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Palestine News & Reports Also see: Gay Palestine story (Note: some of these stories and reports also appear in the Israel News & Reports 2000-02 and Israel News & Reports 2003-04 on this site, which also includes some reports about Palestinian LGBT people.) Also
see: Gay
Islam Reports 1998-2002 1 Gay community center reaching out to gay Arabs 6/01 2 Jerusalem pride '03 parade delayed after suicide bomb 6/03 4 Recent film documents LGBT suffering in Palestine and Israel--'Zero Degrees of Separation' 6/03 5 Gay Palestinians suffer under Arafat-Commentary 9/02 6 Palestine's oppression of gays should not be ignored-Commentary 3/03 7 Israeli Black Laundry Connects Homophobia and the Occupation of Palestine 12/02 8 The Horrors of Being Gay, Palestinian and Refugee 8/02 9 Isn't That Queer-a Nightclub for Israeli and Palestinian Gays 8/02 10 Palestine's oppression of gays should not be ignored 3/03 11 Palestinian Gay Runaways Survive on Israeli Streets 9/03 12 Palestinian gays flee to Israel 10/03 13 Palestinian gays seek safety in Israel 1/04 14 Gay Arab (with Israeli lover) From the West Bank Finds He Can't Go Home Again 2/04 15
Activist launches first Palestinian lesbian group 'Aswat' 9/04 17 Gay Palestinian Women Appeal for Help 12/05 18 WorldPride supports gay Palestinians? 8/06 19 Coming out in Arabic--Aswat Lesbian Organization 10/06 20 'We are Palestinian, we are women, we are gay' by Mehdi Lebouachera 5/07 21 It is getting harder for gay Palestinians to seek refuge in Israel or abroad 7/07 22 Middle East dispatch Coming out in Arabic 10/07
June 5, 2001 1 by Joshua
Ronen "At this time of conflict in Jerusalem and the region, we see special importance in bringing out different voices, voices from a different time when Islamic and Jewish traditions had a shared view of male-male affection," said Hagai El-Ad, executive director of Open House. "We hope that by expressing these voices from the past in a contemporary context, we will be able to hope for an open life, freedom and happiness in this city which we all love so much." Although Open House has worked with the Muslim community -- its library has a Koran donated by the international Muslim gay and lesbian organization Al Fatiha -- this marks the first time in this country that information about homosexuality is being disseminated in Arabic. "This is the most challenging aspect of Open House's mission," El-Ad said, pointing out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not helped in bringing the homosexual populations of the two communities together. According to Dayan, the homosexuality community, which numbers globally about 10 percent of any population, has faced considerable opposition in this part of the world. She drew a comparison between the Orthodox Jewish community and the Palestinian community, which frequently oppresses those who live a homosexual lifestyle. "Our religious community is as closed and backward as the Palestinians," said Dayan, who just recently sponsored legislation to allow same-sex marriages. "You [not only] have to open up your own society, but in a city like Jerusalem, you have to give support to members of other religions." But despite the similarities, Palestinian society has been a lot less accepting of the homosexual lifestyle. Open House believes it can help change that. "Even with more and more ties between Israelis and Palestinians being slashed, Palestinians still come to the center here," El-Ad said. "In Palestinian society, there's no such thing as open homosexuality," said Daniel Weishut, chair of the Gay and Lesbian Network of Amnesty International, who works closely with Open House. "There are no clubs or bars or meeting places." Along the same lines as Open House, Amnesty is currently involved in a project to offer educational information about homosexuality in Arabic. "Arabic [speaking] homosexuals suffer from a lot of discrimination and usually live in hiding," Weishut said.
