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Gay Palestine (and Israel):
Stories from the Land of Milk and Agony:
Israeli and Palestinian Gays 2002

It's difficult to separate information about Palestinian gays from the Israeli gay scene. Since Palestine is a very homophobic culture many Palestinian gays and lesbians are forced against their cultural and religious will to hide in Israel where homosexuality is much more acceptable and, indeed, protected. Three stories are presented here about gay living and loving in these two lands torn by tribal warfare.

Also see:
Gay Palestine News & Reports
Gay Islam Reports 1998-2002
Gay Islam Reports 2003-05
Gay Islam Reports 2006
Gay Israel stories

(1)
Salon.com San Francisco, CA (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/02/21/ezra_selim/index.html)

February 21, 2002

Sleeping with the enemy:
Two men--an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Muslim--risk harassment, jail and death for their love.

(Note: a recent documentary has been made about these two men. See story (2) below and Palestine News & Reports, #4)

By Flore de Préneuf

Jerusalem   

After nuns kissing rabbis and wolves necking with sheep, Ezra and Selim could feature in Benetton's next advertisement campaign. Ezra, an Israeli Jew, and Selim, a Palestinian Muslim, live, sleep--and hide together.

The gay couple faces arrest at any moment: Selim for being illegally on Israeli soil, Ezra for helping, hiring and sheltering him. They took time off, on Valentine's Day, to describe their personal hell.

"We feel like rats. They run after us all the time," says Ezra Yitzhak, the head of a successful plumbing business where Selim also works. "We have to think carefully about where to go, who to go with and always have papers ready to explain our situation."

Their situation is unusual in the extreme. At a time when even sympathizing with the other side is enough to be called a "traitor," an "Arab-lover" or a "collaborator," Ezra and Selim broadcast their love for one another. And in conservative societies where sexuality is rarely discussed, the two are openly gay.

When Ezra accompanies Selim on family visits in the West Bank city of Ramallah every other week, Selim's parents greet Ezra warmly, sometimes even arranging for armed security men to stand guard by the door. (Palestinian neighbors are not so open-minded about homosexuality and Israeli friends, so Selim chose a pseudonym for this article to avoid embarrassing his family.) Selim is also welcome in Ezra's family in Jerusalem. Ezra's mother would prefer that he see a nice Jewish boy, but "it's a Jewish mother's problem," he says, and his brother and nephews accept Selim wholeheartedly.

"For me, it feels normal. I've been working with Arabs since 1967," says Ezra. "But of course it's totally unusual. In Israeli society, it's normal for Arabs to be janitors or garage workers. But here we are on par, living together, going to restaurants and movie theaters together."

"When people ask me [about Ezra] I say yes, I have an Israeli friend," says Selim. "They accept me as I am." Perhaps because he fought and was jailed during the first intifada, Selim has never been accused of being a collaborator.

Selim, 26, is tall, shy and doe-eyed. He was locked up for two years for throwing stones as a teenager during the first intifada, released when the Oslo peace accords were signed and thrown back in jail for stealing a car. Ezra, 50, shorter and bald, has striking eyebrows, sophisticated tastes and fluent English. The pair met in the streets of Jerusalem and had a fling about six years ago. Three years later, Ezra and Selim bumped into each other again and became a steady couple. They've been living together in Ezra's Jerusalem apartment ever since.

"Selim was a product of the occupation: no school, nothing to look forward to, put in jail automatically," says Ezra. "Since he's been with me, it's been the best period of his life: He's working, his health has improved, he's more relaxed." Ezra's love opened new vistas for Selim: steady employment, clubbing in Tel Aviv, movies in Jerusalem - activities that Palestinians often don't have access to, but the current armed uprising abruptly ended all that.

Repeat terrorist attacks in downtown Jerusalem mean people with Arab complexions can't walk two blocks without being carded these days. "I can't count the number of times we've been stopped together," says Ezra. Usually Ezra's eloquent patter, a few documents (including a precious letter from the Israeli security services that states Selim presents no known security risk) and well-placed phone calls solve things on the spot.

In October 2000, at the beginning of the current conflict, Selim was sentenced to eight months in jail for residing illegally in Israel. He was released after three months when Ezra appealed the verdict and the judge recognized that Selim was in Israel due to personal circumstances. The last time they were stopped was just two weeks ago in Jerusalem when security people yelled through a megaphone "Red Toyota - stop!" They were searched down to their shoes and questioned for 30 minutes until Ezra managed to convince the police to let them go.

