The QuAIA Wars https://www.concordia.ca/press/regulationofdesire.html
The development of homonationalism and its relation to Canadian anti-Palestinian state policy set the stage for the wars waged over the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in Pride Toronto. As McCaskell points out: “To expose Canada’s strategic ally as an apartheid state was unsettling to the power structure in which Pride wanted to be included and on which it depended for financial survival.”[i]
I was in a loud, energetic contingent of hundreds of people in Pride Toronto’s parade in 2010 in support of Palestinian rights. There was also a large free speech contingent that year in opposition to the attempt to keep Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) out of Pride. I was helping with marshalling the QuAIA contingent and I noticed a number of times when members of the Jewish Defence League (a now dissolved right-wing racist group[ii]) came into our contingent to try to provoke trouble. I had stopped going to Pride Toronto for a number of years in the 1990s and early 2000s because of its growing commercialization, presence of corporations and banks, mainstream political parties, and large police contingents. I was drawn back when Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) started having a presence, since this raised a more progressive and often liberationist approach in solidarity with other oppressed people. I supported QuAIA when it started to be attacked by supporters of Israeli apartheid (separation and subordination) policies [iii] against the Palestinians. These attacks on QuAIA included City politicians and the board and staff of Pride Toronto.[iv]
As mentioned earlier, as corporate funding and state agencies became more present at the Pride parade (initially a march), it transformed from a day for celebrating and pushing forward our struggles in combination with the struggles of other oppressed people into a site for homonationalist performances celebrating the Canadian state, including its support for the Israeli state against the Palestinians. Here QuAIA ran right up against the attempts by the Israeli state to rebrand itself as a “progressive,” pro-gay nation with its pinkwashing campaigns focusing on the “advances” the Israeli state has made, while obscuring the continuing occupation, colonization and subordination of the Palestinians.[v] When city funders made noises about cutting funding to Pride because of QuAIA’s participation, the Pride executive moved to try to ban QuAIA and the use of the term “Israeli Apartheid.” City councillor Kyle Rae—who earlier was a member of Gay Liberation Against the Right Everywhere, was involved with organizing Pride Toronto for many years, and had been the Executive Director of the 519 Community Centre—now moved to oppose QuAIA. Rae had been initially supportive of QuAIA’s participation but changed his position and came to support a ban on QuAIA’s participation when powerful City politicians threatened Pride funding if QuAIA participated.[vi]
In response, I helped to pull together a solidarity letter from many of the people who had organized the first Toronto Pride at the end of June in 1981, aside from Rae. We wrote:
“As founding members of the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee, and people involved in organizing the first Pride event in Toronto at the end of June in 1981, we stand totally opposed to the decision of the current Toronto Pride Committee to ban the use of “Israeli Apartheid” at Toronto Pride events. This banning of political speech is clearly an attempt to ban the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) and queer Palestine Solidarity supporters from the parade and from participation in a major event in our communities.”
The statement went on to say:
“We call on the Pride committee to immediately rescind this banning and to instead encourage QuAIA’s participation in the pride parade.… We remind people of the political roots of Pride in the Stonewall rebellion against police repression in 1969 and that the Pride march in 1981 in Toronto grew out of our community resistance to the massive bath raids of that year.… We also remember in the 1980s that lesbian and gay activists around the world, including in Toronto in the Simon Nkoli Anti-Apartheid Committee, took up the struggle not only for lesbian and gay rights in South Africa but linked this to our opposition to the apartheid system of racial segregation and white supremacy.… Solidarity with all struggles against oppression has been a crucial part of the history of Pride. To break this solidarity as the Pride Committee has now done not only refuses to recognize how queer people always live our lives in relation to race, class, gender, ability, and other forms of oppression but also breaks our connections with the struggles of important allies who have assisted us in making the important gains that we have won.[vii] “
There was also widespread resistance to these attempts to ban QuAIA, including large community meetings; a Pride Toronto media conference to announce the ban was disrupted by protestors wearing tape across their mouths; more than twenty former Pride honourees returned the awards they had received previously from Pride Toronto, and those nominated for international and local grand marshals, like Alan Li and others, refused to accept these positions; there was also a large free-speech contingent that year. In response to the attempts to ban QuAIA from Pride, bitingly political satirical group the Lesbian Billionaires chanted, “Whose Pride? TD [Toronto Dominion Bank] Pride.” They handed out monopoly money, asking, “Can we buy your Pride?”[viii]
