'Pinkwashing' : The Politics of LGBTQ Rights in Israel/Palestine

G. Weaver

For this thesis I will be drawing on literature from broader bodies of work in areas such as Orientalism and queer theory. Puar, Ritchie and Schulman's theories are reminiscent of Edward Said's descriptions of Orientalism as a discourse used to exercise power over the Orient and Zachary Lockman?s argument that Orientalist scholarship has been used to justify and inform the colonisation of Middle Eastern countries. But it will be interesting to explore the fact that, as Joseph Boone explains, 'the Arabs' were traditionally portrayed as perverse because of their tolerance towards homosexuality, whereas the Israeli state's 'pinkwashing' appears to be aimed at using Palestinian society's intolerance of homosexuality in order to justify its domination of that society. Also interesting is the way that some LGBTQ Palestinians speak of their own society as 'primitive' in terms of its attitudes to homosexuality. These issues tie into Joseph Massad's criticisms of the 'Gay International,' which perceives intolerance towards homosexuality in Arab and Muslim societies and attempts to impose its own solutions. This thesis will put forward strong evidence that Palestinian LGBTQ people feel that Israeli and other foreign LGBTQ people have tried to impose their own versions of LGBTQ identity and liberation on Palestinian society. All these works will be discussed further in the literature review and other sections of this thesis.