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INTRODUCTION
WHEN USED IN RELATION TO THE IsRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT, the word "pinkwashing" refers to Israel's putatively dishonest abuse of its sterling record on LGBT human rights to conceal or "whitewash" its struggles with the Palestinians. Alleged to constitute an invidious "cover up", pinkwashing actually represents a term of art deployed to deceive and fabricate fallacious arguments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It comprises part of the larger strategy of delegitimization of Israel by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to isolate, de-normalize and, eventually, extirpate Israel as a democratic Jewish State. Despite the deceptive misuse of this term in this context, however, the word originated in other loci where it had different-as well as politically legitimate and rhetorically lucid-meanings.
HISTORY OF THE TERM PINKWASHING
The portmanteau compound term pinkwashing derives from the seventeenth century verb to whitewash, which means to hide crimes and vices, or to exonerate through biased presentation of evidence. The Nazis forced gay male concentration camp inmates to wear inverted pink triangles to shame them for their "inverse" gender identification. Subsequently, in the LGBT activist ACT-UP movement, the pink triangle was repurposed to symbolize political resistance to homophobia and the plight of HIV+ people and those living with AIDS.1
In the 1980s, the now iconic pink ribbon logo became a form of socalled "cause marketing" that companies used to advertise their support for breast cancer survivors, victims, and charities. These logos became ideal means to promote products and sell merchandise. However, in a classic case of false advertising, research revealed that many products sold by these companies contained carcinogenic ingredients linked with the increased risk of breast and other forms of cancer. In addition, the focus on mammograms, prevention, and "the cure" ignored environmental factors and the fact that poor women of color suffered disproportionately from breast cancer. Accordingly, in 1985, the organization Breast Cancer Action (BCA) coined the term "pinkwashing" to characterize this fraudulent and deceptive form of cause marketing.2 In 2002, BCA inaugurated its Think Before You Pink®3 campaign as an impassioned feminist protest against the indiscriminate and disingenuous abuse of pink ribbon logos to turn profits and, according to Cary Nelson, "hid[e] the ways they are actually contributing to cancer through their manufacturing processes".4
As applied to...