Group offers $1 million to ‘Queers for Palestine’ to host ‘Pride Parade’ in West Bank or Gaza
Some anti-Israel student groups have dismissed Israeli acceptance of LGBTQ-identifying individuals as ‘pinkwashing.’
The New Tolerance Campaign said it started this initiative ‘to contrast the lives of LGBTQ individuals in the Palestinian territories and Israel.’
A U.S. nonprofit said it will give $1 million to “Queers for Palestine” or other LGBTQ groups to organize a “Pride Parade” in Palestinian-ruled territories.
The New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) announced on Sept. 16 a “$1,000,000 wake-up call to ‘Queers for Palestine,’” prefacing the announcement with “This isn’t a joke. It’s not a publicity stunt. Our offer is real.” The NTC then revealed it has “secured $1,000,000 to underwrite expenses for an LGBTQ Pride Parade in Gaza or the West Bank.”
NTC states that it is a “watchdog organization mobilizing Americans to confront intolerance double-standards by establishment institutions, civil rights groups, universities, and socially-conscious brands.” It claims that its mission is to “uphold real tolerance in American society.”
“For nearly a year, “Queers for Palestine” and allied groups have insisted that Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are “inclusive” — here’s their chance to prove it,” the announcement continues.
NTC claimed it launched this initiative “to contrast the lives of LGBTQ individuals in the Palestinian territories and Israel,” but that it has “evolved into a realization that achieving Palestinian recognition for LGBTQ rights could lead to true liberalization of the Arab world — and thus, eventually, peace.”
The announcement points out that Israel is accepting of LGBTQ-identifying people, in stark contrast to the Arab countries where such individuals face widespread persecution. The $1 million officer is thus meant to “awaken acceptance and greater tolerance in the Arab world.”
NTC wrote that, starting on Sept. 16, “mobile billboards will be circulating around Columbia University . . . in New York City, the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign . . . in Washington, DC, and UCLA . . . in Los Angeles advertising our offer and encouraging Queers for Palestine (or any LGBTQ organization) to accept our challenge.”
The announcement concludes by stating that hosting a Pride Parade in one of the Palestinian territories would “empower grassroots LGBTQ movements within Arab countries and work toward improving human rights for all.”
The deadline for an organization to accept NTC’s challenge is March 16. The stipulations require, among other measures, a minimum of 200 individuals to march in the parade, with an 80 percent majority of Palestinians from the Palestinian territories.
NTC shared with Campus Reform a statement from NTC’s president, Gregory T. Angelo, who said: “The New Tolerance Campaign ‘Million-Dollar Queers for Palestine Challenge’ is meant to turn heads, but it’s sincere. When all is said and done one of two things will happen: there will be a breakthrough moment for pluralism and peace that has the potential to change the entire Arab world, or ‘Queers for Palestine’ and their supporters will see that the governments they’re marching in support of don’t want their support at all.”
[‘Queers4Palestine’ block Philadelphia pride parade: ‘No pride in genocide’]
Those who identify as LGBTQ face persecution in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Same-sex relations in Gaza can incur a punishment of up to a decade behind bars. In 2022, a gay Palestinian man was murdered and his body mutilated after he had initially tried to find sanctuary in Israel.
In 2019, the Palestinian Authority prohibited al-Qaws, a Palestinian LGBTQ advocacy organization, from operating in the West Bank.
Despite the contrast between Israeli and Palestinian treatment of LGBTQ-identifying individuals, anti-Israel activists have repeatedly dismissed Israeli tolerance as “pinkwashing.”
In March, a Rutgers University professor condemned those who state the fact that LGBTQ-identifying people are abused by Hamas, saying: “So I’ve been at protests where I’m then told ‘don’t you know what Hamas would do to you, if you were in Palestine’. . . . We have to start naming this as homophobic. You cannot rehearse violence to queer people. It’s violent.”
In his July address to Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Some of these protesters, hold up signs proclaiming gays for Gaza, they might as well hold up signs saying, chickens for KFC!”