12 June 2003 2 Jerusalem's second gay pride parade, "Love without Borders", scheduled for tomorrow, Friday 13 July, has been delayed after the city experienced one of its worst suicide bomb attacks yesterday. The bomb, which killed 16 people aboard a packed bus during the city's rush hour and injured up to 100 others, precipitated an emergency meeting of the parade's organisers. The meeting concluded with the announcement: "As a result of yesterday's suicide bombing in the center of Jerusalem, Jerusalem's 2nd pride parade Love without Borders (originally scheduled for tomorrow, Friday, June 13th) will be delayed by a week. Yesterday's bombing was one of the worst in Jerusalem since October 2000, the echo of which felt strongly in the center of Jerusalem as well as at the Open House itself. "The parade will take place a week later than planned, on Friday June 20th. No changes occur in the route of the parade or the schedule for pride day, excluding the delay by a week." Hagai Elad, Executive Director of the Jerusalem Open House, told GayMiddleEast.com: "We cannot joyfully parade in the heart of Jerusalem while funerals are taking place - including those of neighbors and friends. Postponing the parade by a week is the only course of action we can take now, an expression of human sensitivity towards the city we live in." Last year's parade, the first in Jerusalem, was considered a huge success, with up to 4,000 estimated participants. June 9, 2003 3 by Jenny
Hazan But the event in Jerusalem is distinct from any of its partner festivals, both here and abroad. "Pride in Jerusalem is very different than pride anywhere else on the planet," said Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Jerusalem Open House. "It's the only pride event in the world that starts with the Traveler's Prayer and ends with Shabbat services." Love without Borders is tailored to Jerusalem's unique population. The six-day event --which includes the sponsorship of both the Al-Fatiha Foundation for gay and lesbian Muslims and the Keshet Ga'avah World Congress of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Jews--takes its name not just from sexual orientation, but also from the political boundaries between Israelis and Palestinians. "We're a social change organization, and the agenda is to make Jerusalem more open, more pluralistic, and more tolerant," explained El-Ad. Some of the more than 4,000 participants at last June's precedent-setting parade used the festival as a pro-Palestinian political platform. Marchers held signs declaring "Free Condoms, Free Palestine," "Transgender, not Transfer" and "Dykes and Fags Against the Occupation." The event also proved controversial to the haredi community, which threatened to stop the march by "all means," but opted merely to boycott. But, the Jerusalem Open House would not be deterred. "It's a gradual process of the community growing, maturing, and understanding what its obligation is toward members of our community who don't yet feel safe enough to come to the center," said El-Ad. "I think that this mixture between disbelief and fear is beyond us. This opens the door to the possibility of a much bigger audience - even bigger than last year. This is what we're hoping for."
A Graphic
pictures production (zerodegreesfilm@aol.com) by
Richard Ammon, GlobalGayz.com 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 murderous 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. 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 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.
September 13, 2002 5 by Davi
J. Bernstein It is not widely known that, along with its war against Israel, the Palestinian Authority is conducting a vicious campaign against its own homosexual population. The New Republic, in its Aug. 19 issue, exposed hideous human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority, which employs special police squads to capture men who have sex with each other. The lucky ones are forced to stand in sewage water up to their necks or lie in dark cells infested with insects; others are simply starved to death. These horrific crimes have motivated hundreds of Palestinian homosexuals to flee to Israel. To be sure, these people have not become Zionists. But at the end of day, they know that "in Tel Aviv no one cares if you're gay," as one Palestinian who fled to Israel said, while in Palestinian Gaza, "the police will kill me, unless my father gets to me first." If any gay solidarity exists, it must be to defend the nations that permit us to live and denounce the regimes that do not. When so many around us are deliberately misunderstanding the reality of the Middle East, we must be honest and state clearly that Israel is the only country in the region that tolerates our existence. It is incredible that Palestinian statehood can be a "progressive" cause, when the state they seek is one in which terrorism is tolerated but gay people are not. Such a state is totalitarian, not progressive. It is this same totalitarian impulse, not any Israeli "occupation," that continues the conflict with Israel, because the Palestinian leadership respects nothing ö not homosexuals, Jews, or inalienable rights ö only its own will. While those on the Left indulge Palestinian totalitarianism, President George W. Bush, DC (Yale '68), rejects it. His vision is the only hope for freedom ö and peace ö in the Middle East: defending Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state while supporting a democratic Palestinian state that eschews terrorism. Such a vision gives Palestinian homosexuals a chance at a life in their own land because a Palestinian government accountable to its people will be attuned to their most basic needs, not busy encouraging suicide bombing and rounding up homosexuals as Yasser Arafat's dictatorship is now doing. Every decent person must take a position. Do you stand with the Palestinian Authority and its totalitarian ethos that seeks to destroy Jews and homosexuals today and who knows what else tomorrow? Or do you stand with Israel ö whose government you may or may not support ö but whose people share our fundamental values of life and liberty? I put this question to my new Palestinian friend in that bar. He answered: "Where you sit is where you stand, and I'm sitting in Tel Aviv." It is inspiring to me ö as a Jew, as an American, and as a gay man ö to know that Palestinians are coming to the Jewish state for the freedom to live as God created them. Let us condemn the barbarism of the Palestinian Authority, and let us pray for the intrepid Israelis and Palestinians who are fighting for the right to live according to Micah's prophecy: "Every man shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid" (Micah 4:4). Davi J. Bernstein is a senior in Ezra Stiles College at Yale. Daily Trojan, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA ( http://www.dailytrojan.com ) http://www.dailytrojan.com/article.do?issue=/V148/N39&id=03-pale.39v.html March 13, 2003 6 by William
