Below is a statement from Arab queer organizations. You can help by writing a letter to the US Social Forum or emailing them.

We, the undersigned queer Arab organizations, are appalled by the US Social Forum’s decision to allow Stand with Us to utilize the event as a platform to pinkwash Israel’s crimes in the region. Stand with Us is cynically manipulating the struggle of queer people in the Middle East through its workshop entitled “LGBTQI Liberation in the Middle East.”

Stand with Us is a self-declared Zionist propaganda organization which describes itself as “an international education organization that ensures that Israel’s side of the story is told in communities, campuses, libraries, the media and churches through brochures, speakers, conferences, missions to Israel, and thousands of pages of Internet resources”
(http://bit.ly/b9eAc4).

Stand with Us has no connection with the LGBT movement in the Middle East apart from ties to Zionist Israeli LGBT organizations, yet it claims to speak for and about our movements. It has no credibility in our region, and as organizations working in and from the Middle East, we condemn its attempt to use us, our struggles, our lives, and our experiences as a platform for pro-Israeli propaganda.

Since Israel’s brutal wars on Gaza and Lebanon in 2006 and particularly after the recent unprovoked attack on the flotilla of activists going to Gaza, the Israeli government has found itself increasingly marginalized by international condemnations and weakened through the growing success of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. To remedy this, it has launched a massive PR campaign using organizations such as Stand with Us to convince the world that Israel is not a brutal settler-colony state, but rather a free democracy where human rights in general, and LGBT rights in particular, are respected and upheld. Stand With Us deceptively uses the language of LGBT and women’s rights to obscure the fact that institutionalized discrimination is enshrined within the state of Israel.

Our struggle is deeply intertwined with the struggle of all oppressed people, and we cannot accept that we are being used as a tool to discredit the Palestinian cause. Stand with Us would have everyone believe that the Palestinian cause is an unworthy one because of the homophobia that exists within Palestinian society, as if homophobia does not exist elsewhere, and as if struggles for justice are predicated on some sort of inherent “goodness” of the oppressed, rather than on the principles of freedom, justice, and equality for everyone, everywhere. Stand with Us would have us all compartmentalize our beliefs, lives, and identities so that solidarity with the queer struggle would preclude solidarity with others.

While Stand With Us is quick to point out the oppression of queer Palestinians under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, it conveniently forgets that those same queers are not immune to the bombs, blockades, apartheid and destruction wrought upon them daily by the Israeli government, and that Israel’s multi-tiered oppression hardly makes a distinction between straight and gay Palestinians.

We refuse to be instrumentalized by anyone, be it our own oppressive governments or the Zionist lobby hijacking our struggle to legitimize the state of Israel and its policies, thus providing even more fodder for our own governments to use against us. If you want to learn about our movements and struggles, engage with us, rather than with those who will use us as pawns in Israel’s campaign to pinkwash its crimes.

The inclusion of Stand With Us at the USSF is an egregious oversight on the part of the forum. We ask the forum to justify this inclusion given that it violates its own principles of anti-racism, uniting oppressed communities, prioritizing marginalized voices, and opposing US foreign policy. The USSF should be held accountable to its own standards. We look forward to hearing its plans to address the situation.

Helem, Lebanese Protection for LGBT
Al-Qaws, For Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society
ASWAT, Palestinian Gay Women
Palestinian Queers for BDS, pqbds.wordpress.com

Assiut–In the realm of sexual taboos in Egypt, the issue of “intersex individuals”–or those born with “ambiguous genitalia”–is certainly somewhere near the top of the list. While medical professionals take an impartial approach to treatment and surgical operations, social and cultural factors pose a challenge for affected individuals and their families.

In Assiut, Upper Egypt’s largest city, where the local culture is among Egypt’s most conservative, various factors–from inbreeding to a lack of knowledge among pregnant women–have led to a disproportionately large number of cases of intersex children. But with exact figures unrecorded by the Health Ministry–and affected individuals not stepping forward–it remains difficult to determine just how large the problem is.

“In Upper Egypt, the family denies and often keeps secret that their children have this problem, since the condition is seen as shameful. They fear he or she will be a homosexual,” explains a senior official at the Assiut Department of Health. “But from a human and medical standpoint, these individuals are just patients. Unfortunately, this is not yet readily accepted by society.”

Nevertheless, some cases are beginning to come forward. Since 2000, doctors in Assiut have performed over 25 local intersex surgeries. Prior to that, cases were sent to Cairo for treatment.

“Male or female?” asks Dr. Mustafa el-Sonbaty, head of plastic surgery at Assiut University. Sitting in his private clinic, he covers one side of a thick photo album containing photographs of his past patients with one hand, and produces a photo of a naked individual of indeterminate gender.

As we are unable to formulate a response, the doctor, who has operated on 15 intersex individuals in Assiut since 2000, promptly comes to our aid, revealing the opposite page of the album.

“You see? This penis was not properly developed while in its mothers fetus,” he says enthusiastically, pointing to what looks like a small phallus. He then points towards the individual’s pelvis. “Do you see those two swollen spots? Those are the testes, but they’re inside–this is a male pseudo-hermaphrodite,” he concludes.

The term “hermaphrodite” is not to be confused with transsexual or transgender, which describe individuals who identify with a gender different to their biological one. While transsexuals are fully male or female in the physical sense, intersex individuals’ “gender dilemma” is rooted in their physiology.

True hermaphroditism is an extremely rare condition in which individuals are born with both male and female reproductive organs, embodying both XX (female) and XY (male) chromosomes. Medical professionals study the chromosomes and run tests to measure hormones, along with other indicators of sex, and usually restore the child to the more dominant gender. In his 15 years of medical practice, el-Sonbaty has witnessed only one such case.

