By Toby Clarke
“In the nation of Israel, people can live freely and love freely, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East where you can have a pride march”. These are the words of Micheal Gove, a senior conservative MP and longstanding ally of the Israeli state. Gove, like much of the political class, is attempting to ally Israel with a seemingly progressive international order, an order which argues that social progress can only be sustained if the geo-strategic interests of the West are upheld. Gove’s pinkwashing serves another purpose, In labelling the Arab world as inherently Queerphobic, he relegates Palestinians to a subclass of humanity, a backwards people undeserving of common compassion, and perversely, deserving of their collective punishment. With little room for resistance and a dearth of international solidarity, Queer Palestinians have used social media as a means of halting their erasure.