The Pride Coalition for Free Speech (PCFS), focused on this ban as a free speech and anti-censorship issue. This unfortunately, diverted focus away from the actual work of building the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Israeli state until it respects Palestinian rights.[ix] A few of the people involved in The Pride Coalition for Free Speech became more mainstream organizers in LGBT groups after this. For instance, Douglas Kerr became involved in InterPride, the global network of Pride Committees, and the Dignity Initiative, where he is currently Executive Director, which collaborates with state agencies.[x] These mobilizations forced a reversal in position from the Pride board of directors.[xi] Continuing attempts to ban QuAIA over the next few years were all defeated.[xii]
This struggle not only took place in Toronto but in a number of centres across Canada and many places around the world. It became especially heated in Halifax. The Halifax Pride fair had a history of having a pro-Israel tourist booth at the fair after the parade. In the midst of the military onslaught on Gaza in July of 2014,[xiii] I encountered and challenged a Tel Aviv tourist booth at the Pride fair. The Halifax Rad Pride Collective had earlier had its ability to distribute flyers for pro-Palestinian actions in the vicinity curtailed by the Halifax Pride Committee. I made a complaint that went nowhere.[xiv]
But when Queer Arabs of Halifax and the Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Project (NSRAP), the only province-wide LGBT advocacy group, made similar proposals in 2016 to stop the pro-Israeli apartheid group from having a booth, the pro-Israel Atlantic Jewish Council brought in many straight members to stack the Halifax Pride Annual General Meeting and vote down these proposals. There were many Jewish groups and activists who, in contrast, spoke out in support of the Queer Arab and NSRAP positions. The result was mostly white, cis, straight people voting down these proposals, forcing the queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and racialized people present to walk out, followed by most of the other queer and trans activists as well.[xv] The decisions of this illegitimate meeting were deemed valid even though those voting ended up being mostly straight white people. Queer Arabs of Halifax called for a boycott of Pride activities for a number of years after this. They eventually did get an apology that never went far enough.
Important discussions were also raised within QuAIA and other queer Palestine solidarity groups about what solidarity meant when there was sometimes no clear “Palestinian queer” subject to be in solidarity with. In important ways, it was about developing more textured forms of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle more generally, which also raised specifically queer concerns in opposition to pinkwashing by the Israeli state.[xvi]
This in-the-end unsuccessful attempt to ban QuAIA was based on the mobilization of an orientalist form of homonationalism, which constructed Israel as the “civilized” state and the Palestinians as “homophobic” and “barbaric.”[xvii] This orientalist form of homonationalism grew out of the mobilizations surrounding the “war on terror,” addressed in the last chapter, that was not unfortunately challenged by mainstream LGBT groups.
QuAIA dissolved in 2015, but global queer and trans solidarity with Palestinian struggles and support for the BDS campaign continues.[xviii] More recently, Palestine solidarity activists have been targeted by governing institutions and pro-Isreali groups for their work. Toronto District School Board employee and queer activist Javier Davila was investigated and put on home assignment for making information about the Palestianian struggle available to parents and students.[xix] When Black author and activist Desmond Cole was invited to speak to the same Board of Education in 2021, he made a reference to solidarity with Palestine. For this, he faced major challenges from pro-Israel groups.[xx] Pride Toronto, in September 2022, selected a new auditing firm that is associated with anti-Palestinian groups.[xxi] This struggle continues!
Notes
[i] McCaskell, Queer Progress, 431. Also see Robyn Letson, “Coming Out? Against Apartheid: A Roundtable About Queer Solidarity and Palestine,” Upping the Anti 13 (March 2012): 137–51, https://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/13-coming-out-against-aparheid. Also see Christopher Samuel, Confirm, Fail, Repeat: How Power Distorts Collective Activism (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2017), 3–4, 69–70.:
[ii] Yves Engler, “Toronto’s Jewish Defence League is a Far Right Group with Powerful Friends,” Rabble.ca, April 5, 2017, https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/yves-englers-blog/2017/04/toronto-jewish-defence-league-far-right-group-powerful. Also see Michael Kaminer, “JDL Compares Gay People to Nazis,” Forward, April 15, 2011, https://forward.com/schmooze/137077/jdl-compares-gay-people-to-nazis/.