Goodwin A pluralistic superimposition of societal equality, however, grossly distorts the vast gulf separating Israelis from Palestinians. Unfortunately, organizations all too often overlook fundamental injustice to champion one side over the other. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in such groups as QUIT!, Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism or Queers for Palestine. QUIT! is a San Francisco-based organization describing itself as "part of an international movement for human rights that encompasses the movement for Palestinian liberation, and all other liberation movements." Solidarity stems from the group's implicit belief that as gays they understand the marginalizing of Palestinians. It would seem to be a simple expression of support for those suffering from Israeli abuses. And so it might be perceived to be by those in the organization. The group's unqualified support for Palestinians, however, puts it squarely in support of a violently homophobic society and government. Brutal oppression and abuse of gays characterizes many Arab nations, though it is certainly not unique to them. Saudi Arabia, in the recent past, has beheaded several men known to be gay. Others had their punishment of 2,600 lashes stretched over two years, in biweekly floggings, so that they would be able to survive long enough to receive their full sentence. Egypt actively arrests and, in some cases, tortures gays, purportedly for "offenses against religion." And the PLA (Palestinian Liberation Authority) is no different. In the August 2002 New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi described the treatment of one gay youth: "He was beaten by his family, then warned by his father that he'd strangle (him) if it ever happened again." Later, "he was arrested ... and forced to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see." This is not by any means the worst. Halevi quoted the friend of another victim. "They put him in a pit. It was the fast of Ramadan, and they decided to make him fast the whole month but without any break at night. They denied him food and water until he died in that hole." Gay Palestinians fleeing for their lives, then, is not surprising. But where they seek refuge is. Paul Varnell, writing for the Chicago Free Press, offers a hint: "Which Middle Eastern country has a variety of gay organizations ... has members of parliament who speak out on behalf of gays ... has a head of state (willing to) meet with gay activists? ... Israel." These "homosexuals sought refuge in Israel after being persecuted in their own communities," according to the BBC News service. Not only that, but Israeli civil rights organizations are fighting to let those who illegally entered the country stay. "Campaigners in Israel are trying to stop the deportation of a Palestinian homosexual back to the Gaza Strip, where they say he faces death threats." Amazingly, this issue has gone almost completely unreported. Outside of the efforts of a few writers such as Halevi, Varnell and blogger Andrew Sullivan (whose writing prompted this article), little has been done or said about the deplorable state of affairs, even by human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch (HRW), in its last annual report, comprehensively documented abuses specifically related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but failed to mention such gay abuse even once. Scrutiny of Israelis on the same subject, however, is far more intense, according to Shaul Ganon, a prominent Israeli gay activist. "The international human rights groups say they've got a long list of pressing issues, (but) when Israeli police harass Arab Israeli homosexuals, I send out reports, and then - oh, you should see how quickly the human rights organizations get in touch with me to investigate. The hypocrisy is unbelievable," Halevi quotes him as saying. The dichotomy in open-mindedness and rational thinking is painfully clear. Israeli activists are willing to fight for Palestinian rights, even as suicide bombers slaughter innocents in malls and discos. Meanwhile, a Palestinian gay fears for his safety because "his own family tracked him down and tried to kill him," according to the BBC. No one could, or should, claim Israeli conduct in countering terrorist attacks has been blameless, nor that their historical treatment of the refugees is untainted. But any discussion of the conflict that fails to acknowledge the bitter homophobia as symptomatic of an ignorant, retrogressive society cannot hope to offer any effective solution. Such recognition is not a racist condemnation of Palestinians or Arabs. Indeed, the seeds of this presently backward state might very well have been sown by the aggressiveness of Israel's security measures during the decades and merely watered by religious extremism and poverty. Whatever the source, the tumultuous upheaval that has become daily life in the West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps must be considered in the context of this gross societal disparity. . Editorial writer William Goodwin is an undeclared freshman. To comment on this article, call (213) 740-5665 or e-mail dtrojan@usc.edu.
