I have some thoughts about Chicago Pride

tikkunolamorgtfo:

whatfreshhellisthis:

socialistsephardi:

jewish-privilege:

tikkunolamorgtfo:

jewish-mccoy:

1. The Chicago Dyke March included everyone–except Jews
2. This was because they made people feel “unsafe”
3. People were claiming “pinkwashing”
4. THEY USED THE STAR OF DAVID AS A COMPARISON TO THE SWASTIKA 
5. “Well done Israel–Hitler would be proud” 

I hope you all are really proud of yourselves.

I’m so mad, I can’t even fully put it into words. One of the marchers they ejected was a Queer Iranian Jewish women:

“I was here as a proud Jew in all of my identities,” [Eleanor] Shoshany-Anderson asserted. “The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional. I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I fell that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”

The Magen David on a pride flag isn’t anymore triggering than any other religious symbol on a pride flag.

I used to live in Chicago and I know for a fact that the Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ has not only participated in Dyke March in the past, but that their Pastor has done events on their behalf at the Broadway Youth Center, as one of my former colleagues was in the congregation. Lots of people from all walks of life have been persecuted under Christianity—is that not triggering?

I’ve seen the Crescent on pride flags before for LGBTQ Muslims. Why isn’t that considered triggering to Kurds because it’s on the Turkish flag? Or triggering to Jews whose families were expelled from places like Algeria and Tunisia, which also have the Crescent on their national flags?

Maybe—just maybe—it’s nothing to do with protecting people and everything to do with hating Jews.

Update from Chicagoist:

Update: Iliana Figueroa, a Dyke March Collective member, spoke to Chicagoist Sunday afternoon about the mounting criticisms on social media that Dyke March is facing in the wake of the march for the decision to ask the three people to leave. She says the Dyke March Collective is not anti-Semitic, and the decision reflected the members’ desire to support pro-Palestinian participants who believed the flags symbolized Zionism.

“Yesterday during the rally we saw three individuals carrying Israeli flags super imposed on rainbow flags. Some folks say they are Jewish Pride flags. But as a Collective we are very much pro-Palestine, and when we see these flags we know a lot of folks who are under attack by Israel see the visuals of the flag as a threat, so we don’t want anything in the [Dyke March] space that can inadvertently or advertently express Zionism,” she said. “So we asked the folks to please leave. We told them people in the space were feeling threatened.”

Figueroa also said she gave the people her cell phone number and offered to discuss the decision with them more later. She added that they didn’t leave immediately, but stayed at the Dyke March rally for “a few hours.”

Figueroa added that the collective will release a statement on the incident after it finishes crafting one, and that members have asked pro-Palestinian organizations and others to release statements of solidarity with Dyke March as well. In the meantime, the collective is facing accusations of anti-semitism on social media.

Okay what I’m getting here is that some non-Jewish, non-Palestinians saw a Star of David and immediately thought “ISRAEL,” decided that the best thing to do was kick them out of the parade preemptively because a religious symbol on a pride rainbow may trigger Palestinians, but they didn’t care at all how kicking out LGBT Jewish people out of a pride parade would trigger Jewish people. Oh but they aren’t antisemitic. Oh and also they’re asking for pro-Palestinian organizations to release statements of solidarity, but not Jewish organizations (whether pro-Palestine or not).

So in other words, you can be Jewish and LGBT, but only if you aren’t outwardly and publicly Jewish because you might “inadvertently…express Zionism.” (Dollars to donuts they wouldn’t be able to accurately express what Zionism is or would be befuddled that you can be a Zionist and also pro-Palestinian.)

Got it. They don’t care about Jewish people. Cool.

Also fact is they removed antizionist queer jews and are just totally ignoring that now??? Fucking backtrackers. My friend was told to leave because she was JEWISH. They said JEWISH.

your friend was asked to leave???? I’m getting so much conflicting info bc some of the jews who were asked to leave *were* from a pro-Israel pro-apartheid pinkwashing org “A Wider Bridge”, but the fact that they removed antizionist queer Jews is something people are keeping very schtum about 

fuck this!!!!! nasty!!!!!

You know what?

It doesn’t fucking matter if they were anti-Zionists or not.

Because even in the case of the woman affiliated with a ‘A Wider Bridge" it very specifically states in every article I’ve read it states that she (and others) were both harassed and ejected based on the flag alone, and that people made an explicit point of ~asking~ whether she was a Zionist because of it:

“She also said she lost count of the number of people who harassed her over the flag on Saturday. ‘People asked me if I was a Zionist…’”

Asked. They asked. Quizzed. Confronted. Because of a Magen David. Because the organizers decided that Jewish people being visible by displaying their own symbol was an inherently political statement.

So I don’t care if she didn’t pass their loyalty test, because it should have never been administered in the first place.

If you see somebody openly identifying as Jewish and your first inclination is to quiz them to make sure they’re a good Jew or to tell them their Jewishness is triggering, you’re a bigot, and I don’t fucking give a damn what organization it turns they’re affiliated with—it was an anti-Semitic question that had no right to be asked.