So, apart from driving to plumbing maintenance jobs around town, they avoid going out as much as possible. "Because of the situation, [Selim] is now 24 hours a day with me. Sometimes it's fun but sometimes it's not easy," says Ezra. They've stopped going to Tel Aviv, preferring instead the mixed Jewish-Arab port town of Jaffa, where Selim looks less conspicuous. They watch videos rather than movies. And Ezra tells Selim to wear a coat at all times in case he gets arrested.

Mixed Israeli-Palestinian couples are very rare, but in most cases marriage confers Israeli residency rights to the Palestinian spouse. In Ezra and Selim's case, that legal option doesn't exist. Although they signed a notarized document establishing the fact that they are domestic partners willing to share all their belongings, the move hasn't helped their case so far. Selim's criminal record is one obstacle; being gay might be another, although Ezra and Selim see their quandary as a case of discrimination against Arabs more than anything else. "If Selim were an illegal resident from Russia, everything would be fine," says Ezra. "But this guy, who was born here, whose family has lived here for hundreds of years, isn't allowed to go two to three kilometers [from Ramallah to Jerusalem]."

The Jerusalem Open House, a one-of-kind organization that provides supports for gays and lesbians in Jerusalem and in the West Bank, is helping to publicize their case. "In many ways [Selim] should have been the poster boy of the Oslo agreement," says Hagai El-Ad, the organization's director. "He was engaged in terror during the first intifada, and now after a turn-about he's in love and living with an Israeli." El-Ad hopes to raise Selim's plight with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a meeting that could take place as early as today; the group wants Sharon's government to blast bureaucratic hurdles and give Selim the Jerusalem ID papers he badly needs. (El-Ad knows of at least one precedent when the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin granted residency rights to a Palestinian from Gaza who wanted to live with his partner in Tel Aviv.)

With residency rights, "I would be more quiet, less anxious. Every time I'm stopped, I get upset," says Selim. Half Selim's family was born in Jerusalem and therefore has Jerusalem IDs. But Selim, born in Ramallah a few miles north, has no residency rights and must tiptoe in Jerusalem, moving about like Ezra's anxious shadow.

"I'm twice his age; I'm realistic. We're not going to marry or adopt children," says Ezra. "We just want to lead our life and let it develop naturally. I would like Selim to have the freedom to choose to reduce the intensity of our relationship, look for a wife, whatever. The situation has partly forced us together. I don't want another jail for Selim. Right now, we're together whether we want it or not."

Last time Selim was jailed, "he looked like a caged animal; his eyes were full of terror," recalled Ezra. "His body and soul wouldn't survive another stay in jail. He would collapse as a person, and I would feel a sort of Palestinian need for revenge. I would hate those who killed him. I don't want to hate my country." Ezra sees himself as a loyal citizen: He's politically engaged, pays taxes, served three years in the army (like most Israeli men) and fought the 1973 Yom Kippur War. "I don't want to fight against the state," he says.

As it is, Ezra frequently finds himself on the Palestinian side of things. He takes communal taxis with Selim and other Palestinian workers, walks through hills and valleys to avoid Israeli-manned checkpoints and has had bullets and tear gas fired in his direction by Israeli soldiers. In addition to helping Selim stay illegally in Jerusalem, Ezra also frequently breaks the law that bars Israeli civilians from entering Palestinian-ruled areas.

Several Israeli businessmen--including men like Ezra, who felt they had privileged connections with Palestinians--have been killed in Palestinian-controlled towns in the recent past. All it takes is a hotheaded Palestinian who wants to make a name for himself by gunning down an Israeli. Crazy enough to wander the streets of Ramallah in a time of war, Ezra would be an easy target. But he feels somehow immune. "Friends warn me not to do it. But unlike those who were killed, I'm not going for business. I'm going door to door. Selim's family is waiting for me. I say this without modesty: I feel part of them, and I think I know the code."

He was scandalized when an Israeli policeman took him aside once and asked: Aren't you afraid Selim will kill you? "The relationship between Jews and Arabs can only be one way. We are the masters and they are the servants," says Ezra. Most Israelis "can't imagine an equal relationship. Palestinians are like Indian immigrants cleaning the floors at Heathrow airport - they're transparent." Ezra also dismisses the suggestion that right wing Jews might target him for publicly revealing his love for a Palestinian. "I may be gay, but I'm not a sissy," says Ezra.
(The writer: Flore de Préneuf covers the Middle East for Salon News)

(2)
'Zero Degrees of Separation' film documents suffering of Palestine and Israel gays

A Graphic pictures production (zerodegreesfilm@aol.com)

