The media coverage surrounding the events at this years Dyke March has reminded me that Palestinian voices rarely, if ever, are solicited and our narratives must be co-opted by allies to lend legitimacy to our experiences. As I read all of the articles coming out, I see no Palestinian voices given a platform to express our experiences. Instead, we are these elusive lines, lightly mentioned as those who felt unsafe. Though not one sentence was written about how our experience as victims of Zionism leads us to feel unsafe. As a queer Palestinian woman who was present at Dyke March on June 24, I want to offer my story to defend the actions that Dyke March Collective took to fight racism and create safe space for queer Palestinians.
The first time I saw the rainbow flag with the blue Star of David was at Tel Aviv Pride in 2011. I was in Tel Aviv to grab the bus to Haifa to meet my uncle, who would then drive me to our small village in the heart of Galilee. As usual, the bus was full with Israeli soldiers wearing their military uniforms, with their automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. I took the only seat available to me, and spent the next 3 hours with the cold steel butt of a worn M-16 periodically rubbing against my exposed arm. Quietly paralyzed in fear each time it brushed against me.
I am a Palestinian citizen of Israel currently living in the United States. My family has suffered for 80 years under the rule of Zionist militias and political administrations. From al-Nakba, when Zionist forces massacred our youth in front of our village Church and forcibly exiled my family members to Lebanon; to the internment camps used against Palestinian citizens of Israel fighting to keep their farm lands; to the ongoing occupation of East Jerusalem; my family has survived many faces of Zionism
.
My Palestinian identity weighs heavy as I attempt to navigate this world that has watched our ethnic cleansing and dispossession. Since coming out a year ago, I have found that embracing my queerness has constructed a new prison for me to sit in. As I kiss my partner, my throat lumps up thinking about if they will find outthey being the Israeli government. The Israeli government likes to position itself as a beacon for queer rights in the Middle East. Yet it is known for using Palestinians queerness against us and our liberation.
My worries swirl through my thoughts, as I am with her: Perhaps first they will approach me with threats of exposing my truth to convince me to inform on my family. If I refuse, maybe they will go to my uncles who are afraid of what others will think. Maybe Israel will hold me in their prisons on undisclosed charges until I am broken and I give in to their wishes. Or maybe they will just say I am a collaborator, and sentence me to death within my own community. And then maybe they will use my limp body to proclaim the greatness of their liberal Zionist democracy that is such a safe haven for us queers.
When I saw marchers with Israeli Pride flag on June 24, I remembered that bus ride, and I no longer felt safe. After we arrived at Piotrowski Park, a friend and I approached the marchers carrying this flag to ask them what the intent was behind it. During the conversation, the marchers who brought the flags expressed support for Zionism, and in response, we, queer Palestinians asserted that Zionism is racism, and that racism has no space in radical queer liberation movements. In response to our criticism of their presence at this march, I was personally threatened by a transgender Zionist, who lowered her voice to a masculine tone and threatened to use her man voice to put me in my place. The Zionist marchers then began to accuse us of anti-Semitism, at which point Dyke March organizers became involved and began to engage the Zionist marchers in conversation. At this point, my friends and I left the situation. Two hours later, after an extended conversation with a variety of Jewish anti-Zionist and allied Dyke March organizers, during which the organizers made clear that the march is a pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist one, the Zionist marchers folded up their flags and left.
Charges of anti-Semitism are a historic tool used to silence Palestinian organizing efforts, to delegitimize our suffering, and to move the conversation away from our fight for liberation. What truly pains me is that a triumphant moment in Chicagos Dyke March history to reject the presence of all forms of racism has been transformed into a false attack on Judaic communities.
The full narrative of what happened that day, as articulated by the Dyke March organizers and other supporting organizations, was omitted from the public record. Instead, the narrative was framed entirely by a representative of A Wider Bridge, who was one of the individuals who brought the flag. The two-hour conversations regarding Zionism and the origin of their flag in queer Israeli movements was also not acknowledged. In recounting Saturdays events, these individuals disregarded our concerns about the history of their flag and how it continues to oppress Palestinians, specifically queer members such as myself.
The fears I associate with the Israeli Pride Flag are real. You cannot erase the violence of Zionism against queer Palestinians by claiming that this is just a Jewish flag, effectively gas lighting Palestinians for associating the flag as a symbol of ethnic cleansing and occupation. You cannot cleanse this flag of its context and its continuous use in Israel to deny Palestinians of their rights.
Chicago Dyke March stood by queer Palestinians on Saturday in a radical act of resistance against normalization of Zionism within queer spaces. Their leadership acknowledged our pain upon being exposed to this flag, which reminds many of how our existence both as Palestinians and as queer people is under attack. This is the allyship we dream of! Those who cannot acknowledge the violence of Zionism are not our allies. And you are not our allies if you distort our actions against Zionism to reframe them in the false language of anti-Semitism to distract people from the truth of this moment.
