Queers for Palestine , think again they don’t want you !

I recently attended a rally against anti-semitism. Since Hamas’ attack on Israeli concert goers and kibbutzim occurred on Oct. 7, 2023, I wanted to support Israel in general and my Jewish friends.

I knew there were LGBTQ people who side with Palestinians and Hamas, but one transwoman there, accented in a black-and-white-checkered keffiyeh, and wearing a surgical mask, held a placard reading that “no trans woman would be free until Palestine was free.” She’s not alone. Go to any campus ruckus against Israel today and you will see the flag of Palestine accompanied by the rainbow banner and chants of “From the River to the Sea …”

Lenin once described useful idiots but it takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to ignore the evidence out there that Palestine is not a safe place for anyone LGBTQ.

I doubt that Queers for Palestine know very much about the history of the people they’re agitating for.

Do they know that Palestinians staged pogroms against Jewish immigrants from 1920 through 1929, burning Brits and Jews along the way? Do they know the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (a relative of Yasser Arafat) toured concentration camps during WWII?

In a 2001 book entitled Hitler and the Holocaust the historian Robert Wistrich outlines the visit to Germany of the Grand Mufti, meeting with Hitler and the SS. You don’t really think they were exchanging falafel recipes, do you?

Do Queers for Palestine know of Arab nations and Palestinian rejections of peace offers in 1937, 1948, and 2000?

Speaking with many young transmen and transwomen today, I get the feeling they think history started once they were born. So many dismiss the idea that Jewish people belong in Israel as much as the Palestinians do. Queers for Palestine, however, conflate Zionism with colonialism, when in reality Israel is more a project of homecoming and national rebirth, a return that has been nearly 2,000 years in the making.

It is not just The Bible that articulates Judaism’s place in the region. One example, Empires of Trust, by the historian Thomas Madden, describes three major Jewish revolts against Roman rule in the years 66-79 AD, 115 AD, 132 AD, and numerous minor insurgencies clear up to the year 200.

With each revolt, more Jewish identity was stamped out. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Jews were thrown out of Judea by the Romans, provincial boundaries redrawn, renamed, and repopulated. But alienation from place did not stop the yearning for the homeland. Indeed so strong was the hope, the wish, the ache for Israel, that sometime in the 1300s Jews started adding L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim (Next Year in Jerusalem) at the end of Passover Seders.

How are LGBTQ people really treated in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and under Hamas? According to the LGBTQ Human Dignity Trust, a colonial era British Mandate law remains in effect in the PA. Under those sections, sexual violations can be punished with up to 14 years in prison (for those wonks who want to get into the weeds, reference Sections 152 (1) (b) (c) and 152 (2) (b) of the British Mandate criminal code, as well as PA draft penal codes Articles 258 and 263).

While Human Dignity Trust reports the anti-LGBTQ laws remain in effect, they are not rigidly enforced. But Amnesty International reports that threats and attacks against gays receive scant investigation or adjudication. As late as 2019, the PA announced that LGBTQ groups were forbidden to meet in the West Bank when the Al-Qaws LGBT Palestinian group wanted to hold a conference in Nablus. The PA said, “[LGBTQ] are harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society.” And in October 2022, 25- year-old Ahmed Abu Murkhiyeh, a gay Palestinian, was beheaded after he was discovered to be seeking asylum in Israel. It’s pretty telling when a Palestinian is compelled to apply for asylum in Israel.

Maybe it is truly unsafe for Gays in Palestine. While only 8% of Palestinians approved of honor killings in a June 2019 poll conducted by the BBC Arabic News, it also revealed that only 5% of Palestinians accept LGBTQ people.

In his 2020 book, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, Professor Sa’ed Atshan of Swarthmore College links the LGBTQ struggle against homophobia and transphobia to the struggle for Palestine. Last November in an article in them, Dr. Atshan could only muster a tepid explanation of Hamas’s attacks of Oct. 7, explaining that while it was a horror, the Israeli dead should be seen in the context of the cumulative asymmetry of casualties between Israelis and Palestinians over the span of the conflict.

The article mentioned in them was entitled “Why Queer Solidarity with Palestine is Not ‘Chickens for KFC.’” I don’t know. It certainly sounds that way to me.
–Veronica Zerrer is the author of “Memoirs of a Cold Warrior, a Novel.” She is retired from the US Army and active in the local LGBTQ community. In 2023, she was appointed to the California Veterans Board by Gov. Newsom.