"Our Queers are better than your Queers"

[eumelia]

I've been trying to find a way to write coherently about this subject for the past couple days, I hope I manage to make my point without confusing the hell out of you, dear readers.

Iran is a religious dictatorship. Ahmadinejad has bad PR. Iran is trying to make itself a power house in the Middle East.
Iran's treatment of women leaves much to be desired.
Ahmadinejad has gone on the record saying that Iran doesn't have homosexuals.
All these are facts.

And you know what? I don't care.
I don't care that there are worse places in the world.
Because if that's the kind of narration Israel is using in order to make itself look better... it kind of sucks.

Israel's Foreign Ministry is overseeing a new public relations campaign in which the gay LGBT community is recruited. This PR campaign is going to be used to discredit Iran through it's human rights violations.

Dude... WTF?

Beyond the callous use of an underprivileged minority in order to publicly discredit a different nation, it's a blatant attempt to deflect Israel's own human rights violations.

I'll be the first to admit, my life as a white, Jewish, able bodied cis-woman of the middle-class* in Israel is pretty good.
And in my little cultural Niche of Tel-Aviv Uni and the City itself, being a Queer isn't so bad.
I mean, I can't really complain about same-sex marriage as there is no such thing as civil marriages or union in Israel.
Sure there are common-law marriages and couples un-interested (or can't due to various issues) in marrying through the religious institutions can sign fiscal agreements or fly to countries in which you can marry though civil ceremonies - hetero couples like Cypres as it is close and cheap, at the moment the only country in which same-sex couples can have their marriage sort of recognised in Israel is Canada.
Very convenient.
There is precedent when it comes to the adoption of kids in same sex families, which again, is encouraging and quite awesome.

I suppose I should point out that the above is basically available to Israeli-Jews.

Being a heterosexual couple made out of an Arab and Jew is difficult enough and life threatening. Being a same-sex couple made out of an Arab and a Jew can be a death sentence... for both parties.
And that's within Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
There are Palestinian queer organisations like ASWAT, which are awesome, co-founder Rouda Morcos is one of the most inspiring women I've ever had the privilege to meet.
ASWAT criticises both Israeli and Palestinian societies, but the underlying thought is that the Palestinians society as a whole is oppressed and that in order for LGBT rights to be advanced within Palestinian (and the other Arab societies in Israel and the Occupied territories) the Occupation must end.

Is life better for Queers within Israel proper than beyond the Green Line and in our neighbouring countries? Yes, big and resounding, yes, life is better.

However, that just exemplifies the issue of Israel's own complicity in the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.

To target Iran in order to deflect Israel's own crimes is pathetic.
Yes, yes it is.

Especially when the current government will probably do next to nothing to promote LGBT rights within Israel itself, if anything there will probably be the strengthening of the religious establishment over the next couple of years.

*Did I miss anything in the privilege disclosure?

Comments

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that Intelligence should stop using informants who they have on the payroll. What I'm saying is that Intelligence should stop gaining informants by blackmailing people with the threat of outing them (knowing full well that their likely to be killed if you do so), stop refusing to pay gay informants (because, with the blackmail factor, they don't have to) while they do pay straight ones, etc.

As for your second point, I'm all for countries criticizing human rights abuses elsewhere while still acknowledging their own failures. My problem is with countries refusing to acknowledge their own failures and deflecting attention on them by focusing on human rights abuses elsewhere. I'll also a fan of countries being called out for doing the latter. If Israel called Iran (or any of the multiple other countries for which this is applicable) out for expressing concern about human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories while committing human rights abuses of its own, I would be pleased. But that's not what Israel is doing with this campaign.

[hemlock-sholes.livejournal.com]

[slightly sarcastic]
With today's economic situation, maybe all informants should get a raise?
Why shouldn't the Israeli tax payer over pay informants?
[/end slightly sarcastic]

So you are only allowed to criticize someone else if you do so while admitting your own crimes? This sounds ... nice.
It also sounds appropriate for university level debates, not real life diplomatic conflict.

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

I'm not suggesting that "all informants should get a raise". Apparently I wasn't clear enough, however, about the fact that Israel is effectively telling gay Palestinians that if they don't serve as informants they'll be killed whereas straight Palestinians aren't put in that position. My point wasn't about the money persay but Israel's exploitation of homophobia.

It's one thing if State A criticize State B without admitting its own problems. It's another thing when State B happens to both be the strongest critic of State A and far from the only eggregious perpetrator of the thing that State A is criticizing it for. In the latter case, it's not unreasonable to assume that the criticism by State A is a deflection. If Israel were actually concerned with GLBT rights it would criticize Iraq (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/21/iraq-militias-glue/), Nigeria, etc., not to mention cease actively exploiting, and thereby perpetuating, homophobia in the Occupied Territories. It's not. Instead, it's exploiting the homophobia in Iran to try to get the international community on its side. And just like Israel's exploitation of homophobia in the Occupied Territories has contributed to the Palestinian perception that anyone queer must be a collaborator and thereby perpetuated the homophobia there, Israe'ls Iran campaign is likely to wind up hurting queer people in Iran even more than the homophobia there already does.