By Rose L, aka Rosenriot
Content Warning: This post contains discussions of queerphobia, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, racism, white supremacy, ethnic cleansing, and genocides.
Every anti-Zionist queer person has heard it by now:
“How can you support Palestine? They’d behead you for being queer over there!”
It’s a question that isn’t really a question. It’s a statement, rooted in queerphobia, islamophobia, and racism. What people who say that don’t realize is that we are killed for being queer over here.
Southern Queers know it best: The United States of America is not safe for queer people. In North Carolina alone, there’s been attacks on drag shows everywhere from bars to libraries, laws have been passed forbidding schools from talking about queer existence, and gender affirming care has been banned for minors.
Nationwide, while queer flags and imagery are sold by major corporations for profit the creators of those flags often don’t see a cent, and are left homeless and begging for mutual aid online. Murders of trans people have increased, particularly murders of black transwomen. Books depicting queer people are banned from libraries. Even in “safe states” hate groups like Moms for Liberty are on the rise, pushing for less and less queer representation in society and media. North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has called queer people, “filth”, “maggots”, “flies”, and “what the cows leave behind.” If anything, queerphobia has skyrocketed in response to increasing queer visibility in American society.
Queerness is sold. But we are not safe.
Queerness is marketable. But we are not liberated.
“No Pride For Some of Us Without Liberation For All of Us” is a call for intersectionality and solidarity often attributed to transwoman and activist Marsha P. Johnson, but was actually originally written by Micah Bazant in 2015. Bazant, notably, identifies as quote “a white, trans, timtum, anti-zionist jew.”
2015. Micah Bazant’s quote displayed on a banner at North Carolina Pride in Durham, NC by queer and trans people of color.
Anti-zionism is necessary for queer liberation. When one looks at the people often responsible for queerphobia in America, they are overwhelmingly looking at Zionists. The President of Focus on the Family, a Christian Fundamentalist organization, Jim Daly, wrote an article supporting Israel on October 9th. Focus on the Family has previously called being LGBTQ+ people, ”a particularly evil lie of Satan.” On October 12th, aforementioned Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson called for a day of prayer and declared North Carolina's solidarity with the state of Israel.
But why does Mark Robinson, a man who equated queer people to “filth”, and Focus on the Family, who believe queer existence is a satanic deception, have such unwavering support for Israel, which often presents itself as a haven for queer people in the Middle East? For the last decade or so, Israel has flown in American drag queens to perform in Tel Aviv, and hosts Pride parades and festivities. Surely Mark Robinson, Focus on the Family, and people and organizations like them should condemn Israel and its promotion of such “filth” and lies.
However, contrary to Israel's many claims, it doesn’t actually provide that many material queer rights. Israel forbids same-sex marriage. When it comes to queer Palestinians, Israel outs them to their families and communities to sow division. And on November 6th, after queer people across the world highlighted these discrepancies in reaction to October 7th, Israel’s official X account reposted a skit by the Israeli equivalent of Saturday Night Live, set at the fictional “Columbia Untisemity'' depicting a “blue haired liberal” saying “I'm not antisemitic, I'm racist fluid”. When challenged on the subject of queer rights, Israel stooped to using the same bigoted rhetoric the American right wing has said about queer people for years. As of this article’s publication, Israel has yet to remove the repost.
The marketing of it’s pro-gay image by Israel is a tactic called “pinkwashing”, a term popularized by activist Sarah Schulman. It is a propaganda tactic for countries to convince the world that everything they do is justified because they fly the Pride flag high.
But Israel isn’t the only place that does pinkwashing. America and its liberal cities have pinkwashed for over a decade. The North Carolina capital city of Raleigh boasts one of the largest Pride parades in the South, and never fails to mention its push for inclusivity and diversity on its website. It has passed ordinances protecting its queer citizens, but in reality, North Carolina queers can’t even afford to live in Raleigh to benefit from those protections. This is in large part due to skyrocketing housing costs, which results in the most marginalized queers being pushed farther and farther away from safety: by poverty, gentrification, a hostile police force, and the increasing presence of hate groups. Pinkwashing is merely a lukewarm defense for colonizer tactics, from gentrification to genocide.
Queer people know genocide all too well. The general public knows that Jews were targeted in the Holocaust, but so often they forget the Romani, the disabled, the political revolutionaries, and yes, the queers, who were targeted as well. In fact, one of the earliest, most famous photos of Nazis burning books isn’t of them burning Torahs, or burning leftist leaflets. They burned published medical research on trans people by Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the Institute for Sex Research in Berlin. Nazis later went on to burn the institute and its archives to the ground, and then they moved on to burning queer bodies too.
1933. The first Nazi book burning, of books taken from Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sex Research.
Today, Queers in the South face discrimination simply for where they live. The rest of the nation, and to an extent, the rest of the world, view Southerners as racists, bigots, and Evangelical zealots, as well as assume a general lowered capacity for intelligence amongst those in the region. The truth is however, that the American South is extremely diverse and defies all stereotypes. The South natively belongs to our Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, for whom the land should return, and which many still call home despite numerous attempts by colonizers and the Federal government to displace or erase them. The South contains approximately 59% of the country’s Black people, and 32% of the country’s LGBTQIA+ population, the highest of any region in the US. Despite this, Southerns are still perceived as straight, white, Christian cis men. Diversity is reserved for places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, and this perception leads to the most marginalized populations in our country receiving the least support. Southern politicians, queer and not, are often not representative of their marginalized constituents, leading to mass divides in the protections that marginalized people receive at state levels- often none- and the harsh realities they face. The people are not its politicians or its government, and this is true everywhere, including Palestine.