The New Republic, ( http://www.tnr.com ) http://thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020819&s=halevi081902 (E-Mail: online@tnr.com ) August 20, 2002 Tel Aviv Dispatch 8 by Yossi
Klein Word gets around a refugee camp, and a young man he didn't know invited Tayseer into an orange grove. The next day he received a police summons. At the station Tayseer was told that his sex partner was in fact a police agent whose job is to ferret out homosexuals. If Tayseer wanted to avoid prison, he too would have to become an undercover sex agent, luring gays into orchards and turning them over to the police. Tayseer refused to implicate others. He was arrested and hung by his arms from the ceiling. A high-ranking officer he didn't know arranged for his release and then demanded sex as payback. Tayseer fled Gaza to Tulkarem on the West Bank, but there too he was eventually arrested. He was forced to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see. ("You slap one part of your body, and then you have to slap another," he recounts.) During one interrogation, police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle. Through the entire ordeal he was taunted by interrogators, jailers, and fellow prisoners for being a homosexual. When he was released a few months later, Tayseer crossed into Israel. He now lives illegally in an Arab Israeli village and works in a restaurant. His dream is to move to Tel Aviv. "No one there cares if you're gay," he says. These days, though, he knows that an illegal Gazan in Tel Aviv risks being deported and that he's safest staying where he is. And if he were sent back to Gaza? "The police will kill me," he says. "Unless my father gets to me first." With bombs once again exploding all over Israel, and the Palestinian territories under seemingly permanent curfew, the woes of Palestinian homosexuals haven't exactly grabbed international attention. But after spending two days with gay Palestinian refugees in Israel, I began to wonder why the liberal world has never taken interest in their plight. Perhaps it's because that might mean acknowledging that the pathology of the nascent Palestinian polity extends well beyond Yasir Arafat and won't be uprooted by one free election. Indeed, the torment of gays is very nearly official Palestinian policy. "The persecution of gays in the Palestinian Authority [P.A.] doesn't just come from the families or the Islamic groups but from the P.A. itself," says Shaul Ganon of the Tel Aviv-based Agudah-Association of Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender in Israel. "The P.A.'s usual excuse for persecuting gays is to label them collaborators - though I know of two cases in the last three years where people were tried explicitly for being homosexuals." Since the intifada, Ganon tells me, Palestinian police have increasingly enforced Islamic law: "It's now impossible to be an open gay in the P.A." A gardener
we'll call Samir, who has fled the territories for Israel, told me of
a gay friend who was a member of the Palestinian police and ran
away to Tel Aviv: "After a while he returned to Nablus, where he
was arrested by the Palestinian police and accused of being a collaborator.
They put him in a pit. It was the fast of Ramadan, and they decided
to make him fast the whole month but without any break at night. They
denied him food and water until he died in that hole." International human rights monitors have all but ignored gay Palestinians' plight. The U.S. State Department's recently released human rights report for 2001, for instance, blandly notes, "In the Palestinian territories homosexuals generally are socially marginalized, and occasionally receive physical threats." As Ganon explains it, "The Palestinian human rights groups are afraid to deal with the problem. One Palestinian activist told me that Israelis need to raise the issue because they'll be shut down if they try to. Amnesty Israel is sympathetic but their mandate is limited to Israeli human rights violations. And the international human rights groups say they've got a long list of pressing issues. When Israeli police harass Arab Israeli homosexuals, I send out reports, and then - oh, you should see how quickly the human rights organizations get in touch with me to investigate. The hypocrisy is unbelievable." Because the world hasn't forced the P.A. to tolerate gays, Palestinia n homosexuals are increasingly seeking refuge in the only regional territory that does: Israel. In the last few years hundreds of gay Palestinians, mostly from the West Bank, have slipped into Israel. Most live illegally in Tel Aviv, the center of Israel's gay community; many are desperately poor and work as prostitutes. But at least they're beyond the reach of their families and the P.A. Still, for these refugees life in Israel means subsisting on the margins. Ganon, my guide to the community, heads the Association's outreach to Palestinian gays. He is a big man with a goatee who spends his nights on the Tel Aviv streets where Palestinian gay prostitutes gather, providing food and clothes