Male and female pseudo-hermaphrodites are slightly more common. Such persons suffer from a congenital sexual disorder in which they are born with ambiguous reproductive organs, or “mixed” sex anatomy. The condition includes a wide range of symptoms, including undeveloped, underdeveloped or disfigured sexual organs.

The unusual genitalia of intersex babies may confuse doctors and midwives. Thus, a child may be mistaken for a male when she is in fact female–and vise versa.

According to el-Sonbaty, the causes of intersex disorders are 57 percent genetic, 16 percent predispository, and 27 percent unknown factors.

According to Dr. Abdel Moneim el-Haggagy, a urologist and pioneer of intersex operations in Assiut, intersexuality is one of many chromosomal disorders, including Downs Syndrome and cleft lip. The causes of these disorders vary, but according to el-Haggagy, inbreeding is one of the most significant.

“All of the cases of pseudo-hermaphrodite babies I’ve seen were born to third-degree relatives,” he says. “But other factors are also at play.”

High fertility rates in Egypt mean women are often unaware they are pregnant. Doctors, meanwhile, often fail to ask female patients whether or not they are pregnant before prescribing potentially harmful drugs or x-ray scans. Pharmacists, he points out, also rarely ascertain whether a woman is pregnant before selling over-the-counter medicine.

Exposing the fetus to radiation or harmful medication, such as certain antibiotics–especially during the first eight weeks of pregnancy–can cause damage to the development of an unborn child.

While elsewhere in the world most intersex disorders are immediately discovered and babies operated on within the child’s first two years, in Upper Egypt, the condition often goes undetected, says el-Haggagy. With the onset of puberty, intersex individuals usually begin to manifest signs of belonging to the opposite gender than the one they were assigned at birth.

“When a male pseudo-hermaphrodite child grows older and starts to show male characteristics, such as facial hair and boyish body structure, the family realizes its mistake,” says Tarek el-Gammal, chief of reconstructive microsurgery at Assiut University Hospital, who works closely with el-Haggagy on corrective surgery.

Exacerbating the issue for male pseudo-hermaphrodites (individuals born with disfigured male organs) is the widespread practice of female genital mutilation in Egypt, especially in the rural areas of Upper Egypt. Born with what is mistakenly assumed to be an unusually large vulva, the child is circumcised, losing what is in fact his disfigured penis.

Restoring the organs involves a complex, 12-hour operation, requiring a team of at least five medical personnel, including a micro-surgeon, urologist and anesthesiologist. Tissues from the patient’s arm are used to rebuild the missing part of the male organ and connect it to the nerves and veins. Post-operation recovery lasts four to five days in an intensive care unit, during which time the patient undergoes a “masculinization” process that involves cutting his hair and changing his clothes.

“They are extremely happy after the operation,” says el-Gammal. “They are relieved that their problems are over.”

Despite the positive outcome for recovered patients, the Assiut doctors interviewed for this article point out that many affected individuals fail to come forward, embarrassed by their condition and overwhelmed by the social stigma associated with their condition.

This is especially the case for female pseudo-hermaphrodites, whose conditions are often discovered when the child reaches puberty and begins to menstruate. While more common than male psuedo-hermaphroditism–and in fact much easier to treat medically, using a simple surgical intervention to restore the size of the female organ to normal–few such patients come forward, and of those, none seen by el-Haggagy agreed to the operation, he says.

“She is entirely female, with XX chromosomes and the complete appearance of a woman, except for an enlarged female organ. But the families refuse such operations, and ask for temporary solutions instead,” says el-Haggagy. “Years later, they just give up when they see the drastic changes their child is undergoing.”

Conversely, the doctors report that families are usually quite happy to have their “daughter” transformed into a son overnight.

“I had one father who was so happy that he kissed my cheeks until they nearly fell off,” says el-Sonbaty.

While the doctors view intersexuality disorders as a serious health problem and acknowledge the usefulness of corrective surgery to reverse the condition, transgenderism is not viewed so kindly.

Although sex-change surgery is legal in Egypt, the patients and handful of doctors who agree to operate face intense religious and social scorn, and the Physicians Syndicate has banned transsex operations altogether. The infamous story of Sayyed, an Egyptian who underwent such a procedure in the late 1980s to become “Sally,” is still recalled by doctors when asked about transgenderism.

The Assiut doctors all report being requested by at least one individual for a sex change operation. After finding chromosomal and hormonal results normal, they reject the request, and instead refer the patient to psychologists.

“How could I be complicit in such a sinful crime?” asks el-Sonbaty. “Altering the body of a man with no physical issues to accommodate his psychological problems is a sin, as we would be changing what God created.”

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/beneath-galabiya-intersex-operations-assiut

Press statement

There is growing concern that the Iraqi government is stepping up a witch-hunt against gays and lesbians in the country after a police raid on a Karbala safe house.

On Tuesday 16th June, twelve police officers burst into the house, then violently beat up, and blindfolded the six occupants sheltering there, before bundling them off in three vans. According to a source who witnessed the raid, the police also confiscated computer equipment before burning down the house.

According to reports, one of the arrested people has turned up in hospital. Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the other five individuals, which include two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people. It is feared they may have been taken to the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, where, it is reported, many gay people have been tortured and executed in the last two years.
The one victim found so far – in hospital with slashed throat

Government forces have previously sized people particularly at roadblocks and handed them to militias who have then tortured them and their bodies have later been found.

None of the previous occupying powers have taken any action or delivered any criticism for these atrocities.

Iraqi LGBT feel that the reason the British and United States government in particular didn’t criticises the Iraqi government is because of the legacy of the occupation.

They have criticised the Malawian government and the Ugandan government.

In both those countries there is a strong religious opposition to homosexuality — as there is in Iraq.

