Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego and People 4 Palestine Statement
Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego and People 4 Palestine are heartbroken and outraged at San Diego Pride’s decision to cancel the Pinkwashing 101 workshop, organized by us– queer and trans Palestinians, Jews, and allies– at this year’s She Fest event, an annual community gathering centering LGBTQ+ women and non-binary people.
For months, She Fest and San Diego Pride pledged their full support and commitment to hosting this workshop even in the event of Zionist backlash. Contrary to San Diego Pride’s public statement released at the conclusion of She Fest citing safety concerns, She Fest organizers directly informed us in a meeting on the morning of July 13th that San Diego Pride made the decision to cancel over “fiduciary concerns.” By canceling this workshop San Diego Pride made a clear decision to embrace pinkwashing over our community’s education and are complicit in the oppression of the Palestinian people.
“Pinkwashing refers to when a state or organization appeals to LGBTQ rights in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices.”
https://decolonizepalestine.com/
Pride organizations routinely engage in Israeli pinkwashing by relying on Zionist sponsors for funding and platforming organizations that promote pinkwashing and Islamophobia at their events. Despite this history, San Diego Pride issued a call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza earlier this year, and She Fest issued an even stronger statement encouraging action to “support Palestinians and to resist Islamophobia, Antisemitism, queerphobia and all intersecting forms of oppression.” After 9 months of Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people of Gaza, at least 38,000 have been murdered and recent estimates suggest the death toll could rise to 186,000 or 8% of Gaza’s population, including queer and trans Palestinians. Engaging in deceptive tactics to support a genocidal state contradicts both San Diego Pride and She Fest’s stated values of intersectionality and collective liberation.
She Fest organizers welcomed our workshop proposal with explicit commitment from San Diego Pride executive director, Jen LaBarbera, to support the pinkwashing workshop in the event of Zionist pressure to cancel it. Throughout weeks of private meetings, She Fest organizers and San Diego Pride collaborated with Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego and People 4 Palestine to write statements of support to respond to possible backlash and create a detailed safety plan to hold the workshop at She Fest, further casting doubt on the statement SD Pride and She Fest released citing an unspecified “risk to safety” and claiming to have no “thorough safety plan” as an excuse for cancellation.
On June 28, 2024, She Fest organizers assured us via email that “She Fest leadership are staunchly in support of following through with hosting Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego and People 4 Palestine, and not being pressured into canceling the workshop or event. We have Pride interim Co-ED Jen L.’s full support and backing.” The decision to cancel the workshop just over 12 hours before the start of She Fest contradicts San Diego Pride’s stated politics and values of inclusivity and collective liberation and their repeated commitment to supporting this pinkwashing workshop as part of She Fest’s educational events.
She Fest organizers specifically named Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as an organization involved in San Diego Pride’s decision to cancel the workshop. While we do not know specific details about the ADL’s influence on Pride’s decision, the ADL has a long history of targeting Israel’s critics with false accusations of anti-semitism, while presenting itself as a progressive civil rights organization. The ADL does not represent a unified Jewish perspective on Israel, the definition of anti-Semitism, or what constitutes Jewish safety. In 2020, more than 200 social justice organizations signed an open letter denouncing the ADL’s history of using false claims of antisemitism to undermine social justice movements and liberatory education.
When other workshop organizers learned of She Fest and SD Pride’s decision to censor Palestinian liberation, nearly half of the other workshops pulled out and many joined us at our spontaneous alternative location. We are grateful for this show of solidarity, and know it demonstrates that Pride’s Zionist censorship is not supported by the community it purports to represent.
Zionism is a European settler colonial project that requires the ongoing displacement of Palestinians and occupation of Palestine. Consequently, Zionism is fundamentally incompatible with San Diego Pride’s vision of a “world free of prejudice and bias.” SD Pride’s decision to cave under pressure from the ADL underscores its alignment with power at the expense of the organization’s stated commitment to “equality, and respect for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities locally, nationally, and globally.”
We elevate the words of Zaheer Suboh:
What do any of you know of my Palestine? Of the late night queer parties in Ramallah? Of raves held in biblically aged buildings? Of lesbians in hijabs, of gay men in hoop earrings, of trans Palestinians dancing with joyful abandon?
We fear Israel first, before our families, always. We’re 100 times more likely to die at the hands of an Israeli gun or bomb than by western propagandized ideas of honor killings.
I’ve seen White Christian Americans wish their child be dead rather than gay.
Israel is the one that weaponizes the homophobia that Queer people all over the world of all religions experience to justify murdering Palestinians of all kinds, young and old, Christian and Muslim, Queer and Straight.
Zaheer Suboh
San Diego Pride’s decision to cancel the workshop is a clear decision to embrace pinkwashing and to prioritize powerful donors over San Diego’s diverse LGBTQ+ communities. San Diego Pride and She Fest sent a clear message that not all queer identities and perspectives are welcome at their events. We are dismayed that 9 months into Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza and 76 years into the Zionist settler colonial project that has resulted in the displacement of millions of Palestinians, San Diego Pride bows to financial interests instead of following its own stated commitment to applying “an analytical lens of intersectionality.”
We honor the origins of Pride, a riot against powerful state interests, and know that our collective liberation will never come from corporate pride organizations who care more about funders than our communities.
Shame on SD Pride. Shame on She Fest. Free Palestine.