“Gays, like women, are becoming a readily deployable tool in
service of geopolitical interests that are oppressive and anti-
emancipatory. As people concerned with fighting all forms, and
all networks of injustice, we must not allow that to
happen.”(Mikdashi 2011) Pinkwashing is “the attempt by a state
or people to highlight its treatment of gays to show how
progressive it is, in turn covering up human rights violations
from which it wishes to detract attention.” It has repeatedly
been used by western powers, for example, as a way to construct
themselves as “superior” or “advanced” because they support
LGBTQ rights, and to construct the Other as “backwards” because
they supposedly don’t support these rights. A person or
institution is engaging in pinkwashing when their motives are
not to help LGBTQs but rather to further a separate agenda. In
the recent past, Israel has perhaps been the most avid
“pinkwasher” due to its repeated attempts to divert attention
away from its brutal occupation of Palestine by const