The Anti-QuAIA Fiasco Was Foretold

Despite initially being given the old heave-ho, Queers Against Casablanca Waters will be out in full force this weekend, a tremendous "victory," we've been told, for "free speech." And in case you think that it wasn't fated to turn out exactly as it has, here's an eerily prescient comment from back in April that appeared in Israeli lefty rag Ha'aretz:

I am queer and in Toronto and I fully support QaIA. And, don't you worry, despite the Pro-Israel camp lying through their teeth to label them a hate group, they'll stay and Pride will continue. You just watch us! ... it is so nice to be queer sometimes...:) And the more the Pro-Israel group goes at it,... the better known they will become... and the more supporters they will have. So please, go on about it. As someone else put it in a Toronto discussion... if this was "queers agasint (sic) dutch apartheid" the dutch would laugh... they know they aren't an apartheid state, they know everyone can tell they aren't... I guess Pro-Israel groups aren't so sure that the issue is so clear. And about gay policies in the middle eastern world... we know... we hate it, but we are also human beings and all human rights matter to us.

Save, of course, for the "human right" of Jews to have their own state (while Muslims, incredibly, are entitled to a near-Heinz 57 of 'em, no questions asked). That said, I think there's a bitter lesson here for Israel supporters. Quite often, seeking to "ban" something you don't like has the unintended consequence of making you look bad and bolstering your opponent. (And that said, the argument about "the dutch" laughing off the apartheid charge won't wash, because no one, as far as I know, is in the throes of an irrational obsession about "the dutch" being irredeemably evil and Holland therefore having to cease to be for the sake of mankind.)