BBC reveals torture of gay Palestinians

Is it Afif Safieh, or the blokes with the tanks, APCs, guns, M16s, F16s?

Your first link returns a 404, and your most current link is from February 2003 - theres not a lot there is there?

Why is Israel deporting these people? What do you recommend doing about that?

This is simply getting boring now........

"I fear my brother and Hamas more than the Israeli police, because if the Israelis catch me, they won't kill me. They will just arrest me. But Hamas will surely kill me."

On the day the Independent carries a report of the killing 3 years ago of unarmed palestinians by israeli soldiers to suggest israelis will only arrest and not kill me may not be the way to get support for gays and lesbians in palestine.

 media@outrage.org.uk

 media@outrage.org.uk

 media@outrage.org.uk

It only seems fair that you should use the same format for all email addresses, especially as OUTRAGE! claims that it supports the Palestinian struggle for independence.

on the Persecution of Gay Men by the Palestine National Authority


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.

LAGAI, one of the groups involved in QUIT!, has been actively working for two decades to support queers in north, central and south America, Africa, and Asia. When we first formed, QUIT! took an active role in organizing to support the Egyptian gay men who were arrested in a raid on a gay bar in 2001. We have at times had to struggle for inclusion in the Palestinian solidarity movement, because there were some individuals and groups here who objected to our presence.

We strongly believe that any struggle for liberation has to include queer liberation, because queers are part of all oppressed groups.


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.

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.

The presence of Israeli occupation forces in Palestine does nothing to help and much to hurt LGBT Palestinians.

International law, as repeatedly reaffirmed by the United Nations, recognizes the right of Palestinians to live in any city or town in historic Palestine, including the parts that are now called Israel. This is called the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees. These young men should therefore be able to stay in Israeli cities without asking for asylum. But, under current Israeli law, even if they are granted full Israeli citizenship (which is unlikely), as Palestinians they will be denied equal civil rights with Jews, even Jews who do not live in the country -- they could not own land and they would be ineligible for many social benefits.


In the current situation, it is impossible for queers to have civil rights in the nation of Palestine, because that nation is denied itsright to exist. You cannot have civil rights when you have no human rights. Our support of national liberation for Palestinians is not a quid pro quo for the Palestinian Authority's recognition of queer rights. We support self-determination for all Palestinians, including queer ones, because it is the right of every people.


As people who care about queer rights and all other human rights, we demand:
An immediate end to the military occupation of Palestine and
evacuation of all illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank
(including East Jerusalem) and Gaza;
Equal civil and political rights for all in Israel and Palestine;
Israeli compliance with UN Resolution 194, recognizing the right
of Palestinians to return to their homes;
Until the above are realized, end all U.S. aid to Israel.


We look forward to supporting Palestinian queers in demanding and ensuring the protection of their civil rights in independent Palestine. In the meantime, we certainly would join you in demanding that gay Palestinians be granted refuge and asylum in any country where they choose to live.

It seems to me the statement and mission of QUIT is a lot better thought out than the mission of OUTRAGE. The approach of OUTRAGE is one that always bothers me, because it doesn't seem to build solidarity, but in fact causes division. It is not just the gay Palestinians who are persecuted. Under the stress of occupation, you see people turning against each other and becoming more conservative. If you turn up at a rally in London, with the news that your family has just been buried alive under a bulldozed building in Jenin, are you really going to give a toss about someone waving a banner saying 'Stop Palestinian Persecution of Gays', when those values of overcoming homophobia come obstensibly from the very culture that is oppressing them.
The Muslim world sees the West and sees that in many ways we enjoy greater sexual freedom and forms of self-expression. They also see that this culture is exploiting and oppressing them, funding the illegal zionist project, bombing them and their children in Afganistan and Iraq. It is not surprising there is a conservative backlash. And bear this in mind...there was a time when the Muslim world was considered more sexually liberal than the conservative, christian west.

The approach of QUIT is much more encouraging. They stand in solidarity with the Palestinians but do not hide the fact they are gay. They support the rights of an oppressed people, a people who even hate them, because it is the right thing to do. And by showing this solidarity, they can build good feeling. I read their site, about how when they were marching, various groups told them to take down their banner, and they said they would respect that decision, but wouldn't march without it. The first time, they were told to take it down, and didn't march. But the second time, they were told they could march with the banner. They asserted their identity by simply being openly gay at the march. Perhaps in that way, a Palestinian who sees that will be less likely to turn the other way when a gay Palestinian is being persecuted in the occupied territories. But if that same man sees the gay community seemingly attacking him and his people's right to be free, then he's not going to feel inclined to be open-minded about the issue.

End the brutal occupation. When this happens, the Palestinians will, in the words of Nelson Mandela, 'be free to be free'. With self-determination they can build an egalitarian society, with rights for straights and gays, or live under another backwards dictatorship. But there is simply not this choice under the chains of occupation.

QUIT! have the right approach here, for the reasons set out very clearly by Hermes.

"End the brutal occupation. When this happens, the Palestinians will, in the words of Nelson Mandela, 'be free to be free'. With self-determination they can build an egalitarian society, with rights for straights and gays, or live under another backwards dictatorship. But there is simply not this choice under the chains of occupation."

Nelson Mandela never called for unconditional solidarity with the South African liberation struggle. The ANC produced the "Freedom Charter" outlining their vision for a new South Africa. As a 'government in waiting', the ANC started work on a new constitution that guarenteed the rights and freedoms of ALL South Africans.

If the Palestinians take any tips from Nelson Mandela, it should start with that. The idea that the world should turn a blind eye to their own human rights abuses might work with a minority of apologists, but it won't with most democrats. Having a vision for a liberated Palestine is a key ingredient for broad international solidarity and support - just as Nelson Mandela recognised it was for South Africa's liberation movement.

FTP, there is a difference between copying and pasting an email address into a dedicated email address field and an email address that co-incidentally happens to be in the body of an article, which IndyMedia's system automatically sets to clickable. There is no malice intended, unlike your childish reaction.

By asking people to email letters of protest to the PA, we're trying to save people's lives - that's our only motivation for publishing the relevant email address.

Press releases are simply copied and pasted from the master template into the IndyMedia form, occasionally they may contain an email address. My own email (unmodified) address is all over IndyMedia.

Brett Lock
OutRage!

How, EXACTLY, is Afief Safieh meant to save lives?

And Brett Lock, the email thing has happened twice

:)