Since the fall of Saddam, militias loyal to Shi’a clerics Grand Ayatollah al Sistani and Muqtada al Sadr, both of whom have called for homosexuals to be put to death, have been only too keen to carry out their leaders’ wishes. Over 720 LGBT people have disappeared or been murdered, many of whom have been tortured to death.

There is strong evidence that the government is colluding with these militia groups, by rounding up known homosexual and transgender people. A small number of safe houses, set up for LGBT people to live in relative safety, have been funded by Iraqi LGBT, a London based human rights group. In the current climate, these homes have been life-savers for those taking refuge in them. The house which was raided on Tuesday had been established in January this year.

With the arrest and the seizure of computers, it is feared the government will step up efforts to round up more of the country’s LGBT population.

Ali Hili, who is the leader of Iraqi LGBT, comments: “The UK media and politicians have been too quiet for too long about the violence LGBT people in Iraq. The militia and the powers that be know they can get away with it while that silence continues. It really is time for the Iraqi government to act on this and stop playing the role of guilty bystanders, while our brothers and sisters are murdered in silence”

Currently the UK Border Agency is deporting many Iraqis, some who left the country in fear of their lives after death threats from gangsters and religious militia. “The government is grossly underestimating the danger faced by Iraqi refugees.” says Ali. “The raid on Tuesday proves for LGBT people especially, Iraq is a no-go zone”.

http://iraqilgbt.org.uk/news-home/iraqi-police-raid-karbala-safe-house/

Jacqui Goddard in Miami and Jonathan Clayton in Nairobi

When he arrived at Kampala’s Hotel Triangle for a three-day conference, the Rev Kapya Kaoma knew that he would not like what he heard.

The clue was in the event’s title — “Exposing the truth behind homosexuality and the homosexual agenda” — and in the line-up of guest speakers arranged by Stephen Langa, head of the Ugandan-based Family Life Network (FLN), and an outspoken advocate for the criminalisation of homosexuality in Uganda.

Given top billing at the event hosted by the FLN was Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries, an American conservative Christian group from California, and a Holocaust revisionist whose controversial book The Pink Swastika names homosexuals as “the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.”

Weeks after the Kampala conference in March last year — which followed a meeting between the speakers and members of the Ugandan Parliament — a clause appeared in the country’s draft Anti-Homosexuality Bill recommending life imprisonment for certain homosexual “crimes” or, for “serial offenders”, the death sentence.

to continue reading this article, visit:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article7133431.ece

156 Eddy Street, SF (betw. Mason & Taylor)

Tickets at the door: $10 – 25 (cash only)

Whether it’s learning and claiming the word Lesbian in defining your desires, coming out to accepting, incredulous, or disparaging parents, or the hilarious trials of finding a girlfriend in Beirut, these true stories will have your attention from start to finish.

The lesbian, bisexual, queer, questioning and transgender writers in Bareed Mista3jil (pronounced Mista-a-jil) remain anonymous, and dedicate the book to ‘all of you with stories that are yet to be told.’ This anonymity emphasizes similarity in tone and topic to our stories internationally and audiences may catch a glimpse of themselves in this Beirut landscape.

From reclaiming the word ‘shazz’, which literally means ‘deviant’, to claiming the right to wear a hijab or the right to an atheistic belief, this book, recently published in Lebanon by a collective (www.bareedmista3jil.com.) is daring and bold. The performance of these stories brings that daring and boldness to life. (Artistic director: Happy/L.A. Hyder)

Funds raised will support Meem’s work in Lebanon.

http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/QFest10/Bareed.html

http://www.sffringe.org/now.html#anchor5606

Directions

EXIT Theatre is located in downtown San Francisco at 156 Eddy Street (between Mason & Taylor Streets), one and a half blocks west of the cable car turnaround at Powell and Market Street.

By public transportation take BART, the MUNI underground, or any Muni bus on Market Street and exit at Powell and Market Streets. Walk two blocks West on Eddy Street, which begins at the plaza at Powell and Market, to reach all four EXIT stages at Eddy & Taylor Streets.

Parking: Parking is available at the City owned Ellis O’Farrell Garage, located in the heart of the Union Square district three blocks east of the theaters (maximum $10 after 5pm and on Sundays). You can enter the garage from either Ellis or O’Farrell Streets, between Powell and Stockton. There are also private parking lots adjacent to EXIT Theatre at the corner of Eddy and Taylor Streets and on Eddy between Mason & Taylor, usually offering supervised parking for $15 – $20.

Driving from the East Bay just after reaching San Francisco on the Bay Bridge you take the Fifth Street off ramp (on the left hand side), continue West to Sixth Street and turn North. Continuing north on Sixth Street you cross Market Street onto Taylor Street. Two blocks further north you will be at the corner of Eddy and Taylor, adjacent to all the EXIT stages.

Driving from the South Bay you take either the Sixth Street exit from Highway 280 or the Seventh Street exit from Highway 101, continue north on Sixth Street across Market onto Taylor Street. Two blocks further north you will be at the corner of Eddy and Taylor, adjacent to all the EXIT stages.

Driving from the North Bay you cross the Golden Gate Bridge, entering San Francisco you continue east on Lombard Street and then turn South (right) on Van Ness Avenue. About two miles later you turn East (left) onto Eddy Street continuing until you reach Eddy and Taylor Streets, adjacent to all the EXIT Stages.

