This is about the most hypocritical gesture I’ve seen from the Left since the Chicago Dyke March refused to allow Jewish “gay pride” flags (a star of David on a rainbow-colored banner) in its celebratory march two years ago. According to many sources, including the three below, the DC Dyke March, which took place in Washington on Friday, banned all “nationalist symbols”. That included Israeli flags, Jewish gay pride flags, and American flags. They apparently still allowed marchers to wear Jewish symbols like yarmulkes or Star-of-David necklaces. And of course Palestinian flags were permitted (and perhaps encouraged!).
Read on:
Forward:
Washington Times:
The Jerusalem Post has the fullest explanation:
From The Jerusalem Post:
What is the DC Dyke March?
The DC Dyke March is an alternative parade to the main LGBTQ parade taking place this weekend in Washington, D.C. Its politics have traditionally been to the left of more mainstream pride marches. It’s one of a movement of Dyke Marches that have taken place nationwide.
The Dyke March’s description on its fundraising page says it’s focused this year on combating gentrification and displacement.
“Our goal is to encourage activism within our community and center transwomxn, queer womxn, nonbinary, lesbian, and other dyke identities who are oft-marginalized by the mainstream LGBTQ movement,” the webpage says, using an alternative spelling for “woman.” “We believe Dyke is not a sexuality, but a political identity centered on solidarity in each other’s struggles and a belief that none of us are free until we all are.”
If it’s focused on gentrification, why is everyone talking about Israel and Jewish stars?
One of the march’s policies is to discourage “nationalist symbols.” According to organizers of the march, that includes Israeli flags and American flags, which are the only ones they have mentioned specifically.
But the organizers are taking that policy one step further, and asking marchers not to bring a longtime symbol of LGBTQ rights, rainbow flags, with Jewish stars superimposed on the center. March organizers say those flags are reminiscent of the Israeli flag, which they say could feel threatening to Palestinian marchers. “We choose to prioritize Palestinian lives and justice in Palestine over lazy symbols,” organizers write.
The flags of other countries besides America and Israel are permitted. AsJill Raney (a Dyke March organizer) argued, American flags (and of course Israeli flags) are prohibited because these countries commit “human rights abuses.” The Post adds this:
“Palestinian flags are allowed because we believe they represent the hope for freedom for the Palestinian people,” Raney said. “The symbols of liberation are the whole point of Dyke March. Symbols of governments that cause human rights abuses are not welcome.” She didn’t explain how the Palestinian flag is not nationalist.
And of course, the red herring of “safety” comes up. March organizer Rae Gaines said this (my emphasis):
“The issue [with the Jewish Pride flag] is where the Star of David is positioned in a way that looks like an Israeli flag, it creates an unsafe space,” she said. “It really is a shame that Israel took this symbol of Judaism and turned it into this nationalist symbol….I understand the Jewish pride flag is a symbol that a lot of Jews have come to embrace, but there are so many other Jewish symbols that we can use to express our Judaism, like a Star of David [on a necklace], like a yarmulke, a tallit.”
Unsafe space? Seriously? Are these people 13 years old or something? I would think that it would express a form of solidarity if Palestinian dykes and Jewish dykes could march together with the emblems of their land. Only an idiot would claim that a Star of David on a rainbow flag would create an “unsafe space”.
The Palestinian flag is more than “not nationalist”, though Palestine isn’t yet a nation. It is the very symbol of oppression—of women and gays. The blatant hypocrisy of this whole Dyke March ban, which smacks of anti-Semitism, is demonstrated by the fact that that Palestine is a huge abuser of human rights, especially of gay people, women, and non-Muslims. “Dykes” are gay women, and both of those characteristics are oppressed not by Israel, but by Palestine. Go to the Wikipedia page on “LGBT rights in the State of Palestine” to see the discrimination faced by LGBTQ people in Palestine, which notes:
Homosexuality is illegal in the Gaza Strip but not in the West Bank, although LGBT rights are not protected in either. [Note below that lesbianism isn’t explicitly banned.]
. . . According to a 2010 compendium of laws against homosexuality produced by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and Intersex Association (ILGA), the decriminalization of homosexuality in Palestine is patchwork. On the one hand, same-sex acts were decriminalized in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank in 1951 and remain so to this day. On the other hand, in the Gaza Strip, the British Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance, No. 74 of 1936 remains in force and continues to outlaw same-sex acts between men, although lesbian women are not subjects of the code and their relations are thus, technically, not unlawful. Palestine has no civil rights laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination or harassment.
