<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div id="reader-header" class="header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a id="reader-domain" class="domain"
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-first-trans-officer-helps-ethnic-cleansing/20171">https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-first-trans-officer-helps-ethnic-cleansing/20171</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Israel’s first trans officer helps with
ethnic cleansing</h1>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div id="moz-reader-content" class="line-height4" dir="ltr"
style="display: block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page"
xml:base="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-first-trans-officer-helps-ethnic-cleansing/20171">
<article class="node-20171 node node-story view-mode-full
node-is-page image-landscape">
<figure id="file-46606" class="media
media-element-container media-figure file file-image
file-image-jpeg"><source media="(min-width: 72rem)"><figcaption
class="group-caption field-group-html-element"></figcaption></figure>
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nora Barrows-Friedman</a></span>
<span class="field field-publisher">- </span><span
class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2017-04-12T09:30:00+00:00">12 April 2017</span></span><br>
</p>
<p>Queer and transgender activists protested an <a
href="http://www.deanspade.net/2017/03/29/resist-pinkwashing-in-seattle-now/">event</a>
featuring an Israeli soldier in Seattle on 5 April.</p>
<p>The event was supported by the LGBTQ Commission, a body
that advises city leaders on <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lgbt">lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender</a> issues.</p>
<p>Two commissioners resigned in protest just days
earlier, criticizing the group’s participation as an act
of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/pinkwashing">pinkwashing</a>.</p>
<p><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/pinkwashing">Pinkwashing</a>
is a public relations strategy that deploys Israel’s
supposed enlightenment toward LGBTQ issues to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/pinkwash-greenwash-hogwash-ali-abunimah-israels-use-sex-and-marketing-distract">deflect
criticism from its human rights abuses and war crimes</a>
and as a means to build up support for Israel among
Western liberals and progressives.</p>
<p>Lt. Shachar Erez, who has been in the Israeli army for
five years, is its first transgender officer, <a
href="http://forward.com/news/israel/367907/meet-shachar-erez-israels-first-transgender-idf-officer/">according</a>
to <em>The Jewish Daily Forward</em>.</p>
<p>He is on a <a
href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/snacks-with-lt-shachar-the-first-openly-transgender-commander-in-the-israeli-army-tickets-32820490972">national</a>
<a
href="http://fenwayfocus.org/2017/03/lieutenant-shachar-erez-visits-fenway/">speaking</a>
<a
href="http://www.courant.com/community/west-hartford/hc-west-hartford-lt-shachar-erez-visit-0327-20170327-story.html">tour</a>
sponsored by the Israeli army and foreign ministry.</p>
<p>Erez’s tour is part of the “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/brand-israel">Brand
Israel</a>” campaign, an Israeli government <a
href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2006/Pages/International%20Brand%20Israel%20seminar%20to%20be%20launched%20this%20week%20by%20the%20Foreign%20Ministry%2024-Oct-2006.aspx">effort</a>
to market a liberal image of the country to advance
commerce and tourism and improve Israel’s international
standing.</p>
<p>The tour is hosted by <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/standwithus">StandWithUs</a>,
an <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.636953">Israeli
government-funded lobby group</a> with <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/does-look-incitement-you-zionist-fabrications-smears-intensify-ahead-penn-bds">ties</a>
to right-wing <a
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2012/05/after-lgbt-forum-next-stop-for-ambassador-oren-is-john-hagee-conference/">anti-LGBTQ
activists</a> such as <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/john-hagee">John
Hagee</a> of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/christians-united-israel">Christians
United for Israel</a>.</p>
<h2>Ethnic cleansing</h2>
<p>Along with advising the army’s “gender affairs office,”
<em>The Forward</em> reports that Erez works “on a
national project to relocate military bases from the
center to the periphery of Israel.”</p>
<p>This indicates that Erez, a commander in his unit, is
involved in helping coordinate the mass expulsion of
Palestinian Bedouin communities from their ancestral
lands in the southern Naqab region of present-day
