Israel’s first trans officer helps with ethnic cleansing by Nora Barrows-Friedman

Dean Spade, a professor at the Seattle University School of Law and a member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, told The Electronic Intifada, “It is disturbing to learn that the Israeli government is sending a trans Israeli army commander on a public relations tour in the US, [and] to see this blatant attempt to co-opt the trans liberation struggle to make a brutal colonial military seem like a site of diversity and inclusion. How can it be a victory for trans liberation when trans people become embedded in the most violent operations of settler-colonialism and genocide?” Spade added. “How can we celebrate trans people clearing the land of indigenous people, arresting children, maintaining checkpoints and launching tear gas?”

… About a week before this month’s event with the Israeli officer, two members of the LGBTQ Commission resigned. “We all have issues that we stand for and for me I stand for the boycott, divest and sanctions movement. For me, it is an issue similar to South Africa apartheid,” Luzviminda Uzuri Carpenter wrote her colleagues in a resignation letter on 28 March. “I personally stand against the genocide of Palestinian people and cannot support militarized efforts or military personnel regardless of gender identity, gender expression, or sexuality or other identity markers,” Carpenter added.