equality March, Oct. 11, 2009.

Apologists for Israel push a "pinkwashing" public relations campaign that promotes a supposedly progressive record of LGBT rights to divert attention away from apartheid-conditions and to evoke an image of Israel as democratic "light unto the nations."

This ignores both Israeli homophobia/transphobia and Palestinian struggles for LGBT rights. No amount of "pinkwashing" can justify apartheid or the genocidal violence faced by Palestinians.

As Sherry Wolf said: "It is up to activists--Jewish lesbians like myself, straight gentiles, everyone who cares about social justice--to stand up to Israel's racist policies and those who help to veil them."

Co-sponsored by Stanford Students for Queer Liberation and Students for Palestinian Equal Rights.