and trying to keep them off drugs and out of jail. Over the last four years Ganon has waged essentially a one-man campaign to try to interest human rights groups in Israel and elsewhere in their plight. He's helped about 300 Palestinian gays in Israel and estimates that probably twice that many currently live here illegally without access to legal employment or health care and under constant threat of deportation. "No one here cares about us," says Samir, the gardener, who lives with his Israeli boyfriend. "I've written to all the government ministries, to all the newspapers, asking for my status to be recognized. No one even bothers answering." According to Ganon, during the last year police have generally stopped arresting and deporting Palestinian gays because of his efforts. He has even worked out a quiet arrangement with Tel Aviv police, providing them a list of Palestinian gays under his sponsorship and providing those gays with Association membership cards to show their affiliation. The goal is to reassure local police, who are primarily on the lookout for Palestinian terrorists, that these Palestinians pose no threat. (The exceptions to this arrangement are Palestinian gays with security records and those from Gaza, whom the Israelis see as inherent security risks because of Hamas's popularity there.) Some Palestinian gays, though, say they see no recent change in police policy and still feel hunted. An American we'll call William finds himself in the Palestinian gays' no-man's-land. Last year he and his Palestinian boyfriend, whom we'll call Ahmad, moved into Ahmad's West Bank village - a move that in retrospect seems mad. "We told the people in the village that we were friends, and for a while it worked," says William. "But then one day we found a letter under our door from the Islamic court. It listed the five forms of death prescribed by Islam for homosexuality, including stoning and burning. We fled to Israel that same day." Now they live in hiding - mostly from Ahmad's brothers, who have searched for the couple in Tel Aviv and threatened to kill Ahmad. Though William has appealed to human rights groups around the world, and to the U.S. Embassy for an American visa for Ahmad, he's gotten little response. One American gay-advocacy group offered to help Ahmad get asylum after he arrives in the United States. But getting him there is precisely the problem, and William refuses to leave without Ahmad. And so here they are, an American Christian and a Palestinian Muslim stranded in the Jewish state, with no money and no work, living off the charity of friends, dreading the reappearance of Ahmad's brothers, and waiting for help they know will almost certainly not come. On a recent humid Tel Aviv night, in an area of shabby cafes for foreign workers and neon-lit sex shops, a half-dozen Palestinian teenage boys with gelled hair and sleeveless shirts sit on a railing, waiting for pickups. Ganon is here, as he is most nights, checking on "my children." "Does anyone need condoms?" he asks. "How about clothes? Who hasn't eaten today, sweethearts?" A police car slows down, and the boys call out, "Identity cards!" and laugh. The police ignore them and drive away. The teenage prostitutes, refugees from the West Bank, live in an abandoned building. They tell me that sometimes a client will offer them a meal and a shower instead of payment; sometimes a client will simply refuse to pay in any form, taunting them to complain to police. And sometimes police will beat them before releasing them back to the streets. A 17-year-old refugee from Nablus named Salah (a pseudonym), who spent months in a P.A. prison where interrogators cut him with glass and poured toilet cleaner into his wounds, tells Ganon that he has been stopped by Israeli police no fewer than four times that day. He recites the names of the different police units who stopped him by their acronyms. "Try not to do anything stupid," Ganon says. "I've tried to kill myself six times already," says Salah. "Each time the ambulance came too quickly. But now I think I know how to do it. Next time, with God's help, it will work before the ambulance comes." .
August 16, 2002 9 By Orly
Halpern 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 Friedlander, a Jew from Germany who immigrated six years ago. Friedlander and his wife, Anne 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." Daily Trojan,University of Southern California USC Student Union 421, Los Angeles, CA http://www.dailytrojan.com/article.do?issue=/V148/N39&id=03-pale.39v.html March 13, 2003 10 William
Goodwin Assigning fault and determining the conflict's roots is beyond the expertise of a young student such as myself. A pluralistic superimposition of societal equality, however, grossly distorts the vast gulf separating Israelis from Palestinians. Unfortunately,
organizations all
too often
overlook fundamental injustice to champion one side over
the other. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in such groups
as
QUIT!, Queers
Undermining Israeli Terrorism or Queers for Palestine.