June 2003

By Richard Ammon,
GlobalGayz.com

'Zero Degrees of Separation' is a feature length documentary (still in progress as of June 03) examining a unique and complex relationshiip between two lovers and two nations from different worlds often less than 3 kms apart. Selim and Ezra, a gay Palestinian-Israeli couple, are fighting for the right to live together in Jerusalem. Through their lives and those of other gay and lesbian Palestinians and Israelis we gain a unique perspective on the Middle-East conflict. In a world where borders create and destroy lives daily , the people portrayed in Zero Degrees take on the larger questions of nationalism and its flaws. As Israeli-Palestianian couples exisitng on the the margins of their societies, these individuals cross those borders sometimes physically, sometimes metaphorically defying the notion of an external conflict with impermeable borders. Zero Degrees is about what is possible and impossible; a story that finds humanity in a time where little else seems to exist.

To watch this documentary is to feel suffocated and oppressed--which is perhaps a success for the director in her unflinching intention to see inside the pain and grief currently blanketing the Holy Land, now made very unholy by the intense hostility in the streets and political hallways. 'Zero Degrees of Separation' feels like a voyeur’s intrusion on a deadly family argument that no one should see.

The Palestinian-Israeli war is ugly, violent, divisive and humiliating. Caught in the black hole of hatred are many LGBT citizens of both cloths. As they speak before an impersonal lens their words are sad, mournful--lost in violence and antagonism. Lesbian feminists and a gay Palestinian-Israeli male couple are caught in the crossfire of bullets, occupation, suicide bombers, rocket attacks, arrest and extremist politics. The passion and freedom and easy sensuality taken for granted by many western queers is here forbidden territory.

Ezra and Salim possess a love for each other that transcends their racial and religious heritages but this love is gripped by danger and threats from both camps. Salim is a Muslim Palestinian, now disowned by his family in Ramallah since he came out to them. He cannot return home as he could face death. To be gay in that culture is to be "Lu’ot", to be cursed. Yet to be in Israel is to be an illegal alien, in and out of various jails for the past several years. "These are the schools for teaching more hatred and violence as victims learn well how to victimize in return," he says. "The only way to rescue yourself from being a victim is to victimize others. So the teaching goes.". But Salim refuses to be sucked into that political black hole. His love for Ezra is a small but piercing light in the darkness, a glimmer of what life could be like in the Holy Land.

Ezra is alienated from many of his gay Israeli friends and peers (in Tel Aviv for example) who celebrate Gay Pride festival under rainbow balloons and western-style music and tight bright pants. "Tel Aviv gays are apolitical, they are into assimilation." Ezra cannot understand this sort of life—assimilation into Euro-American lifestyle. "For what? We are not Europe and we are not America. We need to find our own voice and form. We don't dress or act like that," he declares seriously and with fatigue.

He refuses any celebration as long as Israel occupies and oppresses Palestinians in their own territory. His world is filled with daily shots of hostility, arrest, search-and-destroy warriors, bullets and senseless slaughter of innocents on both sides. His words are slow and infused with unbearable heaviness and near hopelessness for a peaceful hearth where he and Salim can relax in each other’s arms, invite friends for dinner or walk easily through the streets of Jerusalem. He cannot feel peace in his heart when he knows others—Palestinians and Israelis—are suffering. The right way is to work actively against all oppression— racial, religious, political --toward women, gays, any minority including refugees.

The film also interviews lesbian feminist activists--a very endanged type in Palestine. Feminism too is another curse, says one of the women Ruada sadly. Her heart is obviously hurt as she speaks about the oppressed condition of women in Palestine. As an activist in her culture she laments the loss of personal identity in the struggle against violence. There is no other right choice in Palestine for women outside the rigid role assigned by Islamic fundamentalists, outside of subservient marriage and prolific motherhood, outside the litany of hate for Israel.

In a discussion which followed the screening in New York at the LGBT Film Festival in June 03, additional points were made in referencee to Zero Degrees:

Black Laundry is a politically active LGBT organization in Israel working actively against oppression. They bother the "pink party types" who want music, style and cell phones on the way to the gym. While they dance, Black Laundry (also translates as 'black sheep') does anti-occupation work.

The West Bank is different from Gaza; Gaza is very torn up from attacks. Life is at the level of survival so virtually no LGBT work is possible there. Gay peoplethere try desperately to escape, but to where? They face torture if it’s discovered they're gay, and Israel refuses entry to Palestinians now. The agony of trapped lesbians and gays in Gaza is horrifying.

In Jerusalem there is Open House, an LGBT organization that has a Palestinian Coordinator offering information—counseling and literature in Arabic-- but with no influence or power to help.

