[News] More Than 60 LGBTQI Groups Boycott Eurovision, Tel Aviv Pride

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/More-Than-60-LGBTQI-Groups-Boycott-Eurovision-Tel-Aviv-Pride-20190130-0016.html 



  More Than 60 LGBTQI Groups Boycott Eurovision, Tel Aviv Pride

30 January 2019
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More than 60 LGBTQ groups from nearly 20 countries called on other LGBTQ 
organizations to boycott the 2019 Eurovision contest 
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/140-International-Artists-Call-for-Boycott-of-Eurovision-in-Israel-20180908-0015.html> 
in Israel. Eurovision has a strong following among the LGBTQ communities.

The signatories accused Israel of distracting “attention from its war 
crimes against Palestinians” and “forward its pinkwashing agenda, the 
cynical use of gay rights to distract from and normalize Israel’s 
occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.”

Israel is hosting this year’s contest because Israeli singer Netta 
Barzilai won the 2018 contest.

The groups criticized Israel for holding a Barzilai concert on May 14, 
2018 in Tel Aviv during the deadliest day of weekly Gaza protest which 
claimed 62 Palestinian lives at the hands of the Israeli occupation force.

The statement by the different organizations recalled the 1969 Stonewall 
Riots which was an LGBTQ uprising against daily violence and harassment 
and drew a parallel with Gaza’s weekly protest for Great March of Return 
and Israel’s decades of violent oppression of Palestinians.

The signatories include: Palestinian collectives al-Qaws for Sexual and 
Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society; Pinkwatching Israel; Aswat- 
Palestinian Feminist Center for Sexual and Gender Freedoms; the National 
LGBT Committee for UNISON, one of the U.K.’s largest trade unions; ACT 
UP groups in France and the U.K.; the Panteras Rosa in Portugal; more 
than 20 queer and trans groups in Spain and Italy; the Gay Liberation 
Network; the Methodist Federation for Social Action; and Jewish Voice 
for Peace's New York City Queer Caucus in the U.S.

“Joining and promoting the call to boycott Eurovision 2019 in Israel and 
Tel Aviv Pride help expose the Israeli government's reprehensible 
co-opting of queer rights as a public relations tool to hide its crimes 
against Palestinians. They strike a blow to its shameful pinkwashing 
strategy to maintain its apartheid regime and its decades-old 
colonization and occupation of Palestine,” said Haneen Maikey, director 
of alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society.

The organizations also gave a call to boycott the Tel Aviv pride parade 
and festival 
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/There-Is-No-Pride-in-Occupation-LGBT-Activists-Block-Tel-Aviv-Pride-March-With-Pro-Palestinian-Protest-20180609-0005.html> 
as according to them, Israel is “promoting Eurovision alongside Tel Aviv 
Pride in order to reap maximum benefits for Israel for an entire month 
of pinkwashing.”

-- 
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