I

World

Zionist Support Targeted

Gay rights workshop axed; pro-Israel organizers
charged with promoting Israeli apartheid.

Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News

f the 1,400 workshops scheduled
for the U.S. Social Forum (USSF)
held in downtown Detroit June
22-26, only one of those dealing with the
Middle East was sponsored by a pro-Israel
Zionist organization. But the abrupt can-
cellation of the StandWithUs (SWU) ses-
sion on gay rights in that embattled region
of the world left the conference essentially
Zionism-free.
Not that Zionism wasn't mentioned.
Planning committee members rep-
resenting the United States Palestinian
Community Network and the International
Jewish Anti-Zionist Network were at the
forefront of the more than 30 sessions
rejecting Israel's "right to exist" and striv-
ing to ensure that existence vanishes.
The U.S. Social Forum calls itself a
gathering "of the world's workers, peas-
ants, youth, women and oppressed peoples
to construct a counter-vision to the eco-
nomic and political elites of the World
Economic Forum held annually in Davos,
Switzerland." The Detroit gathering was the
follow-up to the first USSF held in Atlanta
in 1997.
StandWithUs, a Los Angeles-based
international Israeli advocacy organiza-
tion with an active Metro Detroit presence,
was approved to offer "LGBTQI Liberation
in the Middle East" five weeks before the
session was to take place on June 24. The
workshop made it through a vetting pro-
cess that rejected almost three-quarters of
the 4,000 submissions, but was cancelled
about 24 hours before it was to be held.
LGBTQI is an acronym for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender and queer-inquiring.

Building Tension
In response to an e-mail message from the
Jewish News requesting an explanation,
Adrienne Brown, national co-coordinator
of the USSF National Planning Committee
and head of The Ruckus Society, respond-
ed, "Yes, today the National Planning
Committee cancelled a workshop from an
organization that had violated the social
forum anti-racist principles and misrepre-
sented itself, abusing our submission pro-
cess and our value for transparency." While
the e-mail message invited further inqui-
ries, repeated JN requests for clarification

16

of the alleged violations went unanswered.
Problems arose after StandWithUs
Midwest Regional Coordinator Brett
Cohen, a gay rights pro-Israel activist who
was to present the workshop, sent a June 16
e-mail message to his contact in the USSF
Program Work Group informing her that
he had been receiving threatening mes-
sages. He inquired about security at the
Forum.
The contact expressed initial concern,
Cohen says, but "after that e-mail, the tone
completely changed, and I received a nasty
e-mail from the program staff that they
were deciding what to do with me, citing
that I had misrepresented StandWithUs
— which is patently false — and that they
were going to get back to me:'
When they did get back to him, a day
before the workshop, it was not to discuss
the charges but to let him know, in a one-
line e-mail message, that the session had
been cancelled.
"There was no fair review; they were not
interested in hearing from us," Cohen said.
Days earlier, on June 21, a statement
apparently signed by the USSF National
Planning Committee — the commit-
tee refused to confirm it — appeared on
several websites. It affirmed principles of
"equality, self-determination, transparency
and accountability" and charged that "far
from its claim to represent LGBTQI com-

munities in the Middle East, [the work-
shop's] purpose is to defend and justify
Israeli apartheid." It continued that Cohen
"has claimed to speak for the 'queer Middle
East' when, in reality, he speaks only for
Israel:' It said that committee planners
were "engaged in a very real strategic
debate about how to move forward;' prom-
ising that the session would not proceed
"uncontested."

Boycott Pushed
The National Planning Committee
claimed it was responding to protests
against the StandWithUs workshop;
indeed, there were messages on vari-
ous radical websites urging a boycott of
the USSF if the LGBTQI session was not
cancelled. A June 16 statement from four
groups claiming to represent Middle East
LGBT communities charged StandWithUs
with exploiting Middle East lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender people and
with doing Israel's bidding.
After Cohen received the e-mail
message cancelling the workshop,
StandWithUs issued a lengthy statement
to rebut the charges. "This was the only
workshop about the plight of gays in the
Middle East, but the organizers' unfor-
tunate prejudice against Israel trumped
their commitment to human rights:' the
statement read, quoting StandWithUs

Participant Observations

CEO Roz Rothstein of Los Angeles.
"When the USSF and other activists
take these positions, they don't seem to
be proponents of human rights. Instead,
they are hypocritical or actually enemies
of human rights and of peaceful co-exis-
tence. .. Such bigotry is a grave threat to
human rights values everywhere when
obsessive focus on Israel trumps all else
Rothstein concluded.
"The real tragedy is that once again,
the voice of the persecuted Middle
Eastern LGBTQI community is being
silenced;' said Cohen, who has regularly
presented the multimedia presentation
on gay rights. "They face murderous
persecution and discrimination: citing
harassment, imprisonment, forced sex-
change operations, execution and "honor
killings."
Cohen said his presentation uses video
and documents from Arab LGBT groups
in an effort "to shed light on their plight
and connect conference participants to
these important organizations so that
they could offer assistance and shed light
on this viciously persecuted minority."
A statement issued by 14 Arab organi-
zations welcomed the USSF action, call-
ing the rejection of the gay rights work-
shop a "historic accomplishment" and a
"victory for our struggle and indeed the
struggle for justice for all."

Below is a rough consensus of the anti-Israel organizing at the USSF based on the experiences of about a dozen
Jewish observers:
• Visibility: The opening march of about 4,000 people was predominantly local community groups and union people.
The anti-Zionist Jewish and Palestinian/Arab contingent had no visible presence at the march: among a sea of signs,
only two banners mentioned Palestine. Overall, the anti-Israel/anti-Zionist message was applauded and accepted by
many groups, but was irrelevant to much that went on. While organizers said 14,000 people registered for the Forum,
not even half that number appeared to attend.
• Sessions: Nearly half of the more than 30 sessions scheduled to deal with Israel, Zionism, Palestinian rights and
the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) campaign didn't take place. It was not uncommon to open a door to find
an empty room or just a handful of people. For example, four concurrent workshops at the Woodward Academy were
combined into one when only 14 people showed up. At a major session organized by the United States Palestinian
Community Network, together with leaders of Code Pink, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Gaza
Freedom March and the National Lawyers Guild, only 50 people attended.
• Attitude: Observers from both the left and the right found an atmosphere discouraging questioning or indepen-
dent thought. Participants were told that Palestinian groups had already made the decisions as to analysis and tactics
- and true activists would follow their lead. Efforts to expand discussion to issues like Hamas (the Palestinian terrorist
organization that rules the Gaza Strip), the right of Jews to self-determination or the benefits of a two-state solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were quickly dismissed or met with disdain.
• The "Take Away": It was clear that a core of knowledgeable, committed and networked activists - many Jewish
- are working to intensify their efforts, especially on American college campuses.

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