In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, gays have been killed by either Hamas or their own families, and even a Hamas commander, as reported by the New York Times, was killed at least in part because he was gay.
The UNFPA also reports that “Gender Based Violence (GBV) is a key protection concern in Palestine. According to Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) 2011 Violence Survey, an average of 37% of women are victims of GBV in Palestine; in the Gaza Strip, this percentage increases to 51%. Women in Palestine face multiple layers of violence and discrimination.” Of course the website blames this not on Islamic culture, but on “traditional patriarchal norms and values” and on “the occupation and its consequences” (Islam isn’t mentioned at all, and I’m not quite sure how the occupation leads to gender-based violence since many other Islamic countries that aren’t occupied oppress or even execute gay people).
Women in Palestine are often subject to oppressive sharia law, including grossly asymmetrical divorce laws, for Palestinian law is explicitly based on Islamic law.
Finally, it’s well known that while there is a dwindling number of Christians in Gaza and the West Bank, there are either no Jews or almost no Jews in Palestine (I’m not aware of any, but there may be one or two closeted Jews who would be killed if they were outed). In contrast, nearly 18% of Israelis are Muslims, and Israel harbors many Christians and members of other faiths. Atheists, too, are discriminated against in Palestine, while many Israelis (perhaps most) are nonbelievers. I have to add the caveat that I am not a complete supporter of Israel’s or Netanyahu’s policies, but on this issue—gay rights, women’s rights, and religious rights—the demonization of Israel and extolling of Palestine is ridiculous.
In short, you have to be blind or an idiot to think that Palestine is more friendly to gays or women than is Israel, which has a thriving gay community and much stronger protection of women’s and gay rights. And of course Israel is loaded with atheists.
The position of the organizers of the Dyke March, which tacitly celebrates a territory that openly oppresses women and Muslims, can be understood only by the festering anti-Semitism of the Left. Why? Because the Left traditionally sides with underdogs, and they perceive Palestinians to be far more underdoggish than are Jews. This is why gays side with cultures that demonize and kill them rather than with cultures that tolerate or even celebrate them.
h/t: cesar
And the question is “Why Palestine?” or perhaps “Why only Palestine?”. There are worse places in the world.
“[…] none of us are free until we all are.”
Oh – well, that explains it…. I mean, it would have to, right?
I fully support them in this, in fact, I think they should move the entire DC Dyke March to the Gaza strip.
EXCELLENT IDEA!
The Zionists have turned the star of David into a symbol of oppression. they put it on their fighter jets military equipment.
You forgot an apostrophe. Also your wits: anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
How is that any different from putting the American flag on jets, or the Saudi flag? It seems like quite a trivial thing to focus on.
Can I ask you, and I’m genuinely interested, have you ever specifically gone to articles about Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Iran, and left comments BTL that criticise the horrific, medieval punishments meted out in those countries? If not, why not?
Saudi Arabia has killed several hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and displaced millions over the last few years. Nobody seems to want to talk much about that, including the UN.
Somehow, if they were the only Jewish nation on earth, I have a feeling Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be so lucky when it comes to its PR.
The “Zionists”? I think you mean the Jews, don’t you. And that’s where you went wrong. The Israeli military is not made up only of Jews, nor of Zionists for that matter.
I wonder, is your commentary on the internet and in your life proportional? Do you talk about Saudi Arabia killing several hundred thousand Yemenis and displacing millions more about 10,000 times as often as you do about Israel?
I’m guessing the answer is “no.”
How about Syria? How often do you talk about Syria?
How about…Oh, screw it. We all know.
Excessive sympathy for the Palestinians is a logical part of the sacralization of the “oppressed” of the world (as explained by Jonathan Haidt).
It is not rational and will not go away.
The sword will decide.
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/contemplation-of-the-sword/
sub
sub
Time to chose a verb:
“…there is are either no Jews or almost no Jews in Palestine …”
Oops, I’ll fix it.
Only if you are afraid Palestinians are going to shoot rockets at it.
