Statement On The Ongoing Genocide In Palestine

TQFF was founded in 2016 on the principle of deliberately rejecting the homonationalist consensus that has formed in and around major queer cultural institutions in Canada and internationally. Homonationalism refers to the facade of the promotion of LGBTQ rights by Western nations, and the parallel embrace of nationalist politics by LGBTQ individuals and organizations, to create a fiction of a homogenous, progressive LGBTQ friendly “us” (the west) and a regressive and intolerant “them” (the rest). Nation states capitalize on this fictional opposition’s legitimation of a “rights and rules based international order” to normalize the colonial projects of resource extraction, dispossession, environmental destruction, and settlement. Homonationalism has been used by the settler states of the US, Canada, and Israel to justify the acceleration of the genocide of the Palestinian people.

As a festival, we reject this homonationalist agenda and believe in the liberation of all people. We condemn the US, Israel, and Canada’s pinkwashing and the exploitation of queer and trans suffering in order to justify imperialism, colonialism, and genocide.

We reassert our commitment to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS) in line with the 2005 call from Palestinian Civil Society to engage in non-violent actions until Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.

To learn more about pinkwashing and homonationalism, watch this clip from Pride Denied: Homonationalism & the Future of Queer Politics (Kami Chisholm, 2016)