Something I have never really been able to understand is how gay groups like QUIT can support the PLO Arabs, given the horrendous treatment that homosexuals have endured within the PA controlled territories, especially when compared to the relatively good treatment they receive in Israeli society. And I am not the only one.
But QUIT themselves don’t see any problem with their position. After all, they contend, homosexuals are not treated any worse in “Palestine” than anywhere else.
Recently, the queer and mainstream press have reported on three Palestinian gay men who say that they were severely abused and humiliated by Palestinian police. One of the young men reportedly escaped the police, only to be threatened by his own family. They have been living underground in Israel for the last several years, and now Israel is deporting them back to Palestine, where they fear being killed as suspected collaborators.As queer activists, we condemn the persecution of LGBT people anywhere in the world. This includes Palestine, where many LGBT people experience special oppression living in conservative religious communities, within an oppressed nation.—-However, the story about the three Palestinian men is being used by pro-Israeli gay organizations to suggest that the military occupation of Palestine is justified by anti-gay oppression within Palestinian society. We are outraged by this cynical response to the stories.Palestine is by no means unique in being a place where gay people are threatened, abused or tortured by the police. It happens in every western society, including in San Francisco. Palestinian queers are also not alone in being in danger in the small conservative towns and villages where their families live, or in being threatened with violence from their own families.
(I wonder when was the last time a gay person voluntarily moved to the PA controlled areas like they do to San Francisco..ed.)
Besides, the real problem is not the PA and radical Islamists torturing and killing the homosexuals. It is Israel for not enabling them to escape the PA and radical Islamists torturing and killing the homosexuals!
What is unique is that Palestinian queers are prevented from leaving those repressive small towns and from meeting and organizing with other queers by the ever-tightening restrictions on their movement imposed by the Israeli occupation forces. When Israeli soldiers stop young men at checkpoint after checkpoint, telling them no, they cannot travel outside of their villages, they do not ask them if they’re gay and need to leave because they fear violence from their families. Israeli police routinely threaten to “out” queer Palestinians if they do not provide information.
I think the word I am looking for is “delusional”.
