So we decided to organise a small protest against the event. Even if Israel is friendly towards select LGBTQ individuals, this does not absolve it of the human rights abuses it perpetrates against Palestinians and minorities, including LGBTQ Palestinians.
![pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018 pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/tel-aviv-israel-june-gay-pride-parade-119134831.jpg)
I, like many others in the queer community, am against this appropriation of our movement. She had heard about an event called “Being Queer in Israel” which was to be held on campus and which was meant to encourage queer students, like ourselves, to study abroad in Israel.Įvents like this one constitute what we call pinkwashing, or the use of the LGBTQ movement as part of a public relations campaign to whitewash Israeli human rights abuses and war crimes by inaccurately glorifying Israel as liberal and “gay-friendly”.
![pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018 pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/tel-aviv-israel-june-gay-pride-parade-tel-aviv-israel-tel-aviv-israel-june-gay-pride-parade-tel-aviv-israel-119134966.jpg)
In January 2015, I received a message from one of my friends who was also a member of both organisations. While I regularly participated in protests organised by the Queer-Trans Coalition, I was also on the executive board of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Most people get to choose who they reveal their sexuality to the Canary Mission took that choice away from me.Īt UCSC, I was heavily involved in student activism. This has required me to out myself as queer to the general public. The only thing I could do about this is challenge them in writing. My foreign-sounding last name was enough for them to see me as an easy target, as someone who could be labelled a “terrorism supporter” and anti-LGBTQ. They didn’t include evidence to back their baseless claims about my activism because they didn’t need it. The Canary Mission attempted to erase my sexuality because of my race. I’m bisexual and Middle Eastern (my mother is Syrian-Armenian and my father was Lebanese-Armenian). In one of their online videos, they state that this is to “ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees”. They often use racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric to harass people, even going as far tweeting at their universities. The Canary Mission operates a website featuring profiles of the “blacklisted”, with demonstrably inaccurate summaries of their activism and a Twitter account which regularly cyberbullies people. Today, there are more than 2,000 people on their list. This image was first published by the Canary Mission, an anonymous reactionary group that blacklists students, professors, and activists who support Palestinian rights. Katherine Berjikian harassing LGBT community /Dn2sMLPrLL The signs make it very clear that the people participating in the protest, including me, are queer. Standing next to me are people holding signs saying “Queers against Pinkwashing” and “Queers against Apartheid”. The original picture tells a different story. It states in big rainbow colours, “Katherine Berjikian harassing the UCSC LGBTQ community”, followed by “and calling for terrorism” in red. It’s a photoshopped photo of me at a protest during a student gathering, its edges blurred out so you cannot see the people standing next to me.
![pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018 pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/tel-aviv-israel-june-gay-pride-parade-tel-aviv-israel-tel-aviv-israel-june-gay-pride-parade-tel-aviv-israel-118810563.jpg)
On top of the Google search page, you would see an image that has haunted me for a while now. You would know this if you Googled my name.
![pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018 pictures of gay pride parade in jerusalem 2018](https://s31242.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/GettyImages-1009693954.jpg)
However, shortly after I graduated in 2015, I was shocked to discover that an online hate group was accusing me of harassing the UCSC queer community – the very community I had been part of for two years. All the members of the coalition were queer, including me. When I was a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), I was involved with a group of students called the Queer-Trans Coalition, which was fighting for LGBTQ rights at the university.