Since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ October 7 attack, over 13,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed and more than 1.5 million have been displaced over 46 days. In response, people around the world have come together to call for a ceasefire and advocate for a free Palestine. Solidarity protests and marches in cities including Washington, D.C., London, Hebron, Kuala Lumpur, and Istanbul, have garnered thousands (and hundreds of thousands).
Many of the loudest protesters have been queer and trans people. Among many moments of LGBTQ+ solidarity, queer journalists have resigned from the New York Times over the paper’s coverage of Gaza, and queer celebrities like Kehlani, Jonathan Van Ness, Angelina Jolie, Susan Sarandon, and Indya Moore have publicly taken pro-Palestine stances. On the ground, queer and trans people in London, New York, and Washington, D.C. and other major cities have formed “blocs,” marching together at protests and staging their own direct actions. Online, the anonymous group Queers in Palestine has kept a running list of LGBTQ+ organizations from all over the world that have signed onto its “No Pride in Genocide” statement. It currently lists more than 500 signatories.
Across the board, many who have voiced support for Palestinians have faced backlash, disciplinary measures, and other reprisals. But especially online, many queer and trans people have been met with a particular genre of retort: arguments that LGBTQ+ people supporting Gazans are like “chickens for KFC” or “minks for fur.” The rhetoric has become so common that on November 5, an Israeli sketch comedy show aired a skit, which has garnered millions of views, satirizing queer pro-Palestinian activists, portraying them as empty-headed clowns who celebrate the “LGBTQH” (the H is for Hamas—get it?) community. In the sketch, two “Columbia students” exuberantly wave a combination Pride and Palestine flag, even as their Hamas fighter “BFF” says, “We will throw you from the roof, you homosexual dirt.”
In Gaza, homosexual sex has been outlawed since 1936, and in the occupied territories generally, queer and trans identities continue to be subjects of intense debate in public life, as well as targets of anti-LGBTQ+ violence and persecution. But these retorts fail to acknowledge that international queer solidarity with Palestinians is nothing new, and that LGBTQ+ Palestinians have long been fighting for their rights as queer people alongside their freedom as Palestinians.
Dr. Sa'ed Atshan, a professor of Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, has spent much of his life and career thinking through these issues. His 2020 book Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique is a close look at the necessity of connecting the struggle for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia and transphobia within the occupied territories.
We asked Dr. Atshan for his perspective on the rise in queer solidarity with Palestinians, the arguments against it, and how to make sense of the current moment.
What was it like growing up in the West Bank?
I spent [my] childhood years in the West Bank, in Ramallah, and growing up under Israeli military occupation. On one hand, there's a tremendous amount of beauty and joy in living in Palestine: the people, the landscape, the generosity of spirit, the food, the love, the community, the sense of solidarity, the traditions being really held in a collectivist society and space. There was just a lot of beauty. Picking olives during the olive harvest season. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of picking a fresh fig off the tree; it’s just amazing.
So, I feel deeply connected and rooted there, and my ancestors are from there, and the spirits of my ancestors are with me. But at the same time, there is oppression and there is suffering and there are soldiers and there are Israeli settlers and there are roadblocks and there are systematic denials of our fundamental basic human rights and our civic political rights and our socioeconomic rights. These are the realities. You have the former and the latter, and somehow, you have to just navigate these dynamics.
How would you contextualize this moment that we're in right now, in particular with respect to queer solidarity with Palestinian civilians?
I think that what we’re witnessing now on the ground in Palestine runs along a continuum of what’s been happening for over 75 years now, of Israeli settler colonialism and military occupation and apartheid and different forms of ethnic cleansing. But at the same time, what we’re seeing is truly unprecedented in terms of the scale of the killing of Palestinian civilians, as well as the denial of access to water and electricity and power and medicine, on a scale in Gaza that is absolutely horrifying and very, very, very difficult. And similarly, what happened on October 7th in Israel, after the horrific attacks and massacre by Hamas, also exists along a historical continuum. This is not the first time that Palestinian armed groups have deployed violence against Israeli civilians. There’s a history, unfortunately, of suicide bombings, but the scale of the killing of Israelis is unprecedented. [Although] I want to be clear that there’s a profound asymmetry in power and a profound asymmetry in the loss of life between Israelis and Palestinians.