“We choose to prioritize Palestinian lives and justice in Palestine over lazy symbols,”
In other words: “We’re inclusive! But we also prioritize the rights and feelings and freedom and “safety” and comfort and inclusion of some people over those of of others (and, when it comes to the oppression hierarchy, the “others” always seems to be Jews, who we lump in with all the other original sin-branded peoples despite their history and current position in the world).”
Fuck. You. They wrote that policy to pick and choose the flags of the countries and peoples they see as “oppressors” and allow the ones they see as flags of the “oppressed.” And to continue watching these people classify Jews as part of the oppressor class is just infuriating.
And that quote from the UN report. Oy! No surprise though. The UN is absolutely obsessed with making Palestine look good and Israel look bad. Have hundreds of thousands died in Yemen in recent years? Oh, yeah. In Syria? Sure! In several other places? Of course! But we’re going to keep passing resolutions against Israel for some reason and ignore those actual genocides.
Fuck me. I’m grouchier than usual right now and this is some shit to wake up to.
Jews in general and Israel in particular have been rather successful. Success or failure is purely a function of oppression, thus Jews are oppressors. We must exclude “oppressors”. This is the logic of their ideology, and is why their ideology commits them to an implicit anti-semitism, as well as anti-whiteness, but nobody really cares much about the latter.
It is common for postings to consist, in the entirety, of the single item “sub”, as in the two above.
A minor internet search has not revealed the secret, so could someone tell me just what intelligence this usage implies, conveys, or suggests?
For those who have a WordPress account, all they need to do is post in a thread to get alerts when there are new comments. The common way of getting those updates is to just leave a comment saying “sub.”
I don’t have a WordPress account, so if I want to see if there are new comments, I have to return to a page and reload it.
Actually, it’s also used by people without WordPress accounts like GBJames and Malgorzata above. If you sub and click “Notify me by email”, you get email notifications.
If you are a WordPress account holder (which GBJames and Malgorzata appear not to be, and I am) your name on the comment will appear as a link to your wordpress page.
No kidding! I never even noticed that button. I still won’t use it, but thanks for adding that information. You’ve been a lot more helpful than I was.
FWIW… I have a WordPress account but have never bothered to create a page/site. I think I’m too lazy or something.
Don’t bother, I find it to be a millstone , or at least, I did before I overcame the guilt of not posting often enough. I am in awe of people like Jerry who can post several times a day and hold down a day job.
Said awe is what keeps me from even starting!
Although the religious (Jewish and Arab)sectors of the Israeli society are oppressive towards gays, the secular Israeli society is mostly very open-minded and liberal towards the LGBTQ community. The current Israeli Prime Minister, who is very conservative, a few days ago decided to appoint an openly gay man as a Minister of Justice, probably in order to get more secular votes in the coming elections. Israel is a (relatively) “safe space” for gays to live in, but only if they are secular.
” Israel is a (relatively) ‘safe space’ for gays to live in, but only if they are secular.”
You don’t have to be part of only secular communities to be openly gay. First, no matter what country you live in, you can’t be openly gay in any ultra-religious community from a Judeo-Christian religion, be they evangelical Christians, religious Muslims, or Hassidic Jews. But I know many Conservative and Reform Jews, and they’re all completely accepting of being gay. One Conservative Jewish family I know has a gay son who has been married for years. I’ve never known a Conservative or Reform Jew who is against gay rights. I can’t speak for Conservative Jews in Israel, but certainly Reform Jews even there care not a whit about someone’s sexuality.
Heck, I know a rather conservative Catholic family here in the States who, while they weren’t very accepting of homosexuality twenty years ago, have changed their views completely. One of them has a gay son and the entire family doesn’t care. They haven’t cared in at least fifteen years. It’s amazing how much views have changed in the last couple of decades, and how much they can change when it’s someone you know (especially a close relative) who is affected by those who are anti-gay.
I can confirm that, I was close to an Irish family, not rabiate RC, but still RC. Their oldest son was gay. It took them a bit of effort, but in the end they did accept. Kudos to them.
This is one of the biggest reasons identity politics and its attendant ideas (like having segregated dorms on college campuses) is so harmful. People tend to live in bubbles, be they racial, religious, sexual, etc. Most of them don’t regularly interact with people unlike themselves, and this isn’t by choice. The more people integrate, assimilate, and are exposed to those who aren’t completely like them, the more empathy they feel for those others.
The most important path to empathy is having friends or relatives who are affected by discrimination. Think about how much got done in this country just by MLK’s movement exposing the country to the plight of black people on mere TV screens and in newspapers. That empathy is magnified a thousand-fold when you know people personally.
