You cannot pinkwash genocide: Why the (queer) refugee law studies community should be talking about Palestine – and why it is not
Zisakou, Sophia LU
; Ballin, Samuel
and Manganini, Irene
(2025)
In Feministiqa
- Abstract
- Palestinians represent one of the largest refugee populations in the world, and are reserved a special legal status under Article 1D of the Refugee Convention. A number of urgent novel questions are now also arising from the current genocide and mass displacement in Gaza, yet the refugee law studies community on the whole remains silent. This article examines academic silence and Israeli pinkwashing through the appropriation of queer and feminist approaches to refugee law. It reclaims the political commitments inherent in feminist and queer epistemologies as situated, decolonial, critical, and low theories, and describes the contemporary application of these commitments to both refugee law and the Palestinian struggle. Beginning from a... (More)
- Palestinians represent one of the largest refugee populations in the world, and are reserved a special legal status under Article 1D of the Refugee Convention. A number of urgent novel questions are now also arising from the current genocide and mass displacement in Gaza, yet the refugee law studies community on the whole remains silent. This article examines academic silence and Israeli pinkwashing through the appropriation of queer and feminist approaches to refugee law. It reclaims the political commitments inherent in feminist and queer epistemologies as situated, decolonial, critical, and low theories, and describes the contemporary application of these commitments to both refugee law and the Palestinian struggle. Beginning from a personal encounter with Israeli pinkwashing and academic silence during the meeting of a feminist working group, the authors critique and contextualise these two interlinked phenomena and the wider power structures which they reflect. It argues that behind this academic silence and censorship is a project of epistemicide that extends beyond occupied Palestine to the global stage: what should be a witness project, documenting and opposing genocide, has been transformed into a whiteness project of erasure and silence. The article calls on the migration and refugee law community –and those engaged in critical queer and feminist legal scholarship in particular– to take seriously the oppression and erasure of Palestine and academic complicity in the extreme material and onto-epistemic violence currently being perpetrated. With this, the authors distance themselves from the appropriation of queer and feminist politics to pinkwash genocide. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/397e8858-884f-4eaf-a08b-361310d9b348
- author
- Zisakou, Sophia
LU
; Ballin, Samuel
and Manganini, Irene
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-05
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Feministiqa
- issue
- 7-8
- ISSN
- 2585-3937
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 397e8858-884f-4eaf-a08b-361310d9b348
- alternative location
- https://feministiqa.net/en/you-cannot-pinkwash-genocide/
- date added to LUP
- 2025-05-24 01:27:36
- date last changed
- 2025-05-26 16:29:52
@article{397e8858-884f-4eaf-a08b-361310d9b348,
abstract = {{Palestinians represent one of the largest refugee populations in the world, and are reserved a special legal status under Article 1D of the Refugee Convention. A number of urgent novel questions are now also arising from the current genocide and mass displacement in Gaza, yet the refugee law studies community on the whole remains silent. This article examines academic silence and Israeli pinkwashing through the appropriation of queer and feminist approaches to refugee law. It reclaims the political commitments inherent in feminist and queer epistemologies as situated, decolonial, critical, and low theories, and describes the contemporary application of these commitments to both refugee law and the Palestinian struggle. Beginning from a personal encounter with Israeli pinkwashing and academic silence during the meeting of a feminist working group, the authors critique and contextualise these two interlinked phenomena and the wider power structures which they reflect. It argues that behind this academic silence and censorship is a project of epistemicide that extends beyond occupied Palestine to the global stage: what should be a witness project, documenting and opposing genocide, has been transformed into a whiteness project of erasure and silence. The article calls on the migration and refugee law community –and those engaged in critical queer and feminist legal scholarship in particular– to take seriously the oppression and erasure of Palestine and academic complicity in the extreme material and onto-epistemic violence currently being perpetrated. With this, the authors distance themselves from the appropriation of queer and feminist politics to pinkwash genocide.}},
author = {{Zisakou, Sophia and Ballin, Samuel and Manganini, Irene}},
issn = {{2585-3937}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{7-8}},
series = {{Feministiqa}},
title = {{You cannot pinkwash genocide: Why the (queer) refugee law studies community should be talking about Palestine – and why it is not}},
url = {{https://feministiqa.net/en/you-cannot-pinkwash-genocide/}},
year = {{2025}},
}