At the end of last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a revised policy statement on female genital mutilation (FGM) called “ritual genital cutting of female minors,” suggesting that the federal and state law in the US should permit paediatricians to offer a ritual “nick” of girls’ genitalia as a compromise to appease the cultural needs of their immigrant clients. International women’s rights organisations from the US, Africa, and Europe were quick to respond to this outrageous proposition calling on the AAP to retract its 2010 statement and revert back to its much stronger 1998 statement on the subject.
check link to continue reading:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/11/female-genital-mutilation-us-nicking

State of the Art: Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa

Panel III: Gendering the Middle East
Chair: Jessica Cattelino, UCLA
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Allen Fromherz, Georgia State University
Being Like Women to Be Better Men: The Male Mouth Veil

Sofian Merabet, The University of Texas at Austin
The Human Geography of Queer Identity Formations in Post-Civil-War Beirut, Lebanon

Nadia Dropkin, New York University
The Forty-One informants of Bareed Mistajil: A Textual Ethnography of Queer Women and Transgender Persons in Lebanon

Cortney L. Hughes, UC Irvine
Creating New Belongings: Colonial Pasts, Modern Discourses, and Reproductive Practices in Morocco

For more information on the event:

http://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/events/showevent.asp?eventid=7668

In Israel, people know you well. Your name was even in the popular film Ha-Buah [The Bubble - the tragic tale of a gay relationship between an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Muslim].

[laughs] Although I disagreed with the use of my name in that context. I mean, it was very funny to say, “don’t Judith Butler me,” but “to Judith Butler someone” meant to say something very negative about men and to identify with a form of feminism that was against men. And I’ve never been identified with that form of feminism. That?s not my mode. I’m not known for that. So it seems like it was confusing me with a radical feminist view that one would associate with Catharine MacKinnon or Andrea Dworkin, a completely different feminist modality. I’m not always calling into question who’s a man and who’s not, and am I a man? Maybe I’m a man. [laughs] Call me a man. I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women’s safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality. I was never against the category of men.

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A beautiful Israeli poem asks, “How does one become Avot Yeshurun?” Avot Yeshurun was a poet who caused turmoil in Israeli poetry. I want to ask, how does one become Judith Butler -especially with the issue of Gender Trouble, the book that so troubled the discourse on gender?

You know, I’m not sure that I know how to give an account of it, and I think it troubles gender differently depending on how it is received and translated. For instance, one of the first receptions [of the book] was in Germany, and there, it seemed very clear that young people wanted a politics that emphasized agency, or something affirmative that they could create or produce. The idea of performativity – which involved bringing categories into being or bringing new social realities about – was very exciting, especially for younger people who were tired with old models of oppression – indeed, the very model men oppress women, or straights oppress gays.

It seemed that if you were subjugated, there were also forms of agency that were available to you, and you were not just a victim, or you were not only oppressed, but oppression could become the condition of your agency. Certain kinds of unexpected results can emerge from the situation of oppression if you have the resources and if you have collective support. It’s not an automatic response; it’s not a necessary response. But it’s possible. I think I also probably spoke to something that was already happening in the movement. I put into theoretical language what was already being impressed upon me from elsewhere. So I didn’t bring it into being single-handedly. I received it from several cultural resources and put it into another language.

Once you became “Judith Butler,” we began to hear more about Jews and Jewish texts. People came to hear you speak about gender and suddenly they were faced with Gaza, divine violence. It almost felt like you had some closure on the previous matter. Is there a connection, a continuum, or is this a new phase?

Let’s go back further. I’m sure I’ve told you that I began to be interested in philosophy when I was 14, and I was in trouble in the synagogue. The rabbi said, “You are too talkative in class. You talk back, you are not well behaved. You have to come and have a tutorial with me.” I said “OK, great!” I was thrilled.

He said: “What do you want to study in the tutorial? This is your punishment. Now you have to study something seriously.” I think he thought of me as unserious. I explained that I wanted to read existential theology focusing on Martin Buber. (I’ve never left Martin Buber.) I wanted look at the question of whether German idealism could be linked with National Socialism. Was the tradition of Kant and Hegel responsible in some way for the origins of National Socialism? My third question was why Spinoza was excommunicated from the synagogue. I wanted to know what happened and whether the synagogue was justified.

Now I must go Jewish: what was your parents’ relation to Judaism?

My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue and after my grandfather died, she went to a conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning.

My mother’s uncles and aunts were all killed in Hungary [during the Holocaust]. My grandmother lost all of her relatives, except for the two nephews who came with them in the car when my grandmother went back in 1938 to see who she could rescue. It was important for me. I went to Hebrew school. But I also went after school to special classes on Jewish ethics because I was interested in the debates. So I didn’t do just the minimum. Through high school, I suppose, I continued Jewish studies alongside my public school education.

And you showed me the photos of the bar mitzvah of your son as a good proud Jewish Mother…

So it’s been there from the start, it’s not as if I arrived at some place that I haven’t always been in. I grew very skeptical of certain kind of Jewish separatism in my youth. I mean, I saw the Jewish community was always with each other; they didn’t trust anybody outside. You’d bring someone home and the first question was “Are they Jewish, are they not Jewish?” Then I entered into a lesbian community in college, late college, graduate school, and the first thing they asked was, “Are you a feminist, are you not a feminist?” “Are you a lesbian, are you not a lesbian?” and I thought “Enough with the separatism!”

It felt like the same kind of policing of the community. You only trust those who are absolutely like yourself, those who have signed a pledge of allegiance to this particular identity. Is that person really Jewish, maybe they’re not so Jewish. I don?t know if they’re really Jewish. Maybe they’re self-hating. Is that person lesbian? I think maybe they had a relationship with a man. What does that say about how true their identity was? I thought I can’t live in a world in which identity is being policed in this way.

But if I go back to your other question… In Gender Trouble, there is a whole discussion of melancholy. What is the condition under which we fail to grieve others? I presumed, throughout my childhood, that this was a question the Jewish community was asking itself. It was also a question that I was interested in when I went to study in Germany. The famous Mitscherlich book on the incapacity to mourn, which was a criticism of German post-war culture, was very, very interesting to me.

