Rage Against the Screen
On Palestine and Who Gets to Be Queer
“I’ve always imagined you and me sitting out in the sun, hand, and hand, free at last. We spoke of all the places we would go if we could.” These are the words of an LGBTQIA Palestinian from Gaza, posted on the counter-mapping platform Queering the Map, which seeks to document the personal and lived experiences of queer people from around the world. The writer goes on, “Yet you are gone now. If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything. I’m sorry I was a coward.”
This quote is among many from queer Palestinians who use this online digital archive, as well as social media, to express the terror, loss, and suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. According to the map’s location, this story comes from the city of Jabalia, where according to Al Jazeera, Israeli bombardments targeting the city’s refugee camp killed thirty people and injured twenty-seven. As Israel continues its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip in a horrific act of collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, queer Palestinians are weaponized against their own people in Western conceptions of the seventy-six years of oppression of Palestine by Israel.
In the West, Orientalist views of Palestinians as backward and barbaric, especially in regard to issues of gender and queerness, ignore the plight of queer Palestinians not by virtue of their queerness, but by their national identity as Palestinians. They ignore the ways in which Israel perpetuates colonial violence against queer Palestinians at the intersection of both identities while justifying said violence in spite of its grave consequences. According to Electronic Intifada, Israeli officials routinely blackmail queer Palestinians by threatening to expose their identities if they do not cooperate with their interests, placing them under threat not just within their own communities, but by a colonial apartheid state that has oppressed them their entire lives. In April 2023, the Palestinian resistance group Lion’s Den executed a queer man who was coerced into collaborating with Israeli forces out of fear of being outed. In response, an unnamed Palestinian spoke of the commonality of such atrocious practices by Israel, telling Haaretz “It’s a very well-known practice; the [Israeli] security forces take advantage of poor families or gay men and their need for work permits to enter and work in Israel.”
The pervasiveness of this kind of homophobia goes largely undiscussed, despite Israel repeatedly demonstrating its disdain for queer Palestinian life and safety. In that same vein, many others in the community have perpetuated racialized myths of Palestinians, Muslims, and Middle Eastern people as violently queerphobic, erasing the existence of queer Palestinians and their contributions to various Palestinian liberation movements. The queer feminist collective Aswat, for example, based in the occupied West Bank, brings together Palestinian women and queer folk with the goal of “offering an alternative to Israel’s Pinkwashing practices and Palestinian taboos regarding sexual freedoms and rights.” There are queer people, women, and femmes in Palestine actively fighting against apartheid, occupation, and settler-colonialism as systems of violence inextricably linked to patriarchal and cis-heteronormative structures. Despite this, there is a video circulating on TikTok and X (formerly known as Twitter) of Daniel Ryan-Spaulding, a white queer stand-up comedian, in which he says “I think it’s a little ironic that the people that seem to be defending Hamas online, are also the ones they’d be most likely to kill. Oh no no, I’m sure the Islamic terrorists would love you, queer intellectual feminist.” Many have pointed to the racially charged nature of his language and his demeaning tone, as he uses terms like “Islamic terrorists” and seemingly associates all Palestinians with Hamas and its actions. He fails to mention any of the horrendous violence Palestinian people have faced not just in recent months, but for the past seventy-six years. The reality is Israel is not concerned with the personal identities of any Palestinians, because it is not concerned with Palestinian humanity. A Palestinian will die at the end of an IDF soldier’s rifle, a brutal beating from an Israeli settler, a never-ending barrage of carpet bombs falling from the sky, whether they are queer or not.
These conversations frame solidarity and liberation as transactional and conditional, entirely dependent on some arbitrary expectation of exchange. There is absolutely no room for this kind of selfish presumption of mutual solidarity, when thousands of Palestinian lives are on the line, and some queer folks in the West continue to perpetuate narratives about Arabs, Muslims, and all MENA people as ignorant and barbaric, specifically in matters related to gender and sexuality. This can be especially insidious considering the hypocrisy of Western nations like the United States, where gendered, racialized, cisnormative, and heteronormative violence are institutional and perpetual. Consider the fact that Black and brown trans women are murdered, abused, and assaulted at disproportionate rates in the US, thousands of miles away from Palestine. Queer people, most especially those of color, suffer and die under systemic and sociocultural violence globally, and Western nations are no exception. A Human Rights Campaign report revealed that thirty-two transgender and gender non-conforming people were murdered in 2022, with 81 percent of victims being people of color. Brianna Ghey, a British trans teenager, was killed in a cruel, premeditated attack in February 2023. Nex Benedict, a two-spirit and non-binary Indigenous child of Choctaw ancestry, was beaten in the bathroom of their Oklahoma school this February and passed away the next day. A queer person, especially someone who is most marginalized, does not need to go to Palestine, or anywhere in the Middle East for that matter, to experience danger, violence, or even death. In Western nations, one simply has to step outside. The risks and dangers of living as a queer person are global, they stretch across identities and transcend the arbitrary divide of borders. Why should solidarity be any different? Liberation is a collective effort; the sentiment should be freedom for all of us, not just a select few. Our current reality is one where we are witnessing genocide as it occurs in real-time, with immense financial support in the billions of dollars from Western nations. This past December, President Joe Biden bypassed Congress, providing millions of dollars worth of weaponry to Israel despite his administration’s supposed concern with “reducing civilian suffering.” Given this blatant hypocrisy and bloodlust on the part of our world leaders, there is absolutely no room for any kind of selfish presumption of reciprocity. To exclude Palestinians from these notions of freedom, liberation, and self-determination, is nothing but Orientalist racism.
