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If you’re queer or LGBTQIA+ and pro-Palestinian, chances are you’ve been hit with the phrase ‘you’d be killed for being gay in Palestine’ or something similar. This is an example of pinkwashing.
According to DecolonizePalestine, Pinkwashing ‘refers to when a state or organization appeals to LGBTQ+ rights in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices.’ The term has been used since at least 2010, by groups like the San Francisco Bay Area queer political action group, Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT).
Israel has been promoting itself as a queer utopia, with Rabbi Denise L. Eger from the Jewish Journal describing Israel as ‘the only safe space in the Middle East for LGBTQ people.’ Conversion therapy in Israel was not banned until 2022, and same-sex marriage is not permitted in Israel, although marriages outside the country are recognised.
Israel’s pinkwashing is dependent on demonising Palestinians, alongside all Arabs and Muslims, as being inherently queerphobic (DecolonizePalestine). Not only is this done to deflect Israel’s genocidal tendencies towards Palestinians, but it is also done to deflect its own queerphobia. It deflects how Israel targets LGBTQIA+ Palestinians ‘into becoming informants against their friends and families by blackmailing them and threatening to expose their sexualities’ (Ashley Bohrer, 2014). It deflects how Israel killed approximately 100 Iranian transgender people incarcerated in Evin Prison.
Queer Iranian writer Mira Iranpour, in her article, Israel Killed 100 Imprisoned Trans Iranians. I Could Have Been One of Them sums up pinkwashing perfectly:
‘I learned about how Israel blackmails queer Palestinians…I learned how their bombs don’t check who’s queer before the Israeli military drops them on Gaza, how genocide doesn’t distinguish between straight and gay. I learned that queer Israelis also suffer from a homophobic government that calls them a threat to the family and refuses to let them get married…I learned that queer Palestinians live under siege and occupation with no rainbow safety anywhere.’
It seems like the people who say ‘you’d be killed for being gay in Palestine’ as an excuse for genocide only like to acknowledge queerphobia when it suits them. Oftentimes, they ignore (and in some cases, even defend) queerphobia happening in their own countries, countries that are often labelled as more “civilised”—countries such as Australia, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom.
Israel has no right to label itself as a safe haven for queer people. Not when it is actively murdering queer people and engaging in horrific acts of genocide.
Sources:
DecolonizePalestine, Pinkwashing
Denise L. Eger, Israel is the Only LGBTQ Safe Haven in the Middle East, Jewish Journal (2019)
Equaldex, LGBT Rights in Israel
Ashley Bohrer, Against the pinkwashing of Israel, Al Jazeera (2014)
Mira Iranpour, Israel Killed 100 Imprisoned Trans Iranians. I Could Have Been One of Them, truthout (2025)
Pew Research Centre, How people around the world view same-sex marriage (2023)
Tom Bateman, Netanyahu signs Israel coalition deal with anti-LGBT Noam party, BBC (2022)
Oliver Holmes and Quique Kierszenbaum, Gay Israelis hold mass wedding to campaign for same-sex unions, The Guardian (2019)
Theia Chatelle, How Israel’s Elite Intelligence Unit Targets Queer Palestinians in the West Bank, Drop Site (2024)
Written by El Bancroft
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