The group's unqualified support for Palestinians, however, puts it squarely in support of a violently homophobic society and government. Brutal oppression and abuse of gays characterizes many Arab nations, though it is certainly not unique to them. Saudi Arabia, in the recent past, has beheaded several men known to be gay. Others had their punishment of 2,600 lashes stretched over two years, in biweekly floggings, so that they would be able to survive long enough to receive their full sentence. Egypt actively arrests and, in some cases, tortures gays, purportedly for "offenses against religion." And the PLA (Palestinian Liberation Authority) is no different. In the August 2002 New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi described the treatment of one gay youth: "He was beaten by his family, then warned by his father that he'd strangle (him) if it ever happened again." Later, "he was arrested ... and forced to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see." This is not by any means the worst. Halevi quoted the friend of another victim. "They put him in a pit. It was the fast of Ramadan, and they decided to make him fast the whole month but without any break at night. They denied him food and water until he died in that hole." Gay Palestinians fleeing for their lives, then, is not surprising. But where they seek refuge is. Paul Varnell, writing for the Chicago Free Press, offers a hint: "Which Middle Eastern country has a variety of gay organizations ... has members of parliament who speak out on behalf of gays ... has a head of state (willing to) meet with gay activists? ... Israel." These "homosexuals sought refuge in Israel after being persecuted in their own communities," according to the BBC News service. Not only that, but Israeli civil rights organizations are fighting to let those who illegally entered the country stay. "Campaigners in Israel are trying to stop the deportation of a Palestinian homosexual back to the Gaza Strip, where they say he faces death threats." Amazingly, this issue has gone almost completely unreported. Outside of the efforts of a few writers such as Halevi, Varnell and blogger Andrew Sullivan (whose writing prompted this article), little has been done or said about the deplorable state of affairs, even by human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch (HRW), in its last annual report, comprehensively documented abuses specifically related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but failed to mention such abuse even once. Scrutiny of Israelis on the same subject, however, is far more intense, according to Shaul Ganon, a prominent Israeli gay activist. "The international human rights groups say they've got a long list of pressing issues, (but) when Israeli police harass Arab Israeli homosexuals, I send out reports, and then - oh, you should see how quickly the human rights organizations get in touch with me to investigate. The hypocrisy is unbelievable," Halevi quotes him as saying. The dichotomy in open-mindedness and rational thinking is painfully clear. Israeli activists are willing to fight for Palestinian rights, even as suicide bombers slaughter innocents in malls and discos. Meanwhile, a Palestinian gay fears for his safety because "his own family tracked him down and tried to kill him," according to the BBC. No one could, or should, claim Israeli conduct in countering terrorist attacks has been blameless, nor that their historical treatment of the refugees is untainted. But any discussion of the conflict that fails to acknowledge the bitter homophobia as symptomatic of an ignorant, retrogressive society cannot hope to offer any effective solution. Such recognition is not a racist condemnation of Palestinians or Arabs. Indeed, the seeds of this presently backward state might very well have been sown by the aggressiveness of Israel's security measures during the decades and merely watered by religious extremism and poverty. Whatever the source, the tumultuous upheaval that has become daily life in the West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps must be considered in the context of this gross societal disparity. . Editorial writer William Goodwin is an undeclared freshman. To comment on this article, call (213) 740-5665 or e-mail dtrojan@usc.edu.
September 17, 2003 11 By Dan
Williams Tel Aviv "Anwar" - who like other Palestinian homosexuals interviewed by Reuters goes by an assumed name - fled the West Bank after his brothers and father suspected he was gay and beat him senseless. Rani said he was tortured by Palestinian police who wanted him to spy on other homosexuals - a charge authorities at his Gaza hometown denied. He escaped on a work visa to Israel before a Palestinian uprising for statehood erupted three years ago. Rights activists estimate that 300 mostly male gay Palestinians are quietly eking out a living in Israel, at risk of being forcibly repatriated because they are illegal immigrants or because police consider them a threat. "The first danger to them is from family and community, as well as (Palestinian) authorities," said Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International. "Going to Israel is a one-way ticket, and once there their biggest problem is possibly being sent back." Palestinian runaways learn Hebrew quickly, playing down their Arab accents. Hospitals are avoided, and cash put aside for private health care. Those who turn to prostitution learn to spot plainclothes police from a distance. Fearing that word of their whereabouts might reach vengeful relatives back home, they avoid contact with one another. "In my dreams I see my relatives, wearing masks, coming to kidnap and kill me," said 22-year-old Rani, wearing a goatee, fake military dog-tags and a Star of David medallion - the trappings of Israeli urban youth. According to Shaul Gonen of Aguda, Israel's main homosexual rights lobby, at least three Palestinian runaways have disappeared this way, punished for violating "family honor." Nature Versus Nation Sodomy carries a three- to 10-year jail term in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian legal experts say enforcement is at the discretion of local authorities and usually requires that the accused be caught in the act. Islam denounces homosexuality as a sin, and many Palestinians deny it exists in their midst. Israel, which decriminalized sodomy in 1987, is considered among the more liberal of societies when it comes to gay rights. "Palestinian society is very conservative and there is a very, very, very small and secretive community of these people," said Hassan Khreisheh, who heads the human rights monitoring committee in the Palestinian Legislative Council, or parliament. He dismissed the runaways living in Israel as "collaborators guilty of various crimes, including homosexuality." Palestinian gays are regularly accused by compatriots of being part of Israel's vast network of informers. Asked to verify Anwar's account of his expulsion from home, a Palestinian security source said that not only Anwar, but also his father and brothers were viewed as "prostitutes and spies." "In the Arab mindset, a person who has committed a moral offense is often assumed to be guilty of others, and it radiates out to the family and community," said Bassam Eid, director of Palestinian Human Rights Watch. "As homosexuality is seen as a crime against nature, it is not hard to link it to collaboration - a crime against nation," Eid added, lamenting what he called a "total lack" of support networks for gays in the West Bank and Gaza. Eid and Gonen said they knew of several Palestinian gays who had worked for Israeli intelligence in exchange for money or administrative favors including the right to live in Israel. One former Israeli handler of collaborators disputed this. "Gays are already treated with suspicion in Palestinian society," said Menachem Landau, a veteran of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency. "So what good are they for covert work?" Pressure goes the other way too. "Ali," a 19-year-old from the West Bank, said he went into hiding in Tel Aviv after Palestinian militants ordered him to carry out a suicide bombing and "purge his guilt" for being gay. Rani said he knew of three similar cases. "But they refused. We don't want to kill, just to live - in Israel or wherever." Anwar, who lives with a Jewish partner under identity papers loaned by an Israeli Arab, said he was content but wanted to move abroad eventually. One Israeli-Palestinian gay couple won residency in Canada, but this is rare. Gonen said Israeli police had expelled several dozen gay runaways at West Bank and Gaza checkpoints in recent years. Most soon sneaked back. But he said four had vanished in the territories and one was later reported to have been killed by relatives.