In the 70s and 80s, in the gay and lesbian community, it became clear to me that very often, when a relationship would break up, a gay person wouldn’t be able to tell their parents, his or her parents. So here, people were going through all kinds of emotional losses that were publicly unacknowledged and that became very acute during the AIDS crisis. In the earliest years of the AIDS crisis, there were many gay men who were unable to come out about the fact that their lovers were ill, A, and then dead, B. They were unable to get access to the hospital to see their lover, unable to call their parents and say, “I have just lost the love of my life.”

This was extremely important to my thinking throughout the 80s and 90s. But it also became important to me as I started to think about war. After 9/11, I was shocked by the fact that there was public mourning for many of the people who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, less public mourning for those who died in the attack on the Pentagon, no public mourning for the illegal workers of the WTC, and, for a very long time, no public acknowledgment of the gay and lesbian families and relationships that had been destroyed by the loss of one of the partners in the bombings. Then we went to war very quickly, Bush having decided that the time for grieving is over. I think he said that after ten days, that the time for grieving is over and now is time for action. At which point we started killing populations abroad with no clear rationale. And the populations we targeted for violence were ones that never appeared to us in pictures. We never got little obituaries for them. We never heard anything about what lives had been destroyed. And we still don’t.

I then moved towards a different kind of theory, asking under what conditions certain lives are grievable and certain lives not grievable or ungrievable. It’s clear to me that in Israel-Palestine and in the violent conflicts that have taken place over the years, there is differential grieving. Certain lives become grievable within the Israeli press, for instance – highly grievable and highly valuable – and others are understood as ungrievable because they are understood as instruments of war, or they are understood as outside the nation, outside religion, or outside that sense of belonging which makes for a grievable life. The question of grievability has linked my work on queer politics, especially the AIDS crisis, with my more contemporary work on war and violence, including the work on Israel-Palestine.

It’s interesting because when the war on Gaza started, I couldn’t stay in Tel Aviv anymore. I visited the Galilee a lot. And suddenly I realized that many of the Palestinians who died in Gaza have families there, relatives who are citizens of Israel. What people didn’t know is that there was a massed grief in Israel. Grief for families who died in Gaza, a grief within Israel, of citizens of Israel. And nobody in the country spoke about it, about the grief within Israel. It was shocking.

The Israeli government and the media started to say that everyone who was killed or injured in Gaza was a member of Hamas; or that they were all being used as part of the war effort; that even the children were instruments of the war effort; that the Palestinians put them out there, in the targets, to show that Israelis would kill children, and this was actually part of a war effort. At this point, every single living being who is Palestinian becomes a war instrument. They are all, in their being, or by virtue of being Palestinian, declaring war on Israel or seeking the destruction of the Israel.

So any and all Palestinian lives that are killed or injured are understood no longer to be lives, no longer understood to be living, no longer understood even to be human in a recognizable sense, but they are artillery. The bodies themselves are artillery. And of course, the extreme instance of that is the suicide bomber, who has become unpopular in recent years. That is the instance in which a body becomes artillery, or becomes part of a violent act. If that figure gets extended to the entire Palestinian population, then there is no living human population anymore, and no one who is killed there can be grieved. Because everyone who is a living Palestinian is, in their being, a declaration of war, or a threat to the existence of Israel, or pure military artillery, materiel. They have been transformed, in the Israeli war imaginary, into pure war instruments.

So when a people who believes that another people is out to destroy them sees all the means of destruction killed, or some extraordinary number of the means of destruction destroyed, they are thrilled, because they think their safety and well-being and happiness are being purchased, are being achieved through this destruction.

And what happened with the perspective from the outside, the outside media, was extremely interesting to me. The European press, the U.S. press, the South American press, the East Asian press all raised questions about the excessive violence of the Gaza assault. It was very strange to see how the Israeli media made the claim that people on the outside do not understand; that people on the outside are anti-Semitic; that people on the outside are blaming Israel for defending themselves when they themselves, if attacked, would do the exact same thing.

Why Israel-Palestine? Is this directly connected to your Jewishness?

As a Jew, I was taught that it was ethically imperative to speak up and to speak out against arbitrary state violence. That was part of what I learned when I learned about the Second World War and the concentration camps. There were those who would and could speak out against state racism and state violence, and it was imperative that we be able to speak out. Not just for Jews, but for any number of people. There was an entire idea of social justice that emerged for me from the consideration of the Nazi genocide.

I would also say that what became really hard for me is that if one wanted to criticize Israeli state violence – precisely because that as a Jew one is under obligation to criticize excessive state violence and state racism – then one is in a bind, because one is told that one is either self-hating as a Jew or engaging anti-Semitism. And yet for me, it comes out of a certain Jewish value of social justice. So how can I fulfill my obligation as a Jew to speak out against an injustice when, in speaking out against Israeli state and military injustice, I am accused of not being a good enough Jew or of being a self-hating Jew? This is the bind of my current situation.

Let me say one other thing about Jewish values. There are two things I took from Jewish philosophy and my Jewish formation that were really important for me… well there are many. There are many. Sitting shiva, for instance, explicit grieving. I thought it was the one of the most beautiful rituals of my youth. There were several people who died in my youth, and there were several moments when whole communities gathered in order to make sure that those who had suffered terrible losses were taken up and brought back into the community and given a way to affirm life again. The other idea was that life is transient, and because of that, because there is no after world, because we don’t have any hopes in a final redemption, we have to take especially good care of life in the here and now. Life has to be protected. It is precarious. I would even go so far as to say that precarious life is, in a way, a Jewish value for me.

