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Because there's no shame in airing Israel's diry laundry in public.

How Israel tries to clean up its image as a violator of Palestinian human rights through misleading LGBT, environmental and Jewish identity PR campaigns.

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Campaign Case Study: Toronto Pride (WIN)

Posted on 11.07.11 to PinkWashing.

After two years of lobbying the Pride Toronto organization, several Israeli advocacy groups succeeded in pressuring the Gay Pride committee to censor the term “Israeli Apartheid” from all 2010 Pride related events and thus not allow Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in the Pride march.  QuAIA has marched in the Toronto Gay Pride parade since 2008 to protest against the Brand Israel campaign and its targeting of Toronto. Under pressure from Israeli advocacy groups, the City of Toronto threatened to take away funding from Pride Toronto if they did not oust QuAIA. When Pride Toronto announced its censorship decision in May 2010, they claimed that the use of the words “Israeli Apartheid” made participants feel “unsafe” and that they were obligated to respect the anti-discrimination policy of the City of Toronto.

After this decision was announced, a massive backlash occurred within the queer community:  the founders of the 1981 Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day issued an open letter opposing the decision and showing solidarity with QuAIA. The grand marshal and honored dyke of Pride Toronto both refused their appointments, and 23 past and present awardees returned their statuettes to Pride Toronto.  Many queer leaders and organizations urged Pride Toronto to reverse its decision; a group called “Pride Coalition for Free Speech” formed, and worked to create protests and alternative events to Pride Toronto.

One week before its annual parade, Pride Toronto announced that it would no longer censor the phrase “Israeli apartheid” from the parade.  Why did they give in?  As Naomi Klein argued at a fundraiser for QuAIA, “they messed with the wrong community (“A Case study in failure”).  The Canadian queer community has a long history of fighting censorship of everything from gay porn to various components of pride parades.  As Andrew Brett argues, while the Israel advocacy groups used backroom lobbying of gay leaders, anti-censorship queers turned to the grass roots community by holding various community events, including a town hall discussion about Pride Toronto.