[News] Confronting the Palestinian Dilemma - occupation, resistance, and queer politics
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Aug 20 10:37:32 EDT 2010
Confronting the Palestinian Dilemma
Sarah Schulman burrows in to understand occupation, resistance, and
queer politics
By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/dougireland>Doug Ireland
Source:
<http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2010/08/18/gay_city_news/features/doc4c6c21f0d3db2687232049.txt>Gay
City News
Friday, August 20, 2010
http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2010/08/18/gay_city_news/features/doc4c6c21f0d3db2687232049.txt
The impressively prolific Sarah Schulman -- the avant-garde novelist
and playwright, as well as a historian, essayist, scenarist, and
radical activist who for more than two decades has been one of the
queer world's most admirable cultural adornments and public
intellectuals -- recently journeyed to Palestine and Israel to meet
with LGBT activists.
Now, inspired by that trip, she has organized a US speaking tour by
Palestinian queer activists that will include an appearance on
February 10, 2011, at the CUNY Graduate Center in Midtown Manhattan.
Schulman spoke with Gay City News about the Palestinian queers' tour
and her trip to the region from Yaddo, the prestigious writers'
colony in Saratoga Springs, where she is in residence based on the
recommendation of a panel of her peers. (Since its founding in 1900,
Yaddo residents have received a total of 64 Pulitzer Prizes, 61
National Book Awards, 27 MacArthur Fellowships, and a Nobel Prize for
Literature.)
During her Yaddo residence, Schulman is putting the finishing touches
on "The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination," a
reflection on the impact of the AIDS epidemic to be published by the
University of California Press. She is also writing a book-length
report and meditation about her Palestine trip.
Last fall, Schulman published two new books: "Ties that Bind:
Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences," which Gay City News hailed
as "one of the most exciting gay liberation texts to appear in years"
(see "It Has to Be Said," November 12-25, 2009.). At the same time,
she also published her ninth novel, "The Mere Future" (Arsenal), a
futuristic dystopia about a New York City in which the only remaining
career option is marketing.
Schulman approached her Middle East visit with some trepidation.
"In November 2009, I received an invitation to keynote the tenth
annual Lesbian & Gay Studies and Queer Theory Conference at Tel Aviv
University," Schulman told this reporter, and then referring to
protests aimed at the Israeli occupation of Palestine, she explained,
"At the time, I was barely aware of the sanctions movement. I was
honored to be invited and fully intended to accept the invitation,
but a number of friends suggested that I educate myself first. This
began a two-month intensive learning process, in which I spoke to a
large number of people. I learned that Palestinians, a profoundly
oppressed people, were trying the non-violent strategy of developing
international sanctions on Israeli institutions that are
state-sponsored in order to create change."
Schulman added, "I also learned that there is a movement of Israeli
academics called 'Boycott Me,' who are asking for international
support of these sanctions in order to 'save Israel from itself.' I
discovered that both of these positions were very compelling. To my
surprise, I came to realize that I had to decline the invitation.
However, rather than stay home and do nothing, I decided to go on a
solidarity visit, and in March and April of 2010 I spoke to
anti-occupation audiences in Israel and Palestine."
Schulman explained how John Greyson -- the openly gay director whose
films include the 1996 "Lilies" and the 2009 documentary "Fig Trees,"
about South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat, which won the Teddy
Award for Best Documentary at the Berlin Film Festival -- helped her
in her learning efforts.
"When I decided to decline the Israeli invitation, I was very
concerned about turning my back on an LGBT event," she said. "I
talked at length with John Greyson, the filmmaker. Greyson had
previously withdrawn from the Tel Aviv LGBT film festival after the
Gaza invasion. He was very patient, kind, and supportive with me and
my long process."
Schulman explained that "given earlier uncritical support many
leftists had given to queer-hostile elements in Nicaragua and Cuba,"
she was "concerned about the Israeli boycott organizers' level of
acknowledgement both of queer support for the boycott and of
Palestinian queers. It's a long complex story that I can't summarize,
but I really believe that this relationship is in motion in a
positive direction. Certainly there are theater producers in America
who are more hostile to lesbians than some of the people at PACBI,"
the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
In her travels, Schulman said she "became aware of two queer
Palestinian communities. There is Aswat, which is a lesbian
organization based in Haifa, and Al Qaws, founded in 2007, which is
LGBT Palestinians and has chapters in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem. There are, of course, both Muslim and Christian
Palestinians, and the groups reflect this mixing as well."
