Ahead of Tel Aviv Pride, queer activists bring the occupation home [View all]

LGBTQ activists hang banners and graffiti anti-occupation slogans across Tel Aviv in the run-up to the city’s annual pride parade. 180,000 people are expected to take part in the festivities, at least half of them tourists.

By Yael Marom

In the run up to Friday’s Tel Aviv Pride festivities, Israeli LGBTQ activists hung banners and spray-painted anti-occupation graffiti across the city. The signs, which read “Occupation: Israeli Pride” and “You cannot pinkwash the occupation” were hung from bridges at the main entrances to the city. Meanwhile activists graffitied slogans such as “You can’t pink wash occupation” in both Hebrew and English in dozens of locations.

The activists behind the action hope that the slogans catch the attention of at least some of the LGBTQ community and their supporters who are arriving in Tel Aviv to take part in the festivities.

The banners and graffiti are part of a week-long campaign by queer activists to raise awareness of the occupation, and the ways in which the Israeli government uses tolerance toward the LGBTQ community to divert attention from its human rights abuses.

Earlier last week queer activists published a response to this year’s official Pride music video, “Pink,” which was produced in tandem with the Tel Aviv municipality and includes the controversial artist “Shefita,” who does a Arabic-inflected cover version of the famous Aerosmith song. The women who dance alongside Shefita in the original video are replaced with images of home demolitions, aerial bombings, checkpoints, dead Palestinians, and the suppression of nonviolent demonstrations in the occupied territories.

Source :http://972mag.com/ahead-of-tel-aviv-pride-queer-activists-bring-the-occupation-home/119781/