http://www.advocate.com/letters_detail_ektid80712.asp
James Kirchick's "Queers for Palestine?"
On January 28, little more than a week after Israel concluded its brutal
military campaign against the Gaza Strip, James Kirchick published the
latest installment (www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid71844.asp) in his
growing corpus of articles about tolerant, gay-friendly Israel and
homophobic, "Islamofascist" Palestine. Although Kirchick has published
essentially the same article under different titles -- "Palestine and Gay
Rights" (www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid33587.asp) and "Palestinian
Anti-Gay Atrocities Need Attention" (
www.innewsweekly.com/innews/?class_code=Op&article_code=783) -- and although
he regurgitates the same flimsy, unsupported arguments in all of these
articles, we do not write to question his intellectual prowess or
journalistic qualifications. In fact, Kirchick’s diatribe against
Palestinians and the "radical" gay activists who support them would not
warrant a response if it did not, in our view, represent something much
bigger and more dangerous.
We are two people who come from very different places with very different
histories: one of us, Haneen Maikey, is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and
the director of Al-Qaws ("the rainbow" in Arabic) for Sexual and Gender
Diversity in Palestinian Society (www.alqaws.org), and the other, Jason
Ritchie, is an American anthropologist whose research focuses on sexuality
and nationalism in Israel-Palestine. Despite our differences, however, we
share an interest in what is said about lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and
queer Palestinians, and we are equally disturbed each time we read another
article by another American, European, or Israeli writer who pretends to
offer "the truth" about gay Palestinians by telling simplistic,
one-dimensional stories that are based more on racist stereotypes about
Palestinians than the reality of life in Israel-Palestine.
We would like to start, then, by clearing up a few misconceptions about
Israel, Palestine, and queers. As in most societies, homophobia is a problem
in Palestinian society, but there is not some organized, widespread campaign
of violence against gay and lesbian Palestinians. Of course, there are
occasional acts of violence, much like there are occasional acts of violence
against queers in Western societies; and the social norms and mores about
gender and sexuality that give rise to such violence create a climate in
which many queer Palestinians cannot live their lives openly and honestly.
At the same time, however, there are many openly gay and lesbian
Palestinians, and they are not, as James Kirchick implies, an insignificant
group of a "few lucky Palestinians" who are seeking asylum in Israel: they
are actively engaged in changing the status quo in Palestinian society by
promoting respect for sexual and gender diversity.
Those of us who know a thing or two about Israel know that seeking asylum in
Israel is not an option anyway for Palestinians, who are specifically
ineligible for asylum under Israeli law. It may be true, as Kirchick proudly
states, that Israel "legally enshrines the rights of gay people," but it
enshrines only some rights for some gay people. Restricted freedom of
movement, routine human rights abuses, detentions, checkpoints, and bombing
campaigns are among the legally enshrined "rights" of Palestinians, whatever
their sexual orientation, in the West Bank and Gaza. And while Palestinians
in Israel and Jerusalem are granted some legal rights and their living
conditions are significantly better than in the Palestinian Territories,
Palestinian citizens of Israel, whatever their sexual orientation, are
second-class citizens, who face legally sanctioned and everyday
discrimination and racism in all areas of life, from courtrooms and
boardrooms to hospitals and universities, from the streets of small villages
to the streets of Jerusalem, from the floor of the Knesset to the floors of
Tel Aviv’s hippest, gayest clubs.
Israel is not, in other words, "an oasis of liberal tolerance," and
Palestine is not "a reactionary religious backwater." Kirchick’s article is
built on the weak foundation of these two myths, and we could excuse such
shortcomings as poor journalism -- it’s based, after all, not on research or
conversations with actual gay Palestinians, but the author’s assumptions and
a seven-year-old article (
www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/world/palestine/psnews008.htm) written by another
journalist -- if it did not entail such serious dangers.
In the first place, if we are to believe Kirchick, there are no queer
Palestinians: they’ve all been murdered by Palestinian "Islamofascists," and
the "lucky few" who survived have fled to gay-friendly Israel. In fact,
there is a vibrant, organized community of queer Palestinians who are
working hard to create a just, democratic Palestinian society that respects
the dignity of every person. Perhaps Kirchick would prefer to pretend that
they don’t exist because, in his view, they might as well not exist.
According to Kirchick, "Palestinian oppression of homosexuality isn’t merely
a matter of state policy, it’s one firmly rooted in Palestinian society,
where hatred of gays surpasses even that of Jews." If it were true -- and we
know it not to be true -- that all Palestinians hate gays (and Jews), and
their hatred has nothing to do with laws or stereotypes or other things in
the world that can be changed, then there would be no point fighting for
change. The truth is that homophobia is a problem among Palestinians, but
racist arguments like Kirchick’s that explain it as a sort of sickness
that’s "firmly rooted" in Palestinian society do nothing to help those who
are trying hard to change it.
Fortunately, though, the important work of queer Palestinian activists will
continue, regardless of what James Kirchick does or does not write about
them. What we find more problematic is that he fabricates a story of
oppressed gay Palestinians, about whom he actually knows very little, to
make an argument in support of a brutal military campaign that claimed the
lives of more than 1,200 Palestinians, most of them innocent civilians.
Kirchick, and anyone else, is free to blindly support Israeli repression of
Palestinians, but we would like to suggest that he not do it by recycling
unsubstantiated stories and false assumptions about queer Palestinians,
whose suffering, like that of most Palestinians, stems more from Israeli
policies than it does from "Palestinian homophobia."
In the end, Kirchick’s real point of contention seems to be with those gay
and lesbian activists in the West who were brave enough to oppose the
Israeli war on Gaza. Their opposition, he argues, was akin to "stand[ing]
alongside the enthusiasts of religious fascism." Although many of us have
begun the slow process of recovering from eight years of George Bush and his
"us versus them" mentality, Kirchick apparently did not get the memo. He
views the world -- and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular -- in
simplistic, black-and-white terms: good Israelis/Americans/Europeans versus
bad Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims. “But gays will never,” to borrow Kirchick’s
own words, “get anywhere as long as they view the world in this constrictive
and counterproductive way.”
Where exactly "they" want to go is an open question, and Kirchick proves his
own point that not all gays will care about the rights and dignity of other
people. But to those of us who do care, we would like to issue a call for a
kind of queer solidarity based not on racist assumptions about “others” who
look different, speak different languages, or live in different places but
on a willingness to listen to each other and stand together against violence
and repression, even when some among us try to justify it in our name. That,
we think, is what’s truly "obscene," and the only just antidote to it is a
queer movement made up -- not, as Kirchick argues, of "oppressed" victims
who identify with each other’s suffering -- but of courageous queer
activists, thinkers, artists, writers, and everyday people who identify with
the common dream of a better world for us all.