Right, what I said was unfair towards the liberal religious Jews in Israel. Thanks for correcting me.
No problem. It was an honest mistake 🙂
I googled “Israel gays” and came across an article in “Outword,” which labels itself as “the long-time, proven leader in quality lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advertising and news for Central and Northern California.” It has posted an article entitled “Israel and Arab Countries Are Miles Apart on LGBT Rights.” It is a ringing defense of Israel’s treatment of gays and their oppression in the Arab world. It notes “in Gaza, the Hamas government has declared that homosexuality is punishable by death. In 2011.”
It is clear that the organizers of the Dyke March represent a common phenomenon in social movements, regardless of where they rest on the ideological spectrum: the emergence of a radical fringe that attempts to take over the movement by pretending to represent the movement as a whole. Sometimes they are successful because the mainstream elements do not have the will to resist. The question is whether more mainstream lesbian leaders have the will and the sense to condemn the radicals without hesitation. Leaders who find it difficult to do this out of fear of offending some members of the movement will find themselves leaders no more.
http://www.outwordmagazine.com/inside-outword/glbt-news/1239-israel-and-arab-countries-are-miles-apart-on-lgbt-rights
I was commenting about the ‘woke’ contortions of the sewing community yesterday, saying that when you actually talk to these people about these apparently seismic issues, most of the time they’ve no idea what you’re talking about. The kind of feather-delicate political issues that animate the fringes are gibberish to them.
Like you say, the grand mass of LGBTQ humanity just carries on, mostly perfectly happy with Jews and Muslims. They’re also capable of holding more than one idea in their head at the same time, unlike the fuckwits organising this march.
The Socialism of fools, as August Bebel put it, has reappeared to a jaw-dropping degree on the Left. I see at least two reasons for this, in addition to old-fashioned prejudice.
(1) Israel has had the gall to actually shoot back, with successes, against the Arab/Islamic world’s perpetual war against it. Leftists typically view shooting back as a no-no, as witness the formation of the “Stop the War Coalition” on 9/21/01 in order to oppose any potential American response to 9/11. [This bias on the Left was suspended, of course, during the Russian civil war of 1918-21, and for the portion of World War II that began on June 22, 1941.] (2) When Left millenarians discover that an idol does not meet their inflated expectations, they sometimes respond with intense hostility, as witness the presence of many ex-Stalinists at William F. Buckley’s National Review. This is why some former Labour Zionists (Tony Judt, for example) became so hostile to Israel—when they discovered that it was becoming “a nation like other nations”.
The only National Review writer from the WFB era that I can think of who might plausibly be called a former Stalinist was ex-Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers. There were other former communists, of course, notably James Burnham, but they were former Trotskyists (viz., anti-Stalinists). Indeed, the American neo-conservative movement was essentially founded by disaffected Trotskyists who splintered off the left-wing “New York intellectuals” set, most prominently Norman Podhoretz of Commentary and Irving Kristol of The Public Interest.
Well, we should give the DC Dyke march credit for recognizing, at least, that Palestine is not a country or a nation or a state.
And, if the organizers really do “choose to prioritize Palestinian lives and justice in Palestine over lazy symbols”, perhaps they should give entry discounts or priority to Jordanian dykes. Jordan, after all, is a real nation formed as a homeland in Palestine for Palestinian Arabs. That they ethnically cleansed all Jews out of Jordan would not appear to be a huge stumbling block for the march, I am guessing.
I suggest we leave it to the Palestinians themselves to decide whether they constitute a nation or not.
I’m perfectly fine with that, so long as they do it outside of the 1948 Mandate borders of Israel. I would recommend they establish it in Jordan, as most of them already have citizenship and passports there.
Otherwise, it would be condoning that illegal occupiers of a war of aggression are entitled to steal territory which does not belong to them, simply be declaring themselves a “nation”.
And it is going to be a stretch, considering the frank admissions to exactly that by multiple leaders of the Palestinian cause. For example, here is Zuhair Mohsen, who headed the military operations branch of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the PLO, and was also a member of the executive committee of the PLO, quoted from a Dutch newspaper in 1977:
““There is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are part of one
nation, the Arab people. I myself have relatives with Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian
citizenship. We are one people. Just for political reasons we endorse our Palestinian identity. This is
because it is in the national Arab interest to stimulate the existence of Palestinians as opposed to
zionism. Yes, the creation of a distinct Palestinian identity had only tactical reasons. The creation of a
Palestinian state is a new means to continue the fight for Arab unity and against Israel.”