22 October 2003 12 A number of gay Palestinian men are risking their lives to cross the border into Israel, claiming they feel safer among Israelis than their own people. According to some estimates, there are now 300 gay Palestinian men secretly living and working in Israel. Their willingness to live there - despite the risk of being detained and deported as a security threat - is due to Palestinian attitudes towards gay men, they claim. One 22-year-old gay man who fled from Gaza into Israel four years ago told BBC World Service's Outlook programme he was almost killed when his family found out about his sexuality. He says that when he was 18, he was caught with his boyfriend by his brother. "[My brother] brought a stick and hit us," he said. "He tied us up with an iron rope and went to call my dad, and tell my partner's. Then he came back and hit us again." Illegal status The man said he escaped after his brother went out and told his mother and sister-in-law to make sure they did not run away. "I started crying to my mum, begging her to let us go. So she untied us, and said if my dad found out, he would kill me on the spot. The man said he ran away and, when he discovered his family were hunting for him, fled to Israel. There, he says, he was placed under virtual house arrest because he was viewed as a potential security risk. Shaul Gonen, of Israel's main gay rights lobbying group, Agudah, told Outlook that under international law Israel is obliged to offer asylum to those that seek it. But, he says, it can refuse if the applicants are from an area the state is in conflict with. In practice, Palestinian gays end up being placed under virtual house arrest because of the fear that they may be potential suicide bombers. "They are unable to find proper help," said Mr Gonen. "Everybody blames them for being something dangerous. "The Palestinians say if you are gay, you must be a collaborator, while the Israelis treat you as a security threat." Coercion However, many Palestinian gays say they would still rather live under house arrest in Israel, where homosexuality is not considered a crime, than at home. The 22-year-old who fled his home in Gaza alleged that those who do stay in the occupied territories are often coerced into working for the Palestinian police. He said that he himself had been stopped by police in Gaza, who had threatened to expose him as a homosexual. He alleged he was told by the police to sleep with another man in order to acquire damaging information about him. The man alleged that after he refused, the Palestinian police had tortured him. "They hit me. They put me in a pool of water with just my head sticking out," he claimed. However, the Israeli secret service also often exploit gay Palestinians, said Mr Gonen. He says this usually involves coercing them into working undercover, to gather information about other Palestinians. The precarious status of the gay community means gay men often end up working for the secret service or as targets for exploitation by Israeli men. "They work as prostitutes, selling their bodies unwillingly because they have to survive," said Mr Gonen. "Sometimes the Israeli secret police try to recruit them, sometimes the Palestinian police try to recruit them. "In the end they find themselves falling between all chairs. Nobody wants to help them, everybody wants to use them." 'Against
Allah'
January 15, 2004 13 By Dan
Baron, Jewish Telegraphic Agency Many of them have far more to fear than the police or the occasional abusive client. Tricked out in drag or the tight, modish attire of Western urban youth, dozens of gay Palestinian runaways eke out a dangerous living on Israel's streets. For these gay men, life in the seedy parts of central Israel is far better than the virtual death sentences they fled in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Sani - not his real name - grew up outside Gaza City, in a refugee camp whose clan networks and congestion made privacy practically impossible. He said he realized he was homosexual at age 16, in an encounter with another youth. Sani's secret was safe from his father, a local sheik, but eventually it leaked out to the Palestinian Authority police. "They brought me in, held me for hours," he told JTA. "During one round of questioning, they made me strip and sit on a Coke bottle. It hurt. And all the time I was more worried my family would learn why." Torture by Palestinian Authority security services or vigilante attacks by relatives is a fate suffered by countless gays in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where sodomy carries a jail term of three to 10 years. Islam prescribes capital punishment for homosexual activity. Those who survive torture and attacks either fade into meek self-abnegation or, like Sani, break away. Sani's freedom came