I realized something, through your way of thinking. A classic mistake that people made with Gender Trouble was the notion that body and language are static. But everything is in dynamic and in constant movement; the original never exists. In a way I felt the same with the Diaspora and the emancipation. Neither are static. No one came before the other. The Diaspora, when it was static, became separatist, became the shtetl. And when the emancipation was realized, it became an ethnocratic state; it also became separatist, a re-construction of the ghetto. So maybe the tension between the two, emancipation and Diaspora, without choosing a one or the other, is the only way to keep us out of ethnocentrism. I suppose my idea is not yet fully formulated. It relates to the way I felt that my grandfather was open to the language of exile while being connected to the land at the same time. By being open to both, emancipation and Diaspora, we might avoid falling into ethnocentrism.

You have a tension between Diaspora and emancipation. But what I am thinking of is perhaps something a little different. I have to say, first of all, that I do not think that there can be emancipation with and through the establishment of state that restricts citizenship in the way that it does, on the basis of religion? So in my view, any effort to retain the idea of emancipation when you don’t have a state that extends equal rights of citizenship to Jews and non-Jews alike is, for me, bankrupt. It’s bankrupt.

That’s why I would say that there should be bi-nationalism from the beginning.

Or even multi-nationalism. Maybe even a kind of citizenship without regard to religion, race, ethnicity, etc. In any case, the more important point here is that there are those who clearly believe that Jews who are not in Israel, who are in the Galut, are actually either in need of return ? they have not yet returned, or they are not and cannot be representative of the Jewish people. So the question is: what does it mean to transform the idea of Galut into Diaspora? In other words, Diaspora is another tradition, one that involves the scattering without return. I am very critical of this idea of return, and I think “Galut” very often demeans the Diasporic traditions within Judaism.

I thought that if we make a film about bi-nationalism, the opening scene should be a meeting of “The First Jewish Congress for Bi-Nationalism.” It could be a secret meeting in which we all discuss who we would like to be our first president, and the others there send me to choose you? because we need to have a woman, and she has to be queer. But not only queer, and not only woman. She has to be the most important Jewish philosopher today.

But seriously, you know, it would be astonishing to think about what forms of political participation would still be possible on a model of federal government. Like a federated authority for Palestine-Israel that was actually governed by a strong constitution that guaranteed rights regardless of cultural background, religion, ethnicity, race, and the rest. In a way, bi-nationalism goes part of the way towards explaining what has to happen. And I completely agree with you that there has to be a cultural movement that overcomes hatred and paranoia and that actually draws on questions of cohabitation. Living in mixity and in diversity, accepting your neighbor, finding modes of living together. And no political solution, at a purely procedural level, is going to be successful if there is no bilingual education, if there are no ways of reorganizing neighborhoods, if there are no ways of reorganizing territory, bringing down the wall, accepting the neighbors you have, and accepting that there are profound obligations that emerge from being adjacent to another people in this way.

So I agree with you. But I think we have to get over the idea that a state has to express a nation. And if we have a bi-national state, it’s expressing two nations. Only when bi-nationalism deconstructs the idea of a nation can we hope to think about what a state, what a polity might look like that would actually extend equality. It is no longer the question of “two peoples,” as Martin Buber put it. There is extraordinary complexity and intermixing among both the Jewish and the Palestinian populations. There will be those who say, “Ok, a state that expresses two cultural identities.” No. State should not be in the business of expressing cultural identity.

Why do we use term “bi-nationalism?” For me it is the beginning of a process, not the end. We could say “multi-nationalism,” or “one-state solution.” Why do we prefer to use the term “bi-nationalism” rather than “one state” now?

I believe that people have reasonable fears that a one-state solution would ratify the existing marginalization and impoverishment of the Palestinian people. That Palestine would be forced to accept a kind of Bantustan existence.

Or vice versa, for the Jews.

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Well, the Jews would be afraid of losing demographic majority if voting rights were extended to Palestinians. I do think that there is the fundamental question of “Who is this ‘we’?” Who are we? The question of bi-nationalism raises the question of who is the “we” who decides what kind of polity is best for this land. The “we” has to be heterogeneous; it has to be mixed. Everyone who is there and has a claim – and the claims are various. They come from traditional and legal grounds of belonging that are quite complicated. So one has to be open to that complication.

Now I want to move to the last part of the conversation. It was over three years ago, at the beginning of the Second Lebanon war, that Slavoj Žižek came to Israel to give a speech on my film Forgiveness. The Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel asked him not to come to the Jerusalem Film Festival. They said that I should show my film – as Israelis shouldn’t boycott Israel, but they asked international figures to boycott the festival.

Žižek chose to ask for your advice. Your position then, if I recall correctly, was that it was most important to exercise, solidarity with colleagues who chose nonviolent means of resistance and that it was a mistake to take money from Israeli cultural institutions. Your suggestion to Žižek was that he speak about the film without being a guest of the festival. He gave back the money and announced that he was not a guest. There was no decision about endorsing or not endorsing a boycott. For me, at the time, the concept of cultural boycott was kind of shocking, a strange concept. The movement has since grown a lot, and I know that you’ve done a lot of thinking about it. I wonder what do you think about this movement now, the full Boycott, Diversion and Sanction movement (BDS), three years after that confusing event?

I think that the BDS movement has taken several forms, and it is probably important to distinguish among them. I would say that around six or seven years ago, there was a real confusion about what was being boycotted, what goes under the name of “boycott.” There were some initiatives that seemed to be directed against Israeli academics, or Israeli filmmakers, cultural producers, or artists that did not distinguish between their citizenship and their participation, active or passive, in occupation politics. We must keep in mind that the BDS movement has always been focused on the occupation. It is not a referendum on Zionism, and it does not take an explicit position on the one-state or two-state solution. And then there were those who sought to distinguish boycotting individual Israelis from boycotting the Israeli institutions. But it is not always easy to know how to make the distinction between who is an individual and who is an institution. And I think a lot of people within the U.S. and Europe just backed away, thinking that it was potentially discriminatory to boycott individuals or, indeed, institutions on the basis of citizenship, even though many of those who were reluctant very much wanted to find a way to support a non-violent resistance to the occupation.