As queer Palestinians continue to post their stories on Queering the Map, pleading with the world to turn its gaze towards the current atrocities occurring in Gaza, much discourse has taken place around LGBTQIA solidarity with Palestine in the West, especially on social media. On platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X, many queer people have voiced their support for Palestinians and outrage over the siege on Gaza. There has been one universal and resounding message from queer Palestinians and their allies. They all envision and wish for a free Palestine, regardless of their queer identity. The power and scale of such a declaration echo across the internet and social media, not just on Queering the Map, but with Instagram accounts such as @queersinpalestine, who in early November 2023 released what they have called “A Liberatory Demand from Queers in Palestine.” The collective’s words perfectly illustrate the unshakable dedication queer Palestinians possess against Israel’s decades-long siege:
“We write this not because our queerness exceptionalizes our positions but because, in the same way, we have been othered as queers, we are now facing patriarchal colonial tactics that seek to further alienate us as queer Palestinians … We, queer Palestinians, are an integral part of our society, and we are informing you: from the heavily militarized alleys of Jerusalem to Huwara’s scorched lands, to Jaffa’s surveilled streets and cutting across Gaza’s besieging walls, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
This alienation of queer Palestinians is only further perpetuated by characterizing solidarity as transactional and dependent on what one oppressed group can accomplish by supporting another. It is not only disingenuous, but it is critically dangerous. It only serves the interest of the oppressor to position allyship as conditional. It is in fact the very language and tactic of the oppressor that situates oppressed peoples against each other. Perhaps the most insidious tactic Israel utilizes in this regard is pinkwashing. This practice designates the illegitimate state of Israel as “progressive” in matters relating to gender and sexuality, against a purportedly conservative, violent, and backward Palestinian culture. As such, Israel has successfully marketed itself as the only bastion of LGBTQIA and gender equality in the Middle East. According to the Associated Press, in 2012 “Tel Aviv devoted about $100,000—more than a third of its international marketing budget—to drawing gay tourists.” That summer, Tel Aviv saw an estimated 25,000 gay men tourists who spent $50 million in total, a 20 percent increase from the previous summer. The queer feminist Jewish activist Ashley Bohrer describes pinkwashing as “a frequent trope in discussions of conflict in the Middle East: that Israel is a democracy committed to human rights. What these discussions continually fail to address is that these human rights apply only to Jews and are consistently, flagrantly disregarded for Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid.”
In a recent example of pinkwashing, queer IDF soldier Yoav Atzmoni, was photographed amongst the dismal wreckage of a Gaza, waving a pride flag that read “In the Name of Love” in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. There is an additional photo of him in front of a heavily loaded armament holding up an Israeli flag with rainbow detailing. The images quickly spread across social media, with his supposed intention being “to plant the first pride flag in Gaza as a call for peace and a message of freedom.” But given the unimaginable violence we continue to witness, as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has risen to upwards of 30,000 as of this writing, one must ask the question: freedom for whom exactly? The Israeli death toll since the October 7 attacks has remained steadily at 1,400. Indisputably, any loss of life is tragic, but these disproportional numbers can not be ignored. How can humanity even begin to fathom the scale of the loss in Gaza, let alone reckon with the repeated failures of the international community, with the UN allowing the US to weaponize its veto power against a permanent ceasefire? In particular, how much loss of queer life in Gaza has occurred since early October? Will we ever truly know? With an increase in bombardments terrorizing Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, and a ground invasion looming, can we assume that Israel is concerned with the loss of any civilian life, let alone queer life?
Atzmoni, a member of what is dubbed “the world’s most moral army,” waves his pride flag on a ground seeped in the bloodshed of Palestinians, as the deaths of thousands in Gaza, along with their brutalized ancestors, looms in the same wind that makes the flag move. A flag, stained in blood. Atzmoni’s pride flag is not the first to be waved in the Gaza Strip as he claims. Queer Palestinians do in fact exist, despite attempts to erase them. Atzmoni’s actions should not be read as pro-queer, but instead as a despicable attempt of LGBTQIA visibility on stolen land where Palestinians have suffered an unprecedented siege.
Social media and the internet continue to be a source for Palestinians of all identities to share their stories, as they remind the world not to leave them behind. These outlets are especially crucial for queer Palestinians’ survival. Making themselves visible to us is a matter of life or death. As the war drudges on, social media posts have dwindled. Now more than ever, survival seems out of reach for Palestinians in Gaza. Days grow longer, darker, and harder; for the most marginalized bodies in the Gaza Strip, the situation is unimaginably detrimental. But queer solidarity across our varied experiences remains. This past October, a UK-based queer collective called the Dyke Project hacked London’s transit systems with words from Palestinians on Queering the Map. The images replaced the typical advertisement one might see on their commute, with the harsh realities of queer Palestinians, disrupting daily routines and forcing people to confront the horrors of this ongoing genocide. The collective’s hacked ads read “none of us are free until we are all free” alongside a profound message from Palestine stating a simple fact; “Pls know that despite what the media says there are gay Palestinians. We are here, we are queer. Free Palestine.”