The director of Zero Degrees, Ellen Flanders, will continue filming when she raises more funds. Already the Canadian Film Board has been very generous she said. She can be reached at: zerodegreesfilm@aol.com.

(3)
In These Times ( http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/21/culture2.shtml )

Isn't That Queer-Israeli and Palestinian LBGTs Celebrate, Drink and Talk in One Club--Along with Black Laundry
August 16, 2002

By Orly Halpernfter

Almost 2 years of bitter fighting, trust between Israelis and Palestinians has never been lower. But in a packed, smoky nightclub on the edge of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim district, the gay communities from both sides still bridge the growing divide, breaking down racial and political barriers as Jews and Arabs defy traditional stereotypes and threats of suicide bombers.

While tensions are high in the rest of the country, Laila’s remains the only nightclub where Israeli Jews clap enthusiastically side by side with Palestinian Arabs. Does the fact that these revelers are gay, lesbian or bisexual have anything to do with their mutual tolerance? Absolutely.

“Here we don’t care where you are from or who you are, Jew or Arab. That’s what characterizes the gay world,” says Johnny, a Christian Palestinian Arab from East Jerusalem wearing a tight white shirt and stylish jeans as a Jewish friend greets him with a kiss.

“I have 10 children,” says Simo, an ultra-orthodox Jew wearing a black suit and yarmulke, as he pulls out photos to show Johnny and Amir, the Arabs sitting near the bar with him. “I raise them to believe that all people are the same.”

“No one is prejudiced, you feel very free here,” says Rotem, a 19-year-old Israeli. Simo agrees: “As a religious man ... I feel more comfortable to come to this place than to go to a straight place. I love my wife, but I do have a slight attraction to men.” Despite his attraction, Simo admits, “I’m scared to realize my fantasy of being with one.”

Simo, Johnny, Amir and Rotem sit together in the hot dark nightclub talking about their belief in God as Kylie Minogue blares in the background. “I used to be religious,” says Amir, who has a goatee and wears a tight red shirt. “I prayed five times a day at the Dome of the Rock mosque. I tried for two years to be religious [and not gay], but it was a waste of time. I’m proud to be gay and have been for the last 10 years. This is the way God made me.”

But the political reality outside Laila’s divides these four. Because of severe Israeli security measures, Palestinians are having increasing difficulty coming to downtown Jerusalem, where Laila’s and the Open House, a gay support center, are located. Even those from East Jerusalem, who are considered “permanent residents” of Israel, have trouble passing the newly erected military checkpoints on their side of the city.

Yet despite the checkpoints, many take the trouble to get to Laila’s anyway. “Palestinians feel good to come here because they don’t get harassed,” says club owner Avi Specter, a Jew from Germany who immigrated six years ago. Specter and his wife, Ann Marie, opened the place because he has “many gay friends in Europe who complained when they visited Israel that there are no gay bars in the city. It was our idea to make this place for all kinds of people.”

The first ever Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade took place last June, attended by more than 4,000 people. Despite threats of attacks by ultra-Orthodox Jews, who opposed having a gay celebration in the holy city, the event highlighted the connection between Jewish and Arab gays and the occupation of the Palestinian Territories—even though very few Arabs showed up.

Yasser, 31, a father of three from the Old City, explains why: “The Arabs are scared of being filmed on TV and being seen. Our families don’t know we are gay and that we are here.”

A group of 50 women and men wore black shirts with pink writing in Arabic and Hebrew that said “Black Laundry against the occupation, in favor of social justice.” Founded in Tel Aviv last year, “Black Laundry” members directly connect their sexual tendencies with their fight for Palestinian freedom.

“We protest against the festive nature of the pride parade [because they’re] doing it while the occupation is going on. Pride is a political thing. We can’t celebrate our freedom while other groups are oppressed,” explains Gali, 22, a lesbian from Tel Aviv wearing the Black Laundry shirt and fishnet stockings.

Anat, a 27-year-old lesbian from Tel Aviv and a founder of Black Laundry, adds: “There is a connection between our oppression as lesbians, homosexuals and the oppression of the Palestinians. Since the intifada, the city of Jerusalem is covered with posters and graffiti saying ‘Expel the Arabs.’ Yesterday the city was covered with graffiti saying ‘Expel the homosexuals.’ I don’t want this [parade] to be a fig leaf for the abuses of human rights. A few kilometers from here there are people under siege, people who are hungry.”

Black Laundry web site is http://www.joannestle.com/livingrm/gila/gila020407blacklaundry.html

Also see Gay Palestine News & Reports #7