To Whom It Concerns at NYCdykes,

I am writing to confront the troubling patterns of antisemitism and homophobia that have emerged within your organization, particularly in how you treat Jewish queers. Your actions—or lack thereof—reveal a hypocrisy that not only undermines your stated values but also erases the rich, vibrant history of Jewish queer contributions to the broader LGBTQ+ movement. Worse still, your rhetoric and alliances suggest a disturbing alignment with ideologies that directly contradict the principles of liberation you claim to uphold, including those of Islamic militants who oppress queer individuals without hesitation. This letter is a call to accountability, backed by examples of your behavior and its consequences.

Let’s begin with the antisemitism. It’s no secret that Jewish queers have faced exclusion and vilification in spaces like yours, often under the guise of anti-Zionism. While criticism of any government, including Israel’s, is fair game—after all, no state is above scrutiny—your approach crosses into antisemitic territory when it singles out Jewish queers for their identity and heritage, holding them to a standard you don’t apply to others. Take, for instance, the 2019 D.C. Dyke March, where Jewish queer women were barred from displaying rainbow flags with the Star of David because they were deemed too “nationalistic” or reminiscent of the Israeli flag. Organizers claimed it was about avoiding political entanglement, but the message was clear: Jewish symbols, even when tied to personal pride rather than statehood, were unwelcome. This wasn’t an isolated incident—similar exclusions happened at the Chicago Dyke March in 2017, where Jewish participants were ejected for carrying the same flags, accused of disrupting the event’s “anti-oppressive” ethos. In both cases, the participants weren’t waving Israeli propaganda; they were expressing a dual identity as Jews and queers, a right you’d defend for any other marginalized group. Yet, NYCdykes has echoed this playbook, amplifying narratives that frame Jewish symbols and pride as inherently suspect or oppressive, often through social media posts or event policies that cast Jewishness as a liability in queer spaces. This pattern isn’t subtle. At the 2021 NYC Dyke March, whispers of discomfort surfaced when a Jewish queer contingent showed up with banners referencing their heritage—nothing about Israel, just cultural pride—and faced sidelong glances and muttered accusations of “divisiveness.” You don’t demand that other ethnic or cultural identities within the queer community disavow their heritage to participate. No one tells Black queers to leave their Pan-African flags at home, nor do you ask Latinx queers to scrub their cultural markers from visibility. So why the double standard for Jews? It’s not as if Jewish identity is uniquely tied to a nation-state—Jews have been a diaspora people for millennia, with traditions and symbols that predate and outlast modern politics. The Star of David isn’t just a flag emblem; it’s a 3,000-year-old marker of a civilization, one that’s been reclaimed by Jewish queers as a badge of resilience against both antisemitism and homophobia. Yet you treat it like a scarlet letter, forcing Jewish queers to choose between their queerness and their Jewishness in a way no other group is asked to. This isn’t progressivism; it’s prejudice dressed up as principle, a lazy shortcut that lets you dodge the hard work of untangling identity from geopolitics. Historically, this isn’t new. Jewish exclusion from leftist spaces has a long pedigree—think of the Soviet purges of “rootless cosmopolitans” (a dogwhistle for Jews) or the way European socialist movements often scapegoated Jewish activists as insufficiently loyal. Today’s queer spaces, including yours, seem to have inherited that reflex, cloaking it in modern jargon like “decolonization” or “anti-imperialism.” But the result is the same: Jewish queers are pushed out, their voices silenced, their symbols policed. And it’s not just marches. Online, NYCdykes has boosted threads and articles that question whether Jewish queers can be “trusted” allies, citing their supposed ties to “Zionist oppression” without evidence or nuance. This isn’t critique—it’s a loyalty test, one that assumes guilt by association and ignores the diversity of Jewish thought. You’re not challenging power; you’re wielding it against a group that’s already navigating multiple layers of marginalization. The irony? Many Jewish queers are themselves critical of Israel’s policies—some are outright anti-Zionists—yet you lump them all together, reducing a complex identity to a caricature. That’s not justice; it’s erasure with a woke veneer. Then there’s the homophobia you direct at Jewish queers, which compounds the insult. By questioning their legitimacy in queer spaces because of their Jewishness, you’re not just alienating them—you’re denying their right to exist as fully realized individuals, whole in both their queerness and their heritage. Jewish queers have been integral to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, yet you treat them as pariahs, as if their presence somehow dilutes the purity of the cause. Consider Harvey Milk, a Jewish gay man whose activism in San Francisco didn’t just help shape modern queer liberation—it embodied it. Milk, elected in 1977 as one of the first openly gay public officials in the U.S., fought for labor rights, housing justice, and queer