at a price: He had to report other Palestinian gays to the police. But as soon as he got out of the Gaza lock-up, Sani got out of Gaza for good, posing as a day laborer to escape to the safety of Israel proper, where he joined an estimated 300 fellow gay runaways. Now 22, Sani is always on the move, lodging with friends or rich clients he meets at Tel Aviv's bath houses. If he is short on cash, he resorts to street-walking in Electricity Park. Sani phones home every few months to assure his mother that he is all right - on condition that she doesn't tell his father and brothers anything about the conversations. "She says they consider me dead, and it's better that way," he said. "I have nightmares about them coming to kill me." According to Shaul Gonen of Agudah, Israel's homosexual rights association, at least three Palestinian runaways have been abducted by vengeful kinsmen, never to be heard from again. "Being gay in the P.A. is, quite simply, deadly," Gonen said. Israel's preoccupation with security also means that the runaways, in the country illegally, run the risk of being summarily deported if caught. "The first danger to them is from family and community, as well as authorities" in the P.A.-controlled areas, Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International told Reuters. "Going to Israel is a one-way ticket, and once there, their biggest problem is possibly being sent back." Israel signed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees covenant of 1951, guaranteeing asylum for anyone persecuted on the basis of sexual orientation. The country's Interior Ministry said any gay Palestinian can apply to remain in Israel indefinitely if persecution is proven, but the ministry gave no figures on how many such applications have been filed. Another option for the Palestinians is to seek haven abroad. One gay Israeli-Palestinian couple found a home in Canada, and Gonen currently is campaigning to persuade European Union nations to be more forthcoming with offers of asylum. Many runaways are apparently unaware of their rights, or worried that through some bureaucratic bungle they could find themselves on the wrong side of an Israeli military checkpoint before their asylum application is processed. One 19-year-old runaway told Israel's Channel One TV that the Al-Aksa Brigade, the terrorist wing of the Palestinians' mainstream Fatah movement, tried to pressure him into becoming a suicide bomber to "purge his moral guilt." He refused and fled to an Arab village in Israel's Galilee region. Gonen tells of a Palestinian runaway in Tel Aviv who helped catch a terrorist. The gay runaway grew suspicious overhearing an illegal Palestinian laborer speak. The man's accent was Gazan, but he claimed to be from the West Bank. The runaway reported the laborer to the authorities via an Israeli friend, and police who arrested the laborer discovered he was a terrorist fugitive. Palestinian homosexuals often elicit more suspicion at home than in their haven of choice, regularly drawing accusations that they collaborate with the Shin Bet (Israeli secret police). Human-rights observers suggest that Palestinian homosexuals, fearing for their lives if exposed, are especially vulnerable to Shin Bet blackmail. But a veteran handler of collaborators, Menachem Landau, denied this. "Gays are already treated with suspicion in Palestinian society," Landau said in an interview. "So what good are they for covert work?" In Israel, covertness is a way of life for Palestinian runaways. They pick up Hebrew and make all efforts to erase their Arabic accents. Military dog tags and Star of David medallions are de rigeur as an Israeli disguise. They save up money for private medical care in lieu of hospital visits when they fall ill. The Electricity Park crowd has learned to spot plainclothes police from afar. The really lucky ones adopt a new identity altogether. The 30-year-old runaway from a village near Jenin works in a Tel Aviv restaurant using an identification card loaned to him by an Israeli Arab friend. He lives with his Jewish partner in the quiet Tel Aviv suburb of Holon. "With any luck, I'll go unnoticed until there is peace,'' he said.
February 8, 2004 14
Gay Arab (with Israeli lover) From the West Bank Finds He Can't
Go Home Again Thousands
of undocumented Palestinians have been sent to Israeli
prisons or forced back to the Palestinian territories since
the start of the current Palestinian uprising against Israel nearly
31/2 years ago, according to Palestinian officials and human rights
organizations monitoring the cases.
September 16, 2004 15 By
Glenn Kauth “We have people being killed 20 minutes down the road at the same time as this racist separation wall is being built,” she says, referring to the West Bank towns near Jerusalem that are frequently the |
