Pride and Prejudice: How Antisemitism Captured LGBTQ+ Spaces | With Eve Barlow

It's Pride Month, and at a queer women's sauna night in Barcelona, two married Jewish women — wearing Stars of David — were surrounded, interrogated, and thrown out to chants of "Free Palestine." Not in Tehran. Not in Gaza. In a room built on the promise that no one gets turned away for who they are. Journalist Eve Barlow knows these spaces from the inside. She was deputy editor of NME — the biggest weekly music magazine in the world — broke bands, wrote the cover stories, and built LGBTQ+ coverage from scratch at GQ. She was at the beating heart of progressive culture. Then, around 2019, she said one thing out loud: that the anti-Zionism rising around her was antisemitism wearing a new coat. The world that let her in turned on her. She named her newsletter after what they did to her — Blacklisted. In this conversation, Eve and host Ben Chertoff go past the headlines on: The Barcelona sauna incident — and why the perpetrators were elites (a university sociologist, a lawyer, a teacher), not the ignorant Where "Queers for Palestine" actually comes from — the queer-theory and post-colonial lineage that turned a civil-rights movement into an oppressor/oppressed morality play Why marginalization became a political identity the movement can't put down — and the eerie parallel to how Jews went from "oppressed" to "oppressor" The "as-a-Jew" anti-Zionists — Matt Bernstein, Zach Polanski — and the market that rewards them The pinkwashing smear, flipped on its head: Israel's real LGBTQ+ record vs. the rest of the region Released hostage Emily Damari, and the particular vulnerability of being openly gay in captivity And a closing message to the queer Jewish kid who's been told to choose between their people and their pride Eve's argument: Pride began as a celebration of how far people had come in a single generation. Somewhere along the way it inverted — from celebrating victory into a contest over who is most oppressed. The moment a people succeeds, it gets recast as the oppressor. Her answer isn't to shrink. It's to refuse the trade. Eve Barlow's links 📰 Blacklisted (Substack): https://evebarlow.substack.com ✍️ "Queers for Zion" (SAPIR Journal): https://sapirjournal.org/aspiration-ii/2026/queers-for-zion/ 𝕏 https://x.com/Eve_Barlow 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/evebarlow Chapters (00:00) Cold open (00:18) Welcome — who is Eve Barlow (02:08) The Barcelona sauna incident (06:52) An outlier, or an epidemic? (11:34) From NME and GQ to fighting Jew-hatred (20:35) The writing on the wall: BDS, London, and leaving the UK (28:09) Where "Queers for Palestine" comes from: queer theory & post-colonialism (35:36) Marginalization as political pathology (42:26) Moral superiority and the activist "cult" (48:22) Building a new closet: "take off your Magen David" (52:42) The "as-a-Jew" anti-Zionists: Matt Bernstein & Zach Polanski (57:19) Pinkwashing — and Israel's real LGBTQ+ record (1:02:17) Most rights in the region — and still room to grow (1:04:13) "Queers for Zion" and Emily Damari in captivity (1:08:52) To the queer Jewish kid told to choose (1:12:04) Where to find Eve's work (1:12:41) Ben's final reflection The Honest Take goes past the headlines to find out what's actually true about Israel and the people covering it. Hosted by Ben Chertoff for HonestReporting. ▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLuF-lEHTGTw_RrfN9EP6pdWhgjMX7Fg5 🎧 Listen everywhere: https://thehonesttake.transistor.fm If this conversation made you think, do us one favor: leave a rating and a reviewwherever you're listening — it's the single biggest thing that helps new people find the show. And follow HonestReporting on Instagram, X, TikTok, and Facebook.