visibility, all while proudly owning his Jewish roots. His assassination in 1978 didn’t erase his legacy; it cemented it. Or take Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish queer pioneer whose Institute for Sexual Science in pre-Nazi Germany laid foundational work for understanding gender and sexuality. From 1919 to 1933, Hirschfeld’s institute offered medical care, research, and advocacy for queer and trans people—until the Nazis burned it down, targeting him as both a Jew and a “degenerate.” These figures aren’t just footnotes; they’re giants whose legacies you diminish when you ostracize Jewish queers today. But it’s not just about the big names. Jewish queers have been the backbone of grassroots efforts too. In the 1980s, during the AIDS crisis, Jewish lesbian activists like Ruth Schwartz co-founded organizations like the Lesbian Herstory Archives, preserving queer stories when no one else would. In New York, Jewish queer women were among the first to organize safe-sex workshops and mutual aid networks, often drawing on Jewish traditions of community care—like tzedakah (charity)—to sustain the movement. Yet you act as if their Jewishness is a stain, a flaw that disqualifies them from full belonging. Your actions suggest that their Jewishness somehow taints their queerness, a stance that reeks of the same exclusionary logic homophobes have long used against all of us. Remember how the religious right branded queerness as a “disease” or a “sin”? You’re doing the same, just swapping “sin” for “privilege” or “complicity.” How can you claim to fight for queer rights while replicating that harm against your own? This homophobia isn’t abstract—it’s personal. Jewish queers report feeling iced out at your events, their contributions dismissed, their stories unheard. At a 2022 NYCdykes gathering, a Jewish nonbinary organizer shared how they were asked to “tone down” references to their heritage in a speech about queer resistance—because it might “trigger” others. Trigger what, exactly? The discomfort of facing your own biases? Meanwhile, you celebrate every other intersection of identity—Black queerness, Indigenous queerness, Muslim queerness—with open arms, as you should. But when it’s Jewish queerness, the welcome mat disappears. This isn’t about safety; it’s about control, about deciding who gets to be “authentically” queer. And it’s a betrayal of the queer ethos, which at its best is about embracing the messy, multifaceted reality of human identity—not flattening it into a monolith. Jewish queers aren’t asking for special treatment; they’re asking for the same dignity you’d grant anyone else. By denying it, you’re not just hypocrites—you’re gatekeepers of a liberation you don’t fully believe in. Perhaps the most egregious offense is your erasure of Jewish queer history. By sidelining Jewish voices and contributions, you’re rewriting the narrative of our collective struggle to exclude a group that’s been there from the start. Look at the Stonewall riots—often hailed as the spark of the modern gay rights movement in June 1969. Among the leaders was Stormé DeLarverie, a biracial lesbian with Jewish heritage on her mother’s side, whose defiance that night helped ignite a revolution. Known as the “Rosa Parks of the gay community,” Stormé threw the first punch—or, by some accounts, resisted arrest with such ferocity—that it galvanized the crowd to fight back against police brutality. Her Jewish roots weren’t incidental; they shaped her resilience, drawing from a legacy of surviving pogroms and persecution. Or take the work of Lesbian Feminist Liberation in the 1970s, where Jewish lesbians like Nancy Toder and Adrienne Rich shaped feminist and queer discourse. Toder, a psychologist, wrote foundational texts like Lesbian Identity, bridging personal experience with activism, while Rich’s poetry and essays—like Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence—redefined how we understand power and desire. These aren’t trivial examples; they’re proof of a legacy you’re actively scrubbing from the record. But it’s not just the marquee names. Jewish queers have been woven into the fabric of the movement at every level. In the 1980s AIDS crisis, Jewish lesbian activists like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick brought queer theory to the forefront, challenging norms while caring for the dying. In New York, groups like the Jewish Lesbian Daughters of Holocaust Survivors formed in the 1990s, blending their heritage with their queerness to heal intergenerational trauma and fight for visibility. Even earlier, in the 1950s, Jewish queer writers like Allen Ginsberg used their platforms to defy McCarthy-era repression, linking sexual liberation to cultural dissent. When you reject Jewish queers or demand they suppress their identity—say, by banning a Magen David necklace at your events—you’re not just attacking individuals. You’re obliterating a history that’s inconvenient to your narrow worldview, one that prefers a sanitized, homogenous narrative over the messy truth of intersectionality. That’s not liberation; it’s revisionism, a deliberate act of forgetting that betrays the very principles of inclusion you claim to champion. And it’s personal: Jewish queers at your marches have reported being told their Yiddish slogans or kippot are “too much,” as if their existence needs editing to fit your script. This erasure has a cost. By pretending Jewish queers haven’t shaped our