[iii] See Omar Barghouti, BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011).
[iv] McCaskell, Queer Progress, 406–407, 421–27, 432–37, 451–52. Also see Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail B. Baken, Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race: Exploring Identity and Power in a Global Context (London: I. B. Tauris, 2020), 175–203.
[v] See Barghouti, BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. Pink washing can be seen as the social practices that construct a state as pro-queer to hide its oppressive actions.
[vi] McCaskell, Queer Progress, 422.
[vii] See “Open Letter to Pride Toronto from Founders of Pride in 1981,” Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), May 27, 2010, https://queersagainstapartheid.org/2010/05/27/open-letter-to-pride-toronto-from-founders-of-pride-in-1981/.
[viii] McCaskell, Queer Progress, 432. This was repeated outside the TD Bank at Queen and Bay as part of the Abolitionist Pride March in 2022.
[ix] See Kinsman, “Queer Progress? Queered Marxism and the Making of the Neoliberal Queer Review Essays, #2.” Also see Kinsman, “Interview,” in Bhandar and Ziadah, Revolutionary Feminisms, 134.
[x] The Dignity Initiative is a network of Canadian organizations interested in human rights for LGBTI people globally. See Dignity Network/Réseau Dignité (website), http://www.dignityinitiative.ca/en/.
[xi] McCaskell, Queer Progress, 421–22.
[xii] Gentile and Kinsman, “National Security and Homonationalism,” 133–49.
[xiii] In July 2014, the Israeli military launched a major offensive against people in Gaza. More than 2,200 people were killed and more than 11,000 wounded. See Hanaa Hasan, “Remembering the 2014 Israeli Offensive Against Gaza,” Middle East Monitor, July 8, 2018, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180708-remembering-the-2014-israeli-offensive-against-gaza/.
[xiv] See Gary Kinsman, “Letter of Complaint to the Halifax Pride Committee Regarding Booth Promoting Tourism to Tel Aviv,” Radical Noise, July 25, 2014, https://radicalnoise.ca/2014/07/27/letter-of-complaint-to-the-halifax-pride-committee-regarding-booth-promoting-tourism-to-tel-aviv/.
[xv] See El Jones, “The Coup at the Pride Meeting,” Halifax Examiner, October 6, 2016, https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/the-coup-at-the-pride-meeting/.
[xvi] See Natalie Kouri-Towe, “Textured Activism: Affect Theory and Transformational Politics in Transnational Queer Palestine-Solidarity Activism,” in “Intimacies/Affect and Transgressing Borders/Boundaries: Gendering Space and Place,” special issue, Atlantis 37, no. 1 (2015): 23–34; and Letson, “Coming Out? Against Apartheid,” 137–51. Also see Abu Hatoum and Moussa, “Becoming Through Others,” 169–86.
[xvii] On homonationalism, see Puar, Terrorist Assemblages; Dryden and Lenon, Disrupting Queer Inclusion; and Gentile and Kinsman, “National Security and Homonationalism,” 133–49.
[xviii] QuAIA (website), https://queersagainstapartheid.org/.
[xix] See David Moscrop, “A Toronto Educator Is Being Attacked for Standing up for Palestinians,” Washington Post, June 1, 2021, sec. Opinion, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/01/canada-israel-tdsb-javier-davila-cancel-culture-education-moscrop/.
[xx] Desmond Cole, “Under Investigation: Anti-Palestinian Racism at the Toronto District School Board,” Yes, Everything! (blog), July 10, 2021, https://www.yeseverything.ca/blog/under-investigation-anti-palestinian-racism-at-the-toronto-district-school-board.
[xxi] Javier Davila has pointed out that one of the board members (the treasurer) of the auditing firm Crowe Soberman is on the board of the Jewish National Fund in Toronto. The Jewish National Fund engages in a series of discriminatory practices against Palestinians including support for dispossession of Palestinians from their land. The firm also sponsors many anti-Palestinian/pro-Israeli apartheid fund-raising events. Personal communication from Javier Davila, September 2022.
