Trans Talk
By Veronica Zerrer
Editor’s Note: Connor Maddocks has taken a leave of absence for personal reasons, but in his stead will be local trans community leader, Veronica “Ronnie” Zerrer.
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. She can be reached at [email protected].
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This is the most Islamophobic, anti Arab post I’ve seen. Take your disgusting dehumanization and misinformation elsewhere. Pinkwashing no longer works, we’ve seen the truth.
Such zionist propoganda bull
Queer Palestinians in Gaza cannot be queer if you KILL them all!!!
Maybe start there if you are worried about queer rights in Palestine.
Yes, really. Wow, not surprising coming from a US Army veteran. I’m queer af. Lesbian in a relationship for 5 years. Issue an apology and delete this. Love and absolutely telling that this article mentions nothing of the 47,000+ Palestinian humans murdered with US weapons
and US money and US citizens serving
in IOF. The fact that NO UNIVERSITIES in Gaza are left standing. Mosques have been destroyed by IOF with US weapons and support as well as churches and hospitals. What an absolutely disgusting article! It is very telling why this publication gets very little support. Shame on y’all. I have queer palestinian friends and they have never felt welcome at San Diego Pride. And having the military in pride. Yikes. Anti-Palestinian racism and pinkwashing. Do better. ????
This is an extremely bigoted and ignorant article aimed to spread misinformation and make queer people believe that Zionists, those ethnically cleansing and committing genocide against millions of people, are allies with the queer community when Israel is actively bombing queer people in Gaza to dust. The real homophobia in Palestine is Israel slaughtering queer Palestinians and their loved ones. Please take this down and apologize, this is extremely misleading, harmful, and disrespectful amidst a genocide. Stop trying to justify a genocide and ethnic cleansing that has been occurring for the past 75 years, your white supremacy, racism, and disgusting morals are showing.
This is grossly reductive and misinformed. Please, read anything by Ilan Pappe or Norman Finkelstein, and stop pink washing.