93%! and a REPOST: Emily Schrader "Palestinians: LGBTQ+ not welcome here"
Contestants Ta’alin Abu Hanna, 21, Carolin Khoury, 24 and Lee Aviv, 26. Image by Eitan Tal/ Haaretz
“Abu Hanna told reporters she is “proud to be an Israeli Arab,” noting, “If I had not been in Israel and had been elsewhere — in Palestine or in any other Arab country — I might have been oppressed or I might have been in prison or murdered.”
I have posted Emily Schrader (and her husband’s) work before. Emily and her husband are true “hasbara” and proud of it. I don’t get a shek to write about Jewish-Arab peace, but that does not stop haters from accusing me of being paid by “Big Jew.” According to bigots, there’s nothing judeophobic about claiming random Jews are paid to write political commentary. Which they say… as they write libelous political commentary.
What’s depressing is that any action I do, as a Jew, to be pro-LGBT+ can be scoffed as somehow anti-Arab. Not just because the “Palestine” culture being freed is vehemently anti-LGBT. But also because Arabs outnumber Jews 1000 fold. Haters have managed to change the meaning of a word to its polar opposite.
The term “Pinkwashing” used to refer to performative actions related to cancer awareness. For example, a big company putting up a pink ribbon, while not donating a penny. The word later referred to LGBT+ issues. I’m not sure why “Rainbow Washing” was second choice over “Pink”, despite a community priding itself on a spectrum of color. [Obv I don’t decide word choice, or else “judeophobic” would be used over “antisemitic.”]
Today, when Jews do concrete and important actions, ie the opposite of performative actions, such as hosting the largest Pride Parade in MENA and Asia, hosting LGBT+ movie screenings and taking in LGBT+ refugees, it is dubbed pinkwashing, from people who insist we must have ulterior motives. They know our motives, and they’re going to expose us!
I have a pansexual relative who lives in a 94.1% white state, that famously divided itself by Catholic or Protestant. They can accuse me of living in apartheid, despite me living in a far more diverse building, city and country than they (74% Jew, ~30% white). When my (half Jewish, half Christian) building donated money and clothes to a trans-Arab runaway living on the beach of Tel Aviv, then brought her to several shelters until one would take her in, my relative could claim we were “pinkwashing.” That relative ranting #FreePalestine—support for the culture this poor, young girl ran away from—is deemed being a trans-ally. It sucks.
I volunteer for a group called KeepOlim . It is a challenge to balance our Orthodox and Secular members’ needs. That said, we have NEVER allowed homophobia or transphobia on our page. We have had to block about 100 members from our Facebook page over the years due to their complaints about our LGBT+ events and imagery. Though this is a minority of a large group, though both our partnered Orthodox and Traditional Rabbis are aware of our “accept all, no hate” values, any lunatic can pretend our minority is similar to an identity where 93% oppose homosexuality (Pew). It sucks.
Original post: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-709930
Note: Several months after this post, Ahmad Abu Marhia was barbarically kidnapped from Israel and decapitated in Hebron, disputed territory, allegedly because of his sexuality: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63174835
Note 2: Emily does not get into detail about the brutality of the torture LGBT+ face under Arab occupation. The New Republic ran an article in 2002 about how gay men were kept in raw sewage up to their neck, until they died from infection. This reality is regularly erased to appease #FreePal supporters.
Palestinians: LGBTQ+ not welcome here - opinion
Not only are there atrocious laws against LGBTQ+ in the West Bank and Gaza, the social attitudes are an even larger problem.
By EMILY SCHRADER; JUNE 20, 2022 21:18
A MAN shouts ‘Free Palestine’ during a march in midtown Manhattan. Activists in the West care more about attacking Israel than they do about LGBTQ+ Palestinians, says the writer.
(photo credit: Darren Ornitz/Reuters)
As the world celebrates Pride month and rainbow flags brighten up the white city of Tel Aviv, in the West Bank and Gaza, the contrast couldn’t be greater for the LGBTQ+ community. While Pew Research shows that attitudes towards LGBTQ+ have evolved to be more tolerant in much of the world over the last decade, in the Palestinian territories there has been no progress.
Despite the dark reality for gay Palestinians, some left wing and LGBTQ+ groups in the West still insist on supporting the Free Palestine camp. Yet, while they call for Israel’s destruction, Palestinians legally and socially persecute their own LGBTQ+ community.
Not only are there atrocious laws against LGBTQ+ in the West Bank and Gaza, the social attitudes are an even larger problem, with deeply embedded homophobia rampant in the culture that endangers the local community.
According to Pew Research, 93% of the Palestinian population is completely opposed to homosexuality, a percentage among the highest in the world. Palestine has also been named by Forbes as one of the worst countries in the world for LGBTQ+ travelers.
In recent years, Palestinian authors have been targeted for writing about LGBTQ+ issues, LGBTQ+ NGOs like alQaws have been banned for not being aligned with “traditional Palestinian values” (though this was reversed after international outcry), and individuals continue to be harassed and assaulted for their identity.
Bashar Murad in a studio (REUTERS/Ammar Awad) (credit: REUTERS/AMMAR AWAD)
According to Palestinian law, being gay is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and in Gaza, it’s punishable by death. In 2016, Hamas executed a senior commander by firing squad in Gaza for homosexual activity. LGBTQ+ Palestinians have no legal protections against discrimination, are forbidden from adopting and gay marriage is not recognized in any capacity.
In this Pride month alone, the LGBTQ+ community has been threatened and silenced in Ramallah, forcing a concert of east Jerusalem’s Bashar Murad to be canceled when anti-gay activists marched into a concert venue and demanded the organizers cancel the event for the LGBTQ+ community.
The lead activist, the son of a Hamas commander, stated in a now viral video, “don’t test our patience” and warned that the LGBTQ+ community isn’t welcome in Palestine. Over the weekend, cars of participants in an LGBTQ+ event were also vandalized by anti-gay Palestinians.
It’s also important to note that this was not occurring in a village in the remote West Bank, but in Ramallah, which is considered to be the most developed and progressive Palestinian city.
Across the ocean, anti-Israel extremist Mohammed El Kurd, one of the activists from Sheikh Jarrah, has also begun taking heat from his own community for giving a speech at a Palestinian LGBTQ+ organization alQaws in New York and coming out in support of them.
After the organization posted his photo, Palestinian telegram channels were outraged claiming he came out as gay and called for God to “return his sanity.” Apparently in Palestine, it’s not enough to hate Israel and support terrorism if you are also gay.
While the war is being waged against Palestinians in the LGBTQ+ community in the West Bank and Gaza, intersectional activists in the West care more about attacking Israel than they do about Palestinian LGBTQ+. In fact, even Palestinian NGOs like alQaws have been criticized by gay Palestinians for focusing more on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than on supporting the community.
Activist groups like the ironically named Queers for Palestine have repeatedly used their platform and that of their activists to obsessively condemn Israel, rather than educating for tolerance and support for the LGBTQ+ community in the Palestinian territories. And while it’s possible to advocate for more than one cause at once, there is no proportionality when it comes to the criticism of Israel versus advocating for the Palestinian LGBTQ+ community.
Such obsession is the height of irony, given that many Palestinians flee to Israel due to the fact they are gay and that Tel Aviv is home to the largest Pride parade in the Middle East, with attendance above 170,000 people this last month. The anti-Israel LGBTQ+ activists may stand with Palestine but Palestine certainly doesn’t stand with them. Sadly, it’s the Palestinian LGBTQ+ community which pays the price.
The writer is the CEO of Social Lite Creative and a human rights activist.
