When the Greens-led Marrickville council campaigned to introduce the ill-fated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) scheme against Israel in March, posters popped up all over Sydney's inner west asking, 'Do the Greens hate gays?'
The aim of these posters — ultimately traced, not to a gay rights group but to a member of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies — was to discredit the Greens' stance on human rights. After all, if the Greens really stood for gay rights then they wouldn't be boycotting the 'only country in the Middle East where homosexuality is not a capital offence or even a crime'.
This, it turns out, was not an isolated incident but rather part of a larger pattern of what many in the gay rights community have dubbed 'pink washing'. That is, a concerted, worldwide effort, often by the Israeli government itself, to use gay rights as a means of winning public support for Israel.
Shai Bazak, Israel's consul-general to New England, has deemed November 'Out In Israel' month in Boston, and organised gay celebrities to give panel discussions of their (positive) experiences of being openly gay in Israel. And earlier this year, the Israeli foreign ministry set up an exhibition of gay art in London and Manchester, where, again they invited prominent gay Israelis to attend.
One invitee, Gal Uchovsky, revealed that the brief sent by the ministry insisted speakers inform English audiences 'that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that respects gay rights ... where gay people can live openly and safe'. Uchovsky ultimately declined the invitation.
This is not the first time Israel has seized on global struggles in order to win the public relations war against Palestinians. In 2008, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech at Israel's Bar Ilan University, declared Israel was 'benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon', which had 'swung American public opinion in (Israel's) favour'.
Indeed, 9/11 marked the point at which Israel reframed its conflict with the Palestinians, as a fight against terrorism rather than anti-Semitism.
Israel is 'spinning' gay rights in a similar way. Gays do enjoy more rights in Israel than in the Palestinian territories, due primarily to their own tireless and often