Schulman explained, "Palestinian queers are active in Israel and in
the occupied territories. I'm no expert and don't want to make
mistakes here, but the folks I met were great -- both socially and
politically motivated, interested in Palestinian politics and queer
politics, and in bringing the two together into an organic whole.
What I felt was that the global LGBT movement is a vibrant force in
worldwide realpolitik and intersecting with national issues
everywhere. The particular intersection of the two in Israel and
Palestine is very important and exciting."
On the Israeli leg of her trip, Schulman said, "Aswat and an Israeli
feminist organization called Eisha L'Eisha [woman to woman] meet at
the Haifa Women's Center, and I met with them there. I would say
there were about 40 people. We had a great deal in common, and my
talk was on nuts and bolts of organizing. Of course, Israeli queers
are divided along nationalist lines, but queers are also visibly
over-represented in the anti-occupation movement in Israel."
Schulman underlined how "anti-occupation Israelis are in a very tough
spot and need our support, especially the queers who are doubly
marginalized. I think that community is amazing. Saying 'Boycott Me'
is so difficult to do. As Americans we know what it is like to have a
government that commits war crimes."
The question of familial homophobia that Schulman addressed in "Ties
That Bind" is, she said, a serious problem for both Palestinian and
Israeli queers.
"I gave presentations on the book in Tel Aviv and in Ramallah, and
the responses were identical, as they have been everywhere that I
have presented this material," she recalled. "I just spoke on it in
Paris last month, to a room of nodding heads."
In fact, Schulman noted, "Familial homophobia seems to be the common
experience, on a continuum of specificities, everywhere. Despite all
the different cultural constructions of queerness, one thing that is
consistent in every culture and country is the delusion by straight
people that their sexuality is neutral, natural, objective, and
value-free. And this has negative consequences on queers in every condition."
Given her long activist career -- that she finds time for it while
producing such a valuable quantity of writing is astonishing -- it is
not surprising that Schulman's reaction to her trip was to organize
an American speaking tour for Palestinian queer activists.
To list just a few of her activist credentials, she co-founded the
New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival, now called MIX
and in its 24th year; joined ACT UP in 1987 and spent five years
organizing its direct action protests, with numerous arrests to her
credit, including one for the occupation of Grand Central Station
during the First Gulf War in a protest dubbed "Money for AIDS and Not
for War"; co-created the ACT UP Oral History Project with Jim
Hubbard, with whom she is now producing a feature documentary,
"United In Anger: The History of ACT UP"; co-founded the direct
action group Lesbian Avengers in 1992 and toured the South organizing
chapters; co-founded the militant AIDS service organization Housing
Works; and was arrested five times as an organizer of the Irish
Lesbian and Gay Organization's attempts to march in the St. Patrick's
Day Parade.
"It is obvious that there is no human face for Palestine in the US
LGBT community, and the fact that there are lesbian and LGBT
organizations of Palestinians is exciting," she explained. "People
are looking forward to hearing about these Palestinians' lives and
meeting them. The tour is not finalized, but I am expecting it to
start in Minneapolis on February 5, and then go to Chicago's
University of Illinois campus on February 6, to the Harvard Kennedy
School on February 8, to the CUNY City Graduate Center on February
10, the University of Pennsylvania on February 11, and the Arab
Resource Center in the Bay Area on Valentine's Day, February 14. We
also are very hopeful that the Palestinians will be given a chance to
speak at the [National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's] Creating Change
conference."
Schulman said she can be contacted via her Facebook page for more
information on the Palestinian queers' tour of the US. Roughly a
quarter of the funds needed for the tour have been raised, she said,
and donations will gratefully be accepted.
Asked what were the most valuable things she learned from her trip to
Palestine and Israel and Schulman responded: "That it is okay to be
afraid, but fear should not control my actions. That I need to always
think things through for myself and beware of received wisdom. That
feeling afraid doesn't mean that I am in danger. Finally, that doubt,
contradiction, and nuance is where one has to live sometimes to make
moral choices."
The English-language website of ASWAT, the Palestinian queer women's
group, is aswatgroup.org/English/. The English-language web site of
Al Qaws, the Palestinian LGBT group, is
alqaws.org/q/content/community-building. The website of Lesbian
Avengers, co-founded by Schulman, is lesbianavengers.com/. The ACT UP
Oral History Project, also co-founded by Schulman, is at actuporalhistory.org.
Doug Ireland may be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at
http://direland.typepad.com/.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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