But now I feel that it has become more possible, more urgent to reconsider the politics of the BDS. It is not that the principles of the BDS have changed: they have not. But there are now ways to think about implementing the BDS that keep in mind the central focus: any event, practice, or institution that seeks to normalize the occupation, or presupposes that “ordinary” cultural life can continue without an explicit opposition to the occupation is itself complicit with the occupation.

We can think of this as passive complicity, if you like. But the main point is to challenge those institutions that seek to separate the occupation from other cultural activities. The idea is that we cannot participate in cultural institutions that act as if there is no occupation or that refuse to take a clear and strong stand against the occupation and dedicate their activities to its undoing
So, with this in mind, we can ask, what does it mean to engage in boycott? It means that, for those of us on the outside, we can only go to an Israeli institution, or an Israeli cultural event, in order to use the occasion to call attention to the brutality and injustice of the occupation and to articulate an opposition to it.

I think that’s what Naomi Klein did, and I think it actually opened up another route for interpreting the BDS principles. It is no longer possible for me to come to Tel Aviv and talk about gender, Jewish philosophy, or Foucault, as interesting as that might be for me; it is certainly not possible to take money from an organization or university or a cultural organization that is not explicitly and actively anti-occupation, acting as if the cultural event within Israeli borders was not happening against the background of occupation? Against the background of the assault on, and continuing siege of, Gaza? It is this unspoken and violent background of “ordinary” cultural life that needs to become the explicit object of cultural and political production and criticism. Historically, I see no other choice, since affirming the status quo means affirming the occupation. One cannot “set aside” the radical impoverishment, the malnutrition, the limits on mobility, the intimidation and harassment at the borders, and the exercise of state violence in both Gaza and the West Bank and talk about other matters in public? If one were to talk about other matters, then one is actively engaged in producing a limited public sphere of discourse which has the repression and, hence, continuation of violence as its aim.

Let us remember that the politics of boycott are not just matters of “conscience” for left intellectuals within Israel or outside. The point of the boycott is to produce and enact an international consensus that calls for the state of Israel to comply with international law. The point is to insist on the rights of self-determination for Palestinians, to end the occupation and colonization of Arab lands, to dismantle the Wall that continues the illegal seizure of Palestinian land, and to honor several UN resolutions that have been consistently defied by the Israeli state, including UN resolution 194, which insists upon the rights of refugees from 1948.

So, an approach to the cultural boycott in particular would have to be one that opposes the normalization of the occupation in order to bring into public discourse the basic principles of injustice at stake. There are many ways to articulate those principles, and this is where intellectuals are doubtless under a political obligation to become innovative, to use the cultural means at our disposal to make whatever interventions we can.

The point is not simply to refuse contact and forms of cultural and monetary exchange – although sometimes these are most important – but rather, affirmatively, to lend one’s support to the strongest anti-violent movement against the occupation that not only affirms international law, but establishing exchanges with Palestinian cultural and academic workers, cultivating international consensus on the rights of the Palestinian people, but also altering that hegemonic presumption within the global media that any critique of Israel is implicitly anti-democratic or anti-Semitic.

Surely it has always been the best part of the Jewish intellectual tradition to insist upon the ethical relation to the non-Jew, the extension of equality and justice, and the refusal to keep silent in the face of egregrious wrongs.

I want to share with you what Riham Barghouti, from BDS New York, told me. She said that, for her, BDS is a movement for everyone who supports the end of the occupation, equal rights for the Palestinians of 1948, and the moral and legal demand of the Palestinians’ right of return. She suggested that each person who is interested, decide how much of the BDS spectrum he or she is ready to accept. In other words, endorsement of the boycott movement is a continuous decision, not a categorical one. Just don’t tell us what our guidelines are. You can agree with our principles, join the movement, and decide on the details on your own.

Yes, well, one can imagine a bumper sticker: “what part of ‘justice’ do you fail to understand?” It is surely important that many prominent Israelis have begun to accept part of the BDS principles, and this may well be an incremental way to make the boycott effort more understandable. But it may also be important to ask, why is it that so many left [wing] Israelis have trouble entering into collaborative politics with Palestinians on the issue of the boycott, and why is it that the Palestinian formulations of the boycott do not form the basis for that joint effort? After all, the BDS call has been in place since 2005; it is an established and growing movement, and the basic principles have been worked out.

Any Israeli can join that movement, and they would doubtless fine that they would immediately be in greater contact with Palestinians than they otherwise would be. The BDS provides the most powerful rubric for Israeli-Palestinian cooperative actions. This is doubtless surprising and paradoxical for some, but it strikes me as historically true.

It’s interesting to me that very often Israelis I speak to say, “We cannot enter into collaboration with the Palestinians because they don’t want to collaborate with us, and we don’t blame them.” Or: “We would put them in a bad position if we were to invite them to our conferences.” Both of these positions presume the occupation as background, but they do not address it directly. Indeed, these kinds of positions are biding time when there is no time but now to make one’s opposition known. Very often, such utterances take on a position of self-paralyzing guilt which actually keeps them from taking active and productive responsibility for opposing the occupation even more remote. Sometimes it seems to me that they make boycott politics into a question of moral conscience, which is different from a political commitment. If it is a moral issue, then “I” as an Israeli have a responsibility to speak out or against, to sink into self-beratement or become self-flagellating in public and become a moral icon. But these kinds of moral solutions are, I think, besides the point. They continue to make “Israeli” identity into the basis of the political position, which is a kind of tacit nationalism. Perhaps the point is to oppose the manifest injustice in the name of broader principles of international law and the opposition to state violence, the disenfranchisement politically and economically of the Palestinian people. If you happen to be Israeli, then unwittingly your position shows that Israelis can and do take positions in favor of justice, and that should not be surprising. But it does not make it an “Israeli” position.