Israel’s pinkwashing not only erases the truth, it erases the existence of Queer Palstinians, who very much exist. This is best exemplified on Queering the Map, a community-based online collaborative platform on which users submit their personal queer experiences in relation to a place on a map. It often serves as a safe space for marginalized queers around the world to tell their stories. Since Israel ramped up its bombing of Gaza, it has become a memorial for Palestinian queer experiences:
“...Being gay in Gaza is hard but somehow it was fun. I made out with a lot of boys in my neighborhood. I thought everyone is gay to some level.”
-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza
“Realizing the feelings I had for you were more than adoration, realizing that wanting to see you everyday, to be with you and talk to you, for you to call me by my petname that you gave me. I miss you beyond words can describe.I wish if I had the courage to tell you but again I was scared, I didn’t want to cause you any trouble. Now both of us [live] outside [the] Gaza strip, but much far away from each other. I love you, despite what is always on my mind.”
-Anonymous from Rafah, Gaza
“I wish I could watch the sunset over [the] Gaza sea with you. For one night I wish this occupation was no longer and that we could be free for once on our own land.”
-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza
“Danced in the street with her [here].”
-Anonymous from Ramallah, Palestine
“I found out I was queer here. Whoever is reading this, I just want you to know that you are valid and Allah loves you the way you are. We exist and it's not wrong. Stay brave and beautiful.”
-Anonymous from Al-Mazra a Ash Sharqiya, Palestine
“Here was our first date, we sat, talked about our childhood[s], queer culture, food and bagpipes”
-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza
“Being out doesn't mean anything to me. I wish to see Haifa. I wish to see the village my parents had to leave. I wish to see my brother who got killed. I wish to be free but my freedom is beyond being out. It's being Palestinian first and foremost. God have mercy on my brother and my Palestinian siblings.”
-Anonymous from Bethlehem, Palestine.
“Played with his hair [here].”
-Anonymous from Betunia, Palestine
“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. 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."
-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza
“Please know despite what the media says there are gay Palestinians.
We are here, we are queer. Free Palestine.”
-Anonymous from Khan Younis, Gaza
Furthermore, there are prominent Queer Palestinians and Queer Arab and Muslims organizations that have called for a free Palestine. Bashar Murad, a queer Palestinian musician often referred to as “The Lady Gaga of Palestine” has spoken out in articles by Them.us, Teen Vogue, NPR, and the BBC, calling for an end to the occupation since long before October 7th. alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Queer Crescent, and Hidayah have all made explicit statements connecting queerness and Palestinian liberation.
2021. Bashar Murad, a queer Palestinian pop artist, photographed in Palestine.
Israel, despite its claims of being queer friendly, forces queer Palestinains to choose between their identities, then bombs them regardless of their choice. Then, it claims it is justified, because Palestine doesn’t have pride parades. Nevermind the fact there are hardly any roads left to have a pride parade on. Nevermind the fact that a Palestinian genocide will leave no one left to be in a pride parade. Nevermind that pride parades are not liberation.
Queerness is sold. But Queer Palestinians are not safe.
Queerness is marketable. But Queer Palestinians are not liberated.
Still, some may argue that Palestine has not earned Queer solidarity or liberation. That it is not progressive enough, not queer enough, not worthy. The irony is, queers have been told this for years about their own identities: that they are not enough. Not gay enough, not trans enough. Not bi enough, not ace enough. The devastation these expectations have brought to the queer community is immeasurable and should not be passed off onto Palestine.
Solidarity is not transactional. Liberation cannot be achieved if there are barriers for entry. Solidarity does not come with a “you must be this woke to be liberated” brochure that only the most progressive hand out to the have-nots. Queers deserve liberation, now. Palestine deserves liberation, now. All those marginalized and oppressed deserve liberation, now, and they all require solidarity to achieve that, without expectation, without prerequisite.
The queer identity is not a justification for genocide or a lack of solidarity. Queer identity demands solidarity with all those oppressed, and all those who are victims of genocide. There is no amount of pride flags America can fly above its capitol buildings that will excuse the mass genocides that it is currently committing here and across the world. And there is no amount of pride flag stickers that Israel can slap on a bomb to make the Palestinian genocide humane. These countries are in bed together for a reason. There is no amount of queer money they can take, no amount of drag queens they can platform, no pride parades or limited edition pride collections at Target that can make Native American genocide, or Queer genocide, or Trans genocide, or Palestinian genocide, or Congolese genocide, or Armenian genocide, or any genocide acceptable. None of it is acceptable.
North Carolina queers must demand a Free Palestine, with our voices, our divestment, our influence, our art, and our power. We will not condemn the Palestinian people in their resistance. We will fight until there is Palestinian joy on Palestinian land, unoccupied, thriving, with olive trees as far as the eye can see, and we will see that in our lifetimes.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
About the Author:
Rose L (they/them), also known by their drag persona ROSENRIOT, is a member of NCTDSA, activist, and queer performer living and working in Central NC. They’ve lived in the South for over half their life, and can be found handing out water and sign-making supplies at protests around the area.