Statement Against Pro-Israel Groups at Progressive LGBT Conference in Chicago

For Immediate Release: January 22, 2016

Statement Against Pro-Israel Groups at Progressive LGBT Conference in Chicago

Recently the National LGBTQ TaskForce, a U.S.-based organization that bills itself as not only opposing anti-LGBTQ discrimination, but as anti-racist as well, allowed pro-Israel organizations to host a reception as part of their official program at their annual conference in Chicago.

The Task Force also invited to participate in their conference the federal government's Immigration andCustoms Enforcement (ICE) agency, which currently is in the midst of anti-immigrant sweeps adding to President Obama's already record-setting number of deportations.

Vigorous protests forced the TaskForce to cancel both the ICE and pro-Israel events, but a PR campaign byZionists falsely equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism recently caused theTask Force to backtrack and re-slate the pro-Israel event.

Below is a statement on these events by the Gay Liberation Network, a Chicago-based, multi-issue LGBT group founded in1998.

Why We Oppose Pro-Israel Organizations at Creating Change

For several years the Israeli government has attempted to use propaganda about the freedoms some LGBTQs inthat country have as a cover for their increasingly brutal rule overPalestinians, a process known as "pink-washing."

Because of the brutal racism of the country, mimicking South Africa under apartheid – one set of laws for Jews,another for Palestinians – most Palestinian LGBTQs don't enjoy those freedoms.Instead, they endure the anti-Palestinian racism meted out on a daily basis to gay and non-gay alike.

Israel's racist rule features widespread imprisonment of Palestinians without charges or trials, systemic torture documented by numerous human rights organizations, and the intentional,extreme impoverishment of Palestinians thru the purposeful destruction of their economic activity in Gaza and the West Bank.

Nothing more succinctly encapsulates the racist nature of the Israeli state than its infamous apartheid wall,facilitating the increasing theft of land from Palestinians even as they approach a majority of people in all the areas controlled by Israel. As progressives rightly criticize the racist wall that Donald Trump proposes to build on the U.S.-Mexico border, why can't some of them see the profoundly racist nature of the wall that Israel has already built?

By allowing a pro-Israel group space at its Creating Change conference, the National LGBTQ Task Force has turned its back on its ostensible mission to oppose racism in all of its forms.

We will not keep silent as the LGBTQ movement is used as a cover for this anti-Palestinian racism.

Gay Liberation Network
Chicago