“
Had I been a Jewish lesbian I would’ve showed up to the march in striped pajamas.
LOL 🙂
For heavens sake… Why don’t they just go the whole hog and ban gays and lesbians as well?
And marching. Something a bit dodgy about people who want to march I’ve always thought.
‘The non-lgbtq non-march for straight people who want to stand still’. Has a ring to it.
So ya sayin’ you’re down with Phil Ochs on this one, Saul? 🙂
I was thinking more along these lines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeGsQOWFXO8
‘Don’t just do something / sit around instead’…that’s more my speed. 😉
Forgot not to embed, ‘pologies.
I personally don’t know why Pride and similar events even need to have national/political flags of any kind …
Ironically, one reason might be to raise awareness and support for gay communities in less free countries. A sort of “yes, we’re here too.”
Not that I subscribe to the “Israel is horribly repressive” meme, but given that some in the woke community do, that would seem to be an argument to pointedly include the Israeli flag, rather than pointedly reject it.
Jews in general and Israel in particular have been rather successful. Success or failure is purely a function of oppression, thus Jews are oppressors. We must exclude “oppressors”. This is the logic of their ideology, and is why their ideology commits them to an implicit anti-semitism, as well as anti-whiteness, but nobody really cares much about the latter.
1. The West Bank Palestinians cannot establish their nation state in Jordan because they don’t live in Jordan.
2. Many of them still have a Jordanian citizenship because in 1948 Jordan occupied their land. Therefore, the issue of their citizenship is irrelevant to the topic.
3. The West Bank wasn’t occupied by the Palestinians, so you cannot called them occupiers. You seem to be confusing the Palestinians from the West Bank with the Jordanian army. Although many Palestinian refugees live in Jordan many of them don’t consider it as their motherland.
The formation of a national consciousness and identity is a long and gradual process. The subjective feeling of belonging is commonly shaped, developed, manipulated and exploited by the elites, but the political reality also contributes to it. In case of Palestinians, the rise of their local nationalism is, in part, a reaction to the Israeli occupation, and it is affected by the political propaganda of their leaders. Zohair Mohsen and others cynically foster pan-Arabism (to get the support of other Arab countries), but we all know it is a fiction: the focus of the Palestinian identity of is much more local – the local Palestinian part is currently much-much stronger then the “pan-Arabic” part. In contrast, many other Palestinian leaders stress the local West Bank identity and downplay the other part, usually for manipulative and propagandistic reasons as well. Although nationalism is in part an artificial phenomenon, once it appeared, it can hardly be eradicated. You cannot just say that just declared themselves a nation – if this is what they feel we just, I guess, have to accept that. Indeed, it is a very new phenomenon, but so what?
This issue is very different from the topic of Jerry’s original post, but it might be helpful to discuss it as well.
It had to be a part of a string of no.15, sorry for posting it as a separate comment
” Many of them still have a Jordanian citizenship because in 1948 Jordan occupied their land. ”
Wow~!
I would suggest to you you educate yourself on the legality of the Mandate for Palestine, the official map of Israel (cis-Jordan) as published from 1922-1948, and the International law precept known as “Uti possidetis juris “.
Under every known example of International law in modern history, the West Bank and Gaza were officially within the borders of Israel the instant it declared independence, and the Mandate for Palestine was thus ended.
And you might also want to investigate the arguments, rationalizations, and promises made by the Arab negotiators for the establishment of “The Arab State” (Trans-Jordan” to end all claims to any other Palestine lands by Palestinian Arabs if the formation of Trans-Jordan was to be approved.
It is funny how left-identified groups will so easily betray their primary identity to support Islam.
Feminists explaining away rapes by Islamic immigrants with the phrase “No, it was not real rape”
LGBT people supporting countries and regions where they could be put to death for their lifestyle.
Now, here’s a flag that’s all-inclusive:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1040595-swastika
Item: Jewish Pride flag
Place to use
Effect: People who hold double standards within a 10 meter radius of the item take 0.5% HP damage every second.
-Ryan
*social justice mage casts fire spell to burn flag*