#opinion / Prime Minister Netanyahu, LGBTQ+ people are not "chickens", and we are not Israel's problem in the world
The writer, Hila Pe'er (הילה פאר), is the chairperson of The #Aguda – Israel's LGBT Task Force
We need to talk about "LGBTQ+ for Hamas is like chickens for KFC", the phrase used by the Prime Minister during his speech to the American Congress. It's interesting that #Netanyahu mentioned the protests against Israel and instead of saying "liberals against Hamas" he said LGBTQ+. Have you tried to think why?
In recent years, there has been an attempt to make a connection between American progressives and #LGBTQ+, concluding that whenever there's a media storm attributed to "progress", such as protests against Israel, the culprits are LGBTQ+ people.
This is wrong for several reasons. First, we're not in the US, and the very dichotomous American politics isn't relevant to Israeli politics. In Israel, LGBTQ+ people are part of all segments of the population, right, left and center, religious and secular, and throughout the country. If you throw a stone in an LGBTQ+ crowd, you won't find two people who agree exactly on the same issues, even if they're both on the same political side. There's no one way to categorize us, and attempts to do so create enormous damage, excluding parts of the community and creating misconceptions about the community in Israeli society.
The second problem with linking the protesters to LGBTQ+ is that it's simply not true. Are some of the protesters LGBTQ+? Probably. Is their LGBTQ+ identity presented as a moral and ethical consideration for opposing Israel? Likely. But so is every person who stands in the US and world countries to protest against what they perceive as crimes against humanity by Israel.
Israel didn't lose the PR war against LGBTQ+ people. It lost the PR war against entire populations that consider themselves liberal and consume local news and biased content on social media on a regular basis.
Labeling protesters against Israel abroad as LGBTQ+ is not only outrageous but dangerous. Creating a connection between LGBTQ+ people and opposition to Israel puts Israeli LGBTQ+ people in the crosshairs without any justification.
This was also the case throughout the war with the use of the term "purple hair girl", which expresses everything that the straight white person perceives as "the other", "the strange" or the "incomprehensible" - girls with purple hair. Interestingly, it's precisely the hair color that expresses different thinking and creativity that causes such deep disgust. Again, instead of dealing with the issues that concern these young people and discussing the effects of media consumption and social networks on the social activism of that generation - they solve it with expressions that belittle and reduce these people, so that the simple person can exempt themselves from broader confrontation.
So there's someone to blame: The problem isn't with us or our failed public relations - the problem is with those who behave stupidly, who are uneducated, who don't understand what they've been given, who are ungrateful for the fact that they're not being thrown off rooftops in Gaza.
While Netanyahu mentioned LGBTQ+ protesters in his speech, he forgot about the LGBTQ+ public who watched on TV yesterday and didn't stop to think about how they felt hearing these words - why are we being talked about in the same breath as opponents of Israel? Why associate an entire public that fights, contributes, teaches, assists, that loves the country like anyone else, with our fiercest opponents?
October 7th only emphasized the gap between the mobilization and contribution of community members to the state, and the lack of equal rights and treatment that community members receive in Israeli public life. With the outbreak of the war, the gay community in Israel stepped up and contributed its part to the national effort in all sectors: in fighting, in public diplomacy, in volunteering, and in every task that arose, especially in light of the state's failure to prepare for an emergency. All this, without stopping to think about what rights we receive and what we don't.
A harsh reminder of the rights we need to fight for came with the fall of Major Sagi Golan RIP, which led to the amendment of the Bereaved Families Law, but so many laws still need amendment.
It's time we were treated as equals. We are not the scapegoats for the country's problems, nor are we its public relations solution. Don't use us, for good or bad, just give us completely equal treatment, like any citizen in the State of Israel.
Hebrew https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-07-26/ty-article-opinion/.premium/00000190-ee62-dda7-a9f7-ef7773970000 or https://archive.ph/h6f05#selection-848.0-855.8
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