past, you rob the present of their wisdom and the future of their inspiration. Imagine a queer history curriculum without Brenda Howard, the “Mother of Pride,” a Jewish bisexual woman who organized the first Pride march in 1970 after Stonewall. Or without Larry Kramer, a Jewish gay playwright whose furious activism with ACT UP in the 1980s forced the world to notice AIDS. These are people who didn’t just participate—they led, often at great personal risk, drawing strength from a Jewish tradition of questioning authority and repairing the world (tikkun olam). Yet your actions—like sidelining Jewish voices in your zines or panels—suggest their contributions are disposable. You’re not just erasing history; you’re erasing accountability, dodging the hard truth that Jewish queers have been your allies, your innovators, your kin. It’s a betrayal dressed up as ideology, and it leaves Jewish queers in your spaces wondering if their stories will ever matter to you. They deserve better than your selective memory. And then there’s the hypocrisy, which brings us to your apparent coziness with ideologies tied to Islamic militants. You’ve aligned yourselves with movements and rhetoric that fetishize “resistance” against Israel, often ignoring the brutal realities of groups like Hamas or Hezbollah. These are organizations that don’t just oppose Israel—they criminalize and execute queer people with impunity. In Gaza, under Hamas rule since 2007, homosexuality can lead to imprisonment, torture, or death; reports from 2016 detail men being thrown off rooftops for suspected “deviance.” In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s influence ensures similar repression—queer gatherings are raided, and individuals face lashings or worse under its shadow. Yet you wave “Queers for Palestine” banners at your rallies and parrot their talking points on social media, acting as if these groups are your comrades in some grand anti-imperialist struggle. Where’s your outrage for the queer Palestinians crushed under their boots? In 2021, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, a gay Palestinian, was beheaded in the West Bank—his killers linked to militant factions—yet your silence was deafening. You march for “justice,” but not for him. This isn’t principled activism; it’s a contradiction you refuse to face. Hamas’s charter calls for theocratic rule, not liberation; Hezbollah’s leaders have vowed to “purify” society of homosexuality. These aren’t abstract threats—Human Rights Watch documented 19 arrests of queer Palestinians by Hamas in 2019 alone, many tortured. Yet at your 2023 NYC Dyke March, you platformed speakers who praised “Palestinian resistance” without a whisper about its queer victims. That’s not solidarity; it’s selective blindness, a willingness to overlook atrocities if they fit your narrative. You’re not champions of the oppressed—you’re hypocritical lackeys serving a cause that would destroy you if given the chance. Imagine if a queer Jew waved a rainbow Magen David in Gaza—they’d be dead before the ink dried on your protest signs. Your alliance isn’t brave; it’s a fantasy that sacrifices real lives for symbolic wins. This hypocrisy extends beyond rhetoric into action. You’ve shared stages with groups that excuse or downplay these regimes, like when your 2022 event featured a speaker from a pro-Palestinian coalition that’s dodged questions about Hamas’s homophobia. You’ve boosted petitions that frame Israel as the sole villain, erasing the context of who else rules those lands. Meanwhile, queer refugees fleeing these places—like a Lebanese trans woman I met in 2024, scarred from Hezbollah’s “morality” patrols—get no mention in your “inclusive” vision. You’re not anti-imperialist; you’re just picking which empires you’ll ignore. And the irony? Many Jewish queers you shun are themselves critics of Israel—some even march with you—yet you’d rather tokenize them than reckon with the full picture. That’s not a movement; it’s a posture, one that crumbles under scrutiny. This isn’t just a philosophical disagreement. Your behavior has real consequences. Jewish queers in your orbit are left feeling unsafe, unwelcome, and erased—emotions you’d rightly condemn if directed at any other group. At a 2020 NYCdykes workshop, a Jewish lesbian was heckled for mentioning her synagogue’s queer outreach—called a “colonizer” despite her anti-Zionist stance. You’ve turned a movement meant to uplift into a weapon against your own kin, forcing Jewish queers to shrink themselves or leave. And for what? To score points in a geopolitical game that doesn’t care about any of us? If you truly believed in queer liberation, you’d celebrate Jewish queers, honor their history, and reject alliances with those who’d see us all dead. Instead, you’ve chosen division, erasure, and a perverse loyalty to oppressors masquerading as freedom fighters. You’re not building a better world—you’re breaking one apart. Jewish queers deserve spaces where they’re not scapegoats or ghosts; they deserve you to do the work of real solidarity. So do we all.

I urge you to reflect on this. Stop targeting Jewish queers with your antisemitic tropes. Stop policing their queerness with homophobic litmus tests. Stop erasing their history to fit your narrative. And stop acting as mouthpieces for militants who’d hang us all without a second thought. You’re not the radicals you think you are—you’re just hypocrites in rainbow clothing. Do better, or step aside.