It's Not All Sunshine and Rainbows: Homonationalism and the Weaponization of Queer Rights in the Netherlands and Israel

Colorful parades and colorfully marketed products present Pride as all sunshine and rainbows. Pride not only allows queerness to be made visible but, also, to be in the spotlight—a radical departure from the marginalization and erasure LGBTQ+ people have faced for centuries. However, in some cases, sinister intentions lurk beneath Pride celebrations, as countries like the Netherlands and Israel embrace and then weaponize queer rights to serve their interests.

A conflict in Amsterdam over the 2024 Pride Walk exemplifies these tensions between queer rights and state interests. The event, intended to embrace the LGBTQ+ community and love in all its forms, devolved into conflict when the grassroots organization Queer Amsterdam pulled out. The group recused itself from the Pride Walk after Amsterdam city officials challenged a ban on the Israeli flag. Amidst the Israeli state’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, Queer Amsterdam asserted that they would not allow Israeli flags at the Pride Walk as “no form of Zionism is tolerated,” referring to the political movement that advocates for a Jewish homeland and national state in the region of Palestine. The organization’s framing of “tolerance” here is particularly provocative considering the Netherlands prides itself on its “tolerant” culture. “Tolerance,” though, as Queer Amsterdam’s messaging points out, can breed passivity. Not all political movements nor all states should be tolerated—and certainly not when it requires turning a blind eye to the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

Unfortunately for Queer Amsterdam, the city government contested the organization’s ban on the Israeli flag. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema dismissed the prohibition and chided Queer Amsterdam for having a “confused formulation” about the walk. Through this public rejection, the mayor reasserted her belief in Dutch “tolerance” but refused to recognize its insidiousness. While Queer Amsterdam highlighted the dangerous passivity that a culture of “tolerance” can foster towards gross human rights abuses, the Dutch state’s attitude toward the LGBTQ+ community reveals yet another dark side of such “tolerance”: homonationalism.

Homonationalism recognizes the performativity of nation-state embraces of queer citizens and identities. Jasbir Puar, a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Professor at Rutgers University, defines homonationalism as “acceptance of lesbigay subjects as an index of both progress and national sovereignty, emphasizing queer rights seen through the prism of legislation and decriminalization.” Homonationalist countries champion queer politics to assert their legitimacy and relegate any state or culture that refuses to embrace queerness to the periphery. Thus, homonationalism converts LGBTQ+ people into political tools to justify a hierarchy of countries and cultures. Unsurprisingly, this hierarchy works to privilege Western nations, like the Netherlands and Israel, over non-Western nations, like Palestine, or non-Western religions, like Islam.

The “tolerant” Dutch culture embraces queer subjects and, with it, homonationalism, marketing the Netherlands as a queer utopia. In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize marriage for same-sex couples. Yet, as the country embraced members of the LGBTQ+ community, it ostracized other groups, particularly Muslims. Pim Fortuyn, an openly gay right-wing politician, embodied this tension. He labeled the Islamic religion and its practitioners as “backward” for their inability to accept queer identity, then used this essentialist and Islamophobic claim to justify his anti-immigrant sentiments.

Fortuyn, unfortunately, is not the only Dutch politician to weaponize queer rights to promote Islamophobia. Rita Verdonk, founder of the right-wing Trots op Nederland (“Proud of the Netherlands”) party, drew distinctions between native-born Dutch citizens and Muslim immigrants, declaring that “Dutch people simply do not have it in them to discriminate” and implying Muslims do because of a supposedly unified Islamic rejection of queerness. Verdonk’s claims, though, erase the intersections of such identities; there are Dutch Muslims, including queer Dutch Muslims, whose very existence disproves her assertions. Her words also overflow with irony. By declaring that certain people do not belong in the Netherlands because they allegedly discriminate against others, Verdonk creates a discriminatory basis to justify excluding them from the country. Thus, Verdonk’s statement, in rejecting discrimination, effectively perpetuates discrimination. While the Dutch state—at least, legally—may accept queer people, politicians like Fortuyn and Verdonk nevertheless weaponize this acceptance to “protect” the state (and themselves) from groups they deem threatening.

Israel, similarly, uses homonationalism as a political weapon. While the Netherlands champions itself as Europe’s (if not the world’s) queer utopia, Israel champions itself as the Middle Eastern equivalent. Israel is the only country in the region with comprehensive legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and, in 2022, began allowing civil unions (though not marriages) between same-sex individuals. However, Israeli citizenship rights are highly conditional and often depend on Jewish ancestry. Like the Netherlands, Israel may be willing to accept LGBTQ+ citizens but not citizens of other national or cultural backgrounds, such as citizens of majority-Muslim Palestine.

Israel not only deprives Palestinians of citizenship but actively persecutes and slaughters them. The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been ongoing for more than a century but has escalated in the last four years into a genocide. Since the genocide in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Horrifyingly, a study by The Lancet, released in February of this year, found that the true toll of the first 16 months of the conflict was likely much higher than the 72,000 deaths documented by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The inability to accurately quantify the death and destruction is a testament to the scale of the atrocities committed against Palestinians.

To make matters even more grotesque, Israel weaponizes queer rights to justify this violence. In a photo from 2023, Israeli soldier Yoav Atzmoni held up a Pride flag with the words “in the name of love” written on it, suggesting that the Israeli genocide of Palestinians is being carried out to protect the LGBTQ+ community. A year later, the Israeli court ruled to allow LGBTQ+ Palestinian asylum seekers. Israel now allows a small number of queer Palestinians to seek asylum because of their sexual orientation, while ignoring that many Palestinians need asylum elsewhere to escape violence inflicted by Israel. Both the photo and asylum policy are faulty attempts at covering up and justifying egregious uses of state violence. Israel claims to champion LGBTQ+ rights but, ultimately, only wants to promote state interests that are utterly irrelevant to sexuality.

Politicians in both the Netherlands and Israel weaponize queer rights to justify discriminatory agendas. The conflict between Queer Amsterdam and the city’s government over the Israeli flag serves as a microcosm of the tension between queer rights and state interests. Dutch politicians use queer rights to justify Islamophobic rhetoric and policy towards Muslim immigrants. Dutch “tolerance” extends only far enough to embrace queer identity but not far enough to embrace Muslim identity, all while cultivating a culture that turns a blind eye to violence committed by other homonationalist states, like Israel. In Israel, the state not only denies citizenship based on ethnic and religious identity but also defends its genocide in the name of queerness. While claiming to champion LGBTQ+ rights, both the Netherlands and Israel ultimately undermine progress for the queer community, embracing LGBTQ+ individuals only to exclude other groups who they deem less desirable and more threatening. Western countries’ embrace of LGBTQ+ communities maintains a strict (racialized) color line and proves unwilling to embrace the rainbow.

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Grace Guernsey is a Senior in the SFS studying Culture & Politics and minoring in Spanish. She spent last semester studying abroad in Amsterdam where she explored plenty of cafes—not to be confused with coffee shops.