DAY 532 | After Israel destroyed all rooftops in Gaza, finally it's safe to be Gay there

Anti-LGBT Discrimination Is Official Palestinian Authority Policy

In Gaza, where the government is in the hands of Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organization, LGBT Palestinians are subjected to torture, imprisonment, and capital punishment. In 2016, for example, 34-year-old Mahmoud Ishtiwi was executed for homosexuality, despite being a former commander in Hamas’ armed wing. According to Islamic law, he died not as a “shahid,” or “martyr,” but as a gay man.

After Palestinian LGBT organization al-Qaws announced that it had held a gathering in the West Bank city of Nablus earlier this month to discuss gender pluralism in the city, the group was banned by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The PA said that the group’s activities were “contrary to the values of Palestinian society” and threatened to arrest its members. Not content with that, the PA proceeded to ban all activities designed to promote LGBT rights in its territory.

And anti-gay prejudice is nothing new in the region.

According to a 2013 Pew survey, for example, in Egypt and the Palestinian territories, over 90 percent of the population considers homosexuality unacceptable. But with this latest ban, the Palestinian LGBT community has lost the very small margin of hope they still maintained that they would not be officially classified as criminals — as they are in many Muslim countries (in a few, homosexuality carries the death penalty).

NYC, Nov. 2023 - Turkeys Voting for Thanksgiving

The champions of the “intersectional” fight against Israeli “oppression,” such as US Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), have remained strangely silent regarding this development, and about the persecution of gays in the Muslim world generally. Nor, it would appear, have they ever heard of the many other forms of oppression common in the Muslim world — for instance, against women.

 In Gaza, where the government is in the hands of Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organization, LGBT Palestinians are subjected to torture, imprisonment, and capital punishment. In 2016, for example, 34-year-old Mahmoud Ishtiwi was executed for homosexuality, despite being a former commander in Hamas’ armed wing. According to Islamic law, he died not as a “shahid,” or “martyr,” but as a gay man.

LGBT Palestinians flee to Israel

To be openly gay in the Islamic world, you have to be a hero.

However, even if up until now there were no PA laws on the books against homosexuality, the West Bank’s LGBT community still faced a brutal reality in which they suffered persecution, blackmail, public ridicule, beatings, ostracism, and even “honor killing” at the hands of their own families.

This, as everybody knows, leads LGBT Palestinians to flee to Israel. In Tel Aviv alone, there are several thousand gay Palestinians, and many humanitarian Israeli organizations exist to help them not only integrate, but also with psychological treatment. If these Palestinians dare venture back home, in addition to the regular persecution, they are also accused of treason and espionage, and often end up in jail.

Homosexuality is a Western disease and a danger to Islamic society

One reason Abbas has only now moved to officially silence Palestinian LGBT groups is that the PA, at this time of confrontation with the United States, is moving toward alliances with US enemies. As part of this, Abbas implicitly accepts the Islamist point of view, according to which homosexuality is a Western disease and a danger to Islamic society.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance, hangs homosexuals from cranes in public squares. Some readers may remember former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s answer when a journalist asked him why his country persecuted homosexuals: “gays don’t exist in Iran.”

In short, to be openly gay in the Islamic world, you have to be a hero. Not least because no Western “anti-oppression” activists are going to come to your aid.

Source: algemeiner.com, Fiamma Nirenstein / JNS.org, August 27, 2019

Palestine: Should a father kill his gay son? And why?

Only 5% of Palestinians accept gay relationships; Hamas enforces lethal homophobia in the Gaza Strip

A survey published for BBC News Arabic reveals shocking rates of homophobia across the Middle East and North Africa.

The study was conducted by the Arab Barometer research network on June 24, during LGBT Pride month. The BBC wrote, “Acceptance of homosexuality varies but is low or extremely low across the region. In Lebanon, despite having a reputation for being more socially liberal than its neighbors, the figure is 6%.”

The study wrote that a mere 5% of Palestinians from the West Bank accepted same-sex relations. Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip were not surveyed.

Algerians scored the highest number of acceptance of gay relations with 26%. Morocco followed with 21% and Sudan with 17%. Tunisia tied Jordan with 7%. Palestinians harbored the most intolerance toward gay relations.

According to the BBC, “More than 25,000 people were interviewed for the survey across 10 countries and the Palestinian territories between late 2018 and spring 2019.”

Hamas enforces lethal homophobia in the Gaza Strip. In 2016, Hamas executed 34-year-old Mahmoud Ishtiwi, based on allegations of gay sex and theft, shooting him three times in the chest.

A Confederacy of Dunces

Regarding Jordan, the BBC wrote, “While Sharia law forbids homosexuality in the country, same-sex relationships are not criminalized.” The British media giant reported that Khalid Abdel-Hadi oversees an online LGBT magazine that is blocked by the Jordanian authorities in his country.

Volker Beck, a German Green party politician and prominent LGBT activist, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday: “Without freedom of the press and expression, there is no chance for education and social progress. It is tragic that even in Jordan, Islamists are more likely to have the freedom to speak than LGBT human rights defenders. One should encourage the Jordanian king to allow more free speech in Jordan. “

Abdel-Hadi told the BBC, “I don’t hate my society. I am not fighting it, and I’m not defying it in the way some people think. As a person who identifies himself as a gay Arab man, I struggle to find my place in my community, in a community in which I love.”

US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell – who is the administration’s most high-profile openly gay official – told the Post in February, “71 countries criminalize homosexuality and eight will put you to death for being gay. The Trump administration is launching a new push with our European allies to end this human rights outrage.” Grenell is spearheading the international effort to stop the persecution of the LGBT community in countries that impose criminal penalties – including the death penalty – on homosexuals.

The Post reported in January that Iran’s regime publicly hanged a man based on accusations of homosexuality. Iran’s prescribes the death penalty for gay sex. According to a 2008 British Wikileaks cable, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed 4,000-6,000 gays and lesbians since the country’s 1979 radical Islamic Revolution.

During a press conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in June, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said his country executes gay people because of “moral principles.”

Source: jpost.com, Benjamin Weinthal, July 1, 2019

Shock, questions after gruesome killