Monday, June 03, 2024

'Queers for Palestine,' Like 'Minks for Fur Coats,' Support Those Who Want to Slaughter Them

by Bassam Tawil 
  • Palestinian members of the LGBTQ community have never felt safe either in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank or under the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
  • In 2016, when Hamas commander Mahmoud Ishitwi was accused of having sex with men, he was "suspended from a ceiling for hours on end, for days in a row... [h]e was whipped and guards coasted loud music into his cell, banishing sleep." After enduring days of torture, he was shot to death.
  • "In many countries, including my parent's former homes and theocratic Iran, homosexuality is still sometimes punished by public hangings.... The international community must not be silent. But it is." — Hen Mazzig, self-described "queer Israeli Jew," named among the top LGBTQ influencers, Jerusalem Post, October 23, 2022.
  • "It is alleged that 'harassment of gays' is 'practically official policy' in the PA. The victims are frequently called collaborators and accused as such. It is also reported that the PA police regularly inflicts appalling torture on homosexuals." — Ilka Schröder, Member of European Parliament, 2003.
  • "When it comes to Queers for Palestine, what's richly ironic is that many LGBTQ Palestinians seek asylum in Israel – the same country these stateside protesters are rallying against... At the heart of this contradiction is the tendency within social justice movements to pick a clear protagonist and antagonist, the oppressed and the oppressor, and to proceed from there in one-size-fits-all fashion. Some progressives decided long ago that Palestine is the former and Israel is the latter, which is the seed from which everything must grow. Palestine, then, stands not only for anti-colonialism but also LGBT rights and reproductive rights, despite that those rights, in any meaningful sense of the word, do not actually exist there. Queers for Palestine is about as convincing as minks for fur coats." — Billy Binion, Reason, October 27, 2023.
  • "Queers for Palestine" should talk to "Queers in Palestine".... Many Palestinian lives could have been saved if "Queers for Palestine" had cared for the Palestinian people as much as they detested Israel.

"Queers for Palestine" should talk to "Queers in Palestine" to find out about the suffering of the Palestinian LGBTQ community. "Queers for Palestine" should be advocating for the rights of their colleagues in the West Bank and Gaza Strip instead of staging demonstrations against Israel, the only country in the Middle East where LGBTQ people feel secure. Pictured: Anti-Israel protesters at the "queer pride parade" in New Delhi, India on November 26, 2023. (Photo by Sajjad Hussain /AFP via Getty Images)


The anti-Israel group "Queers for Palestine," whose members frequently demonstrate in the streets of US cities to criticize Israel for defending itself against Islamist terrorists, has probably not heard about the case of Ahmad Abu Markhiya, a gay Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Hebron. Even if the organization were aware of the case, it has done nothing to protest against the horrific death of Abu Markhiya.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 massacre, during which hundreds of Israelis were murdered, raped, beheaded and abducted to the Gaza Strip, members of "Queers for Palestine" have been demonstrating in the US and Canada in support of the same Palestinians who would slaughter them if they came to the West Bank or Gaza Strip. The group has never spoken out against the atrocities committed by Hamas.

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