Where the queer solidarity movement with Palestine fits in this landscape is that there’s a long, long history of queer solidarity with Palestine in the U.S., in Europe, and around the world, but the queer Palestinian movement was born in the early 2000s, and has become transnational and has only increased over time. But now, I think, given the horror of what Israel is doing in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, I believe that it’s very, very clear that we are witnessing a resurgence of global queer solidarity with Palestinians.
What do you say to those who argue queer people shouldn't be in solidarity with Palestinians because homophobia is rampant in Palestinian territories?
In my work, I don’t deny or elide the realities of homophobia within Palestinian society and the potency of it, as well as the need to combat it and resist it. So many people in the queer Palestinian movement are connecting the struggles for queer liberation and the Palestinian liberation struggle as inextricably linked and fundamentally connected. That needs to be named very clearly and unequivocally.
That being said, homophobia is not unique to Palestinian society. It exists in most parts of the world, including in Israeli society, as well as here in the United States. It's a near-universal phenomenon, unfortunately.
Homophobia, transphobia, heteronormativity, patriarchy, sexism, gender and sexuality-based violence; these are realities that we have to grapple with all around the world. It's very dangerous to pathologize Palestinian society as uniquely homophobic or that homophobia is endemic to the society without this broader context, as well as without understanding the ways that life under brutal military occupation exacerbates homophobia within Palestinian society as well. In order for us to deal with questions of how queer people are treated in Palestine, we have to address the broader landscape of the denial of freedom to Palestinians more generally speaking.
I also think that it’s racist, in my opinion, to argue that the struggle against racism that’s directed against Palestinians should somehow be halted or undermined because there's homophobia within Palestinian society. Not only does it erase the existence of queer Palestinians, who themselves are subjected to both homophobic violence and racialized violence, it also renders invisible the history of LGBTQ activism within Palestinian society. But if you think about how Palestinians get exceptionalized… There’s this kind of exception when it comes to the oppression of Palestinians; the oppression that we face gets normalized and even justified.
Could you say more about this exceptionalism? How do these types of arguments about homophobia within Palestine play into that?
In 2021, Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick published the book, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics, which highlights how liberal discourses in the United States often exclude the explicit acknowledgment of the need for Palestinian rights and liberation. This exceptionalism when it comes to Palestine gets rationalized in different ways — one of which is pinkwashing. This pinkwashing emphasizes homophobia within Palestinian society in order to contribute to the dehumanization of Palestinians writ large. By pathologizing Palestinians as uniquely bigoted on a collective level, it makes it easier to stigmatize them and to undermine empathy with Palestinians who face devastating levels of death and destruction.
How can we recognize dehumanizing rhetoric?
We can recognize such dehumanizing rhetoric when Palestinians are portrayed merely as perpetrators of homophobia and/or violence or when Palestinians are victim-blamed for the systemic oppression they face. This pinkwashing is also invested in erasing Palestinians altogether or not representing Palestinians as a multi-dimensional society with a just struggle for freedom.
We’re also seeing people say things like, “you can’t be gay in Palestine.” But of course, there are queer people everywhere. It seems like there is an inability to even imagine LGBTQ+ Palestinians existing, whether openly or not. Why do you think that is?
Well, I think part of it is that we don’t get to hear their voices as much as we should. Obviously, they exist; obviously, they have voices; obviously, they speak; and if we listen deeply enough, we can hear those voices. So I think that we need to do a better job of amplifying those voices. That is part of it.
Part of it is that a lot of folks are in the closet, and it is too dangerous for them to be visible. The politics of visibility doesn’t resonate with everyone, and it can be very dangerous and problematic for many people. So, I don't impose the politics of visibility on others. But then, there are others who are privileged, such as myself, for whom it is possible to be out and public and visible. And there are other LGBTQ activists for whom that’s the case as well. And so then, we feel a responsibility to help give voice to the voices that are not being heard, that deserve to be heard as well.
In your book, you talk about how the queer left solidarity movement has at times pressured queer Palestinians to privilege anti-imperialism above fighting the homophobia they experience. Can you talk a bit about that phenomenon?
I want to be clear, I’m not arguing that we want to focus less on anti-imperialism. I agree completely that it is paramount as a priority. But what I’m arguing is that the queer liberation struggle cannot be disentangled from the anti-imperialist struggle. They are fundamentally connected, and the existence of the queer Palestinian body is a testament to that. Because I’m simultaneously queer and Palestinian, I can’t sever parts of my body and self. I am both of these things at once… So I argue that the attempt to actually try to privilege one over the other is a fallacy because they are inextricably linked to begin with. They cannot be separated.
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