But let me return to the question of whether boycott politics undermines collaborative ventures, or opens them up. My wager is that the minute you come out in favor of some boycott, divestment or sanctions strategy, Udi, you will have many collaborators among Palestinians. I think many people fear that the boycott is against collaboration, but in fact Israelis have the power to produce enormous collaborative networks if they agree that they will use their public power, their cultural power, to oppose the occupation through the most powerful non-violent means available. Things change the minute you say, “We cannot continue to act as normal.”

Of course, I myself really want to be able to talk about novels, film, and philosophy, sometimes quite apart from politics. Unfortunately, I cannot do that in Israel now. I cannot do it until the occupation has been successfully and actively challenged. The fact is that there is no possibility of going to Israel without being used either as an example of boycott or as an example of anti-boycott. So when I went, many years ago, and the rector of Tel Aviv University said, “Look how lucky we are. Judith Butler has come to Tel Aviv University, a sign that she does not accept the boycott,” I was instrumentalized against my will. And I realized I cannot function in that public space without already being defined in the boycott debate. So there is no escape from it. One can stay quiet and accept the status quo, or one can take a position that seeks to challenge the status quo.

I hope one day there will be a different political condition where I might go there and talk about Hegel, but that is not possible now. I am very much looking forward to teaching at Bir Zeit in February. It has a strong gender and women’s studies faculty, and I understand that the students are interested in discussing questions of war and cultural analysis. I also clearly stand to learn. The boycott is not just about saying “no” – it is also a way to give shape to one’s work, to make alliances, and to insist on international norms of justice. To work to the side of the problem of the occupation is to participate in its normalization. And the way that normalization works is to efface or distort that reality within public discourse. As a result, neutrality is not an option.

So we’re boycotting normalization.

That’s what we’re boycotting. We are against normalization. And you know what, there are going to be many tactics for disrupting the normalization of the occupation. Some of us will be well-equipped to intervene with images and words, and others will continue demonstrations and other forms of cultural and political statements. The question is not what your passport says (if you have a passport), but what you do. We are talking about what happens in the activity itself. Does it disrupt and contest the normalization of the occupation?

You remember that in Toronto declaration against the spotlight on Tel Aviv at the film festival, it was very clear that we do not boycott individuals, but the Israeli foreign minister tried to argue that we were boycotting individuals. Yet the question is about institutions. On that note, I want to clarify: You will not speak in Tel Aviv University… forever? Well, not forever…

When it’s a fabulous bi-national university [laughter]

Udi Aloni is an Israeli-American filmmaker and writer

24/02/2010

Helem would like to invite you to attend the launching of two case studies on institutional discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Lebanon:

“The Rights of Gays and Lesbians to Universities” (Arabic) – Tamam Mroue

This study sheds light on the situation of gays and lesbians in Lebanese universities based on studies on protocols, internal rules and curricula at each university, as well as studies on publications outsourced by the university. The case study also reviews various sources and books on academic education in regards to the issue of homosexuality, as well as conducts a thorough investigation with students and instructors.

The study emphasizes in its conclusion the result of institutional discrimination on gays and lesbians in universities, and the importance of combined work by human rights organization in the civil sector to change the current situation of gays and lesbians in universities. The study also looks into the situation of gays and lesbians at Lebanese schools and the necessary changes that need to be made to school curricula.

“Homophobia in Clinical Services in Lebanon: Physicians Survey” (English) – Dr. Faysal El Kak

This study investigates the level and type of homophobia found at clinical services in Lebanon and explains the reasons behind it through studies and statistics done on a group of doctors in Lebanon, based on their educational background, their monitoring of new information and research in their field of work, and their opinions and practices concerning gays and lesbians.

The study points out that discrimination in clinical services isn’t the sole product of doctors and practitioners, but also the result of the health services as a whole in Lebanon that promotes homophobia and prejudices towards gays and lesbians

Place: Beirut Theater, Ain Mreisseh, Beirut

Time: Monday, 8th of March, 2010 at 6:30 pm

(Open to the public)

The discussion covered poetic aesthetics and devices, verse form and rhyme, rhythm, symbolism, ambivalence, cliches and pitfalls, etc.

At the end of the workshop, the attending poets-to-be each wrote a poem based on an exercise that Gya put together. It involved listening to a melody, tasting a questionable violet elixir, and of course being caressed by a feather on one side of the face while being nearly scratched on the other (what else would we do for creativity to kick in?).

Poets-to-be then combined their writing into a collective poem, made up of lines from each individual poem. Needless to say, a mere bottle of perfume (perfume being a word we were not allowed to use) triggered *some* bitter memories with *certain* people’s exes (hence the ambivalent dramatic title?)

Here’s the final outcome:

“Bitter Embrace”

Splish splash, a splash

of dew or vin rosé,

a mix of forced sweet temptations

or simply the poison you poured
in my tea.

Inside the apple, an unusual
apple of deformed
seeds barefoot, running in a field
and the sniff of cardboard smell.

I tend to forget that
a whiff of her scent comes in
little pink bottles.

She left the lake behind and

a shadow of birds’ flock
dripping in ten lumps of sugar.
She’s the sweating flower
that goes through my veins

sweet sea in my mouth.

The lasting irritation

of her callous hands.