Israel's Dead Soul

Chapter 4. Sexuality, Violence, and Modernity in Israel: The Paradise of Not Being Arab

_ M uch of Zionism’s humanistic discourse relies on affirmation through negation: iran is irresponsibly nuclear (implying that israel deserves its nuclear weapons even though it still hasn’t confessed to having them), Arabs and muslims are irrationally violent (implying that israel is peaceable or uses violence judiciously), Arab states are backward and Third World (implying that israel is cosmopolitan and european). The latest Zionist intervention into the culture wars is especially clever and equally disingenuous : the Arabs are incurably homophobic (implying that israel is modern and open-minded if we allegorize queers as canaries and civic attitudes as coal mines). in 2009 standWithUs, an emergent Zionist organization, sponsored a campaign claiming that israel is a gay paradise and that gay Arabs and muslims, persecuted in their own societies, find sanctuary in an open-minded israel. But are these claims true? more important, what do the discourses underlying them suggest about the delusions of Zionism and the profound desire of its advocates to position israel in supposedly modernistic spaces? in undertaking analysis of these questions, i draw on and build from the work of Jasbir puar, whose Terrorist Assemblages explores the interconnection of sexuality and the violence of the nationstate .1 puar’s theoretical inquiry is superb but enters into intellectual terrain too ambitious for this project. However, i apply some Sexuality,Violence, and Modernity in Israel The Paradise of Not Being Arab Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth. —Theodor Adorno, MINIMA MORALIA 4 96 b Chapter 4 of her theoretical innovations to the newfangled propaganda initiatives around homosexuality and israeli tolerance. There are fruitful connections to be made between the relationship of feminism with colonization and the identification of purported homophobia as a marker of premodernity. lots of work has assessed the entanglement of certain forms of Western feminism in militaristic imperialism.2 This entanglement involves various political axes and ethical commitments. Of primary importance here is the ability of a humanistic idea such as feminism to be put into the service of war or oppression. That ability connects it to what puar calls homonational narratives, which refer loosely to the integration of national consciousness, including patriotism, and colonialist narratives of moral superiority (in this case, superiority in the form of advanced sexual consciousness). While the terms of imperialist discourses of feminism and homonationalism differ, dramatically in some cases, the use of such discourses as an indicator of proper modernity relies on the same ethical assumptions. The phenomenon is both fascinating and troublesome, and i highlight its rhetorical characteristics and political uses in the following. Paradise to Gay Palestinians? israel, according to some activists and advocacy organizations, is unusually gay friendly given its location in the middle east, a place of intractable homophobia. An advertisement in the 2009 campaign of standWithUs asks, “Why does israel look like paradise to gay palestinians?” The advertisement, which ran in numerous publications , displays the slogan, “israel respects life.” This slogan is nonspecific , but it needn’t specify anything to get its point across. By proclaiming that israel is a paradise—something of a propitious savior of the culturally unfortunate—for palestinians suffering the brutality of their own history, standWithUs uses a homonational claim as a synecdoche of israeli civility in general. Two notable ironies emerge: (1) israel is absolved of its colonial and military policies , which entail an unmistakable disrespect for palestinian lives. (2) israel is contextualized by the middle east but it ceases to be located there; standWithUs positions it in a community of modern nations exclusive of Arab and muslim states and allusive of a cultured european orientation. in reference to the second point, Sexuality, Violence, and Modernity in Israel b 97 standWithUs does not conceptualize israel in spatial terms; it does so through allusion to imagined geopolitical cohorts in europe, whose acceptance of homosexuals separates the region from the muslim backwaters of Asia and Africa. Another advertisement sponsored by standWithUs reinforces this civilizational binary through heavy-handed suggestion. The obvious image here is a noose, which drops into the ad almost serendipitously despite its spookiness, from an unseen hangman or apparatus. The main point of the noose is conspicuous: being gay in palestine is the equivalent of a death sentence. it suggests premodern forms of punishment, in keeping with the sort of irrationality that attends Arab homophobia. The noose is not only threatening; it is also arbitrary, stuck in a dark age whence...