Feminist to Know: Haneen Maikey

“Over the past two decades, the colonial propaganda of pinkwashing, although persistent and well-funded, hasn’t been able to erase us! If anything, the failures of pinkwashing have only emphasized that queer liberation necessitates the liberation of Palestine and all Palestinians!”

— Haneen Maikey

Haneen Maikey is a Palestinian activist working against Israeli apartheid by engaging queer and feminist politics. Through cultivating queer Palestinian kinship and organizing spaces, Maikey has become a crucial voice against pinkwashing** and Israel’s co-optation of “LGBTQ Rights” discourse. Maikey views queer, Palestinian liberation as a cause connected to global liberation, and she has joined transnational movements to challenge occupation and racism.

Maikey co-founded and served as executive director of alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, after it distinguished itself as an anti-apartheid organization in 2007. alQaws offers “peer support to individuals, we have a hotline operated by 20 volunteers who answer the phones, and a large community-building effort in four areas: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa,” especially in the face of Israel’s pinkwashing. She also co-founded the activist group, Palestinian Queers for BDS. Alongside her organizing work, Maikey has published multiple articles and authored The History and Contemporary State of Palestinian Sexual Liberation Struggle.

**Dean Spade’s definition of pinkwashing: “‘Pinkwashing’ is a term activists have coined for when countries engaged in terrible human rights violations promote themselves as ‘gay friendly’ to divert attention from terrible human rights violations.”