Don’t Include Me in this Imaginary Trans-Community: “We’re not duped: Palestine is an important issue for transgender communities”

Fuck you, with your antisemitic hate Israel and the Jews campaigns.  Anti-Zionism is coded language for Jew Hating.

The BDS Movement is Jew hating in action.

The attacking people who work for Isaraeli companies and universities is the same sort of behavior the ultra right wing uses for attacking people who support the rights of LGBT people.

Why am I supposed to support the Palestinians?  Seriously.  It seems as though they have had nearly 70 years to make peace with the Israelis.  Over those years Israel has had to defend itself from numerous Arab Nations attempting to wipe it out.

They were forced to wage a war on terror for nearly 50 years, prior to the 9/11 attack upon the USA in 2001.  If the people of the US had lost a proportionate number of people to suicide bombing that Israel has lost, the numbers would be in the tens of thousands and we too would be in a constant state of war.

Count me out of this campaign of ill disguised antisemitism.

From DePaulia:  http://www.depauliaonline.com/opinions/we-re-not-duped-palestine-is-an-important-issue-for-transgender-communities-1.3164663#.U16dFXfNuUl

By Aiden Bettine
Sunday, April 27, 2014

Editor’s note: This is in response to the recent op-ed “Israel Divestment campaign poses threat to peace, cooperation,” and concerns the overarching debate over student proposals for divestment from Israel.

The Israeli military occupation of Palestine is an important issue for trans* communities (editor’s note: the asterisk stands for inclusivity and refers to all identities in the gender spectrum that do not adhere to the gender binary). We as members of Trans*(formation) DePaul are proud to be a part of DePaul Divest, a student coalition calling for our university to divest from companies that profit from human rights violations committed by the Israeli government.

We see our struggles as transgender people as connected to the struggles of Palestinians. When we compare the experiences of Palestinians living under military occupation and the experiences of transgender communities in the United States, we see striking similarities: policing and mass incarceration, denial of access to healthcare, harmful stereotypes, media images that depict us as violent and unstable, and legacies of colonialism. Our communities are suffering at the hands of the same systems — and even the same companies.

Some of the companies that DePaul Divest is targeting also profit off of the oppression of transgender people. For example, DePaul is invested in Hewlett Packard. In Palestine, HP provides technology for checkpoints and surveillance systems and computer technology used by the Israeli military. HP products are also used in prisons and detention centers where Israel detains African migrants. Here in the United States, HP provides database technology used in prisons. Trans people — especially trans women of color — are disproportionately incarcerated. Therefore, HP profits from our oppression too.

We resent attempts to enlist our community in supporting the Israeli government. Since the early 2000s, the Israeli government has spent thousands of dollars targeting U.S. LGBTQ communities. Activists call this PR strategy “pinkwashing.” Through pride floats, film festivals, tours and advertising campaigns, the Israeli government has tried to persuade us that Israel is a gay- friendly country. But it’s obvious why the Israeli government wants to sell us its gay rights record. As Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) writes, “It’s not about gay rights … Pinkwashing aims to disparage Israel’s neighbors in order to justify the country’s existence as necessary by any means, relying on the image of a lone democracy barely surviving surrounded by violent, intolerant, women- hating and backward societies.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.depauliaonline.com/opinions/we-re-not-duped-palestine-is-an-important-issue-for-transgender-communities-1.3164663#.U16dFXfNuUl

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