Israel, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ben-white/plan-negev-mass-expulsions-moves-forward">part</a>
of the “Negev 2020” plan to “develop” the area
exclusively for Jews.</p>
<p>Negev 2020 is <a
href="http://www.kkl-jnf.org/about-kkl-jnf/kkl-jnf-year-to-year/112-years/negev-2020-plan/">billed</a>
as creating “the Israel of tomorrow” by the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jewish-national-fund">Jewish
National Fund</a>, the quasi-official, state-backed
institution that has carried out operations to
ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their lands since
before Israel was established.</p>
<p>According to the Jewish National Fund, the plan
involves the “relocation of all the IDF [Israeli army]
bases to the Negev,” the region where indigenous
Bedouins are <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/protests-keep-israels-bulldozers-away-bedouin-village">resisting</a>
further forced displacement.</p>
<p>In the early 1980s, the Israeli government <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/26/world/israelis-drive-bedouins-of-negev-into-closed-zones.html">confiscated</a>
Palestinian Bedouin lands in the region to relocate an
air base from the Sinai Peninsula, as it withdrew from
the Egyptian territory under its 1979 peace treaty.</p>
<p>The government forcibly removed approximately 5,000
Bedouins and expropriated 16,000 acres of their land,
according to Human Rights Watch. This process of forced
removal continues.</p>
<figure id="file-46691" class="media
media-element-container media-figure file file-image
file-image-jpeg"><source media="(min-width: 72rem)"><figcaption
class="group-caption field-group-html-element"></figcaption></figure>
<p>Speaking to <em>The Forward</em>, Erez claims that
“Israel is progressive about LGBT rights and it has
nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian situation.”
The article adds that he “rejects the notion” that the
Israeli army, “which features his story <a
href="https://www.idfblog.com/2015/05/17/4-things-hear-first-openly-transgender-officer-idf/">on
its website</a>, is using him to deflect criticism
about the military’s treatment of Palestinians.”</p>
<p>Yet Dean Spade, a professor at the Seattle University
School of Law and a member of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/queers-against-israeli-apartheid">Queers
Against Israeli Apartheid</a>, told The Electronic
Intifada, “It is disturbing to learn that the Israeli
government is sending a trans Israeli army commander on
a public relations tour in the US, [and] to see this
blatant attempt to co-opt the trans liberation struggle
to make a brutal colonial military seem like a site of
diversity and inclusion.”</p>
<p>“How can it be a victory for trans liberation when
trans people become embedded in the most violent
operations of settler-colonialism and genocide?” Spade
added. “How can we celebrate trans people clearing the
land of indigenous people, arresting children,
maintaining checkpoints and launching tear gas?”</p>
<h2>Battles against pinkwashing</h2>
<p>Spade and other anti-pinkwashing activists in Seattle
are also dismayed at the ignorance displayed by city
representatives regarding historic battles over Israeli
propaganda.</p>
<p>In 2012, the commission announced that it would host a
public meeting featuring Israeli LGBTQ speakers
co-sponsored by StandWithUs and A Wider Bridge, an
advocacy group promoting LGBTQ voices for Israel.</p>
<p>Spade directed a <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/battle-seattle-outing-truth-behind-israels-gay-friendly-spin/14839">documentary</a>,
<em>Pinkwashing Exposed</em>, about the efforts by
activists to resist the 2012 event and what happened
after their success in having the meeting canceled.</p>
<p>“I am extremely disappointed that this is happening
again in a city that has been educated, where the
history of pinkwashing is absolutely a part of the
institutional memory of the LGBTQ Commission,” <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/nada-elia">Nada
Elia</a>, a Seattle-based academic and member of the
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of
Israel, told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>Specifically, StandWithUs has been exploiting the LGBTQ
community to promote Israel as a queer-friendly place as
it strengthens relationships with ultra-right-wing
homophobes and racists, Elia noted.</p>
<p>This exploitation is especially troubling given the
current panic by right-wing politicians over which
bathrooms transgender people should use, Spade observed.</p>
<p>“But on the other hand, the right in the US is also
very tied to uncritical support for Israel, including
Israel’s worst actions,” Spade said.</p>
<p>“That same right-wing is willing to lift up these trans
heroes as is convenient – and to lift up the Israeli
military as the site of liberation and progressive
values using the images of trans people,” he added.</p>
<p>Since the 2012 event, A Wider Bridge has distanced
itself from StandWithUs – with an Israel advocate <a
href="http://awiderbridge.org/creating-change-was-right-to-reinstate-a-wider-bridge/">describing</a>
it as “an ill-fated partnership” – but A Wider Bridge <a
href="http://awiderbridge.org/about/">continues to
promote Zionism</a>, Israel’s state ideology, and to <a
href="http://awiderbridge.com/an-incovenient-truth-the-myths-of-pinkwashing/">claim
pinkwashing</a> is a “myth.”</p>
<p>Last year, an event sponsored by A Wider Bridge was
protested by activists with Black Lives Matter Chicago,
Tarab-NYC – an LGBTQ group organizing in Middle Eastern
and North African communities – and others <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jimmy-johnson/activists-pull-out-chicago-lgbtq-conference-over-israel-pinkwashing">over
its inclusion</a> in the National LGBTQ Task Force’s
Creating Change conference.</p>
<p>And in 2010, a workshop on LGBTQ liberation in the
Middle East, led by StandWithUs, <a
href="https://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/reflections-from-detroit-standoff-with-standwithus/">was
shut down</a> by queer Arab activists at the US Social
Forum.</p>
<h2>Commissioners resign</h2>
<p>Seattle’s LGBTQ Commission voted against a public
invitation for a screening of Spade’s <em>Pinkwashing
Exposed</em> in 2015, but accepted the invitation to
participate in a roundtable with the Israeli officer.</p>
<p>“So we know that the commission is in a position to
decline events, even events by their own local
constituents,” Elia said.</p>
<p>About a week before this month’s event with the Israeli
officer, two members of the LGBTQ Commission resigned.</p>
<p>“We all have issues that we stand for and for me I
stand for the boycott, divest and sanctions movement.
For me, it is an issue similar to South Africa
apartheid,” Luzviminda Uzuri Carpenter wrote her
colleagues in a resignation letter on 28 March.</p>
<p>“I personally stand against the genocide of Palestinian
people and cannot support militarized efforts or
military personnel regardless of gender identity, gender
expression, or sexuality or other identity markers,”
Carpenter added.</p>
<p>In discussions with the other commissioners about her
opposition to the event, “I stated everything that I
could possibly state about this particular issue,”
Carpenter told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>Carpenter said she was frustrated that the commission
was not able to “hold onto the history” and explained
that she will remain a community-based advocate.</p>
<p>Yani Robinson, another member of the LGBTQ Commission,
confirmed to The Electronic Intifada that they also
resigned in protest of the Erez event, but will continue
to urge the commission to screen <em>Pinkwashing
Exposed</em>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Bridge Joyce, a former commissioner implored
the body to focus on issues facing queer and trans
members of the Seattle community, including LGBTQ youth
homelessness, gentrification, transphobic and homophobic
attacks and police violence.</p>
<p>“I am at a loss to see what policy issue relevant to
Seattle’s LGBTQ folks that the commission is addressing
by this event,” Joyce wrote in an email to current
commissioners seen by The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>“Participating in an event designed to glorify the
Israel Defense Forces aligns the commission with values
that are directly at odds with the racial justice and
social justice values claimed by the City of Seattle,”
Joyce added.</p>
<h2>Being prepared</h2>
<p>After protesting the Israeli soldier event, activists
say they are mobilized against what they see as
deepening relationships between Israel advocacy groups
and the city’s mayor, Ed Murray.</p>
<p>Murray, who is gay, traveled to Israel in 2015 on a <a
href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-murrays-lgbtq-israel-trip-under-fire/">junket</a>
paid for by the Israeli foreign ministry. There, he
delivered the <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S_DhInzn7M">keynote
speech</a> at a conference co-organized by A Wider
Bridge. He <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/236493096825183/">will
accept an honor</a> from StandWithUs’ Northwest
chapter at a gala next month.</p>
<p>Spade sees ample opportunities to strengthen coalitions
in support of human rights and pressure city
representatives not to take the bait from Israel
propagandists.</p>
<p>“A big part of this is both helping queer and trans
organizations be more prepared to identify certain
propaganda and also increasing educational resources to
be able to respond,” he explained. “Our work is a
continuing work.”</p>
<p><em>Nora Barrows-Friedman is an associate editor of The
Electronic Intifada.</em></p>
<br>
</article>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>