A grassroots collective of queer and trans people of color, anti-Zionist Jews, and Southwest Asian and North Africans is fed up with Israeli pinkwashing of the genocide against Palestinians.
No Pride in Genocide launched on Valentine’s Day with a campaign called “Break Up with Genocide,” which included a march in Washington, D.C. Gender Justice LA, another grassroots organization for queer liberation based in Los Angeles, hosted a march on the same day.
“Pinkwashing” is a term first used by the queer movement against Israel in the 2000s and noted by Sarah Schulman in a 2011 opinion for The New York Times. It describes the way Zionists portray the nation-state of Israel as more humane, modern, and accepting than an otherwise “backward” Arab world.
“Israel has positioned itself as being this beacon of democracy and gay rights and gay liberation,” said Malka Roth, a queer Jewish woman and organizer with No Pride in Genocide. “Queer people are being used to legitimize and justify this horrific violence,” she said, adding that the Israeli military, surveil queer Palestinians to blackmail them into being informants.
No Pride in Genocide is a national network of activists that uses a multi-faceted approach to meet specific demands regarding the genocide in Gaza.
Besides an end to the pinkwashing that multiple nonprofits, celebrities, and governments have committed, No Pride in Genocide also demands the use of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), along with an immediate and permanent ceasefire of the occupation forces in Gaza.
For example, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) receives significant donations from U.S.-based weapons manufacturer Northrop Grumman Corporation and lists it as one of its “platinum” corporate partners. Northrop Grumman was the world’s fourth-largest weapons manufacturer in 2022 and has consistently sent “aid” to Israel in the form of arms.
The collective seeks to combine digital organizing campaigns, strategic direct action, and community-building and cultural work as three key pieces to liberate the people of Palestine, queer Palestinians, and queer folks worldwide.
“As queer Arabs, I think it’s so critical for us to fight back against this narrative that queer and trans people don’t exist in Palestine and don’t exist in the Arab world because we are seeing how that narrative is being used to justify horrific violence against our people,” said Firas Nasr, an Arab organizer with No Pride in Genocide.
During last week’s action, organizers read entries from Rafah submitted to Queering the Map, a platform that digitally archives LGBTQIA+ experiences linked to geographical areas. Rafah was the last city where Palestinians in Gaza could flee from Israel’s bombing. It is now under fire.
“Our visibility is an act of resistance in itself,” Nasr said.
Reporting from Israel and Palestine, +972 Magazine, among other regional news outlets, make it easy to see through the pinkwashing. Same-sex marriage is illegal in Israel, and legislators don’t hide their thoughts on the LGBTQIA+ community. Queer and trans people in the U.S. face enduring repression and violence too, and the ACLU is tracking 437 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills in the country, as of Feb. 21. That’s why Nasr and Roth emphasize that maintaining safety and care for community members is a core tenet of No Pride in Genocide’s community-building and cultural work.
“Our strategy is one of care for ourselves and for each other,” Roth says. “Just as we will push on these organizations and politicians and individuals with power, we also recognize that we need to fill ourselves back up to sustain for the long haul of this fight, and we believe that as queer people, we are able to do that really well for each other.”
Some of this work takes place through food, music, dancing, and healing. Last week’s action in Washington, D.C., was followed by a dinner for activists to be in community with one another.
Nasr says No Pride in Genocide is continuously growing and “emergent.” There is much more to come in the following months, including more coordinated direct actions in multiple cities across the nation.
In many ways, No Pride in Genocide may well be complementary to the Stop Cop City Movement, which deals with the same topic of Israeli military oppression, just on U.S. soil. It has also suffered derision as “domestic terrorism” and government repression.
“We also see No Pride in Genocide as an umbrella, a network where we can be working with folks in other cities across the country to be in coordinated action together and to share resources,” Roth said. “We do know there are so many resources out there, people are doing so much work at this moment, and we want to be able to both help folks find it and work together on it and share.”
Organizers and activists looking to get plugged in with the No Pride in Genocide movement or add their organizations to the growing list of signatories on their petition can do so at their website. There, activists can also find a multitude of resources to help others do the work of liberating Palestine.
“The framing that we’re coming with is, ‘How can we create a space where all of this information is not only accessible, but is actionable?’” Nasr said.
Despite having roots in progressive politics and the writing of activists like Ghassan Kanafani and Noura Erakat, Nasr said there is not one single political ideology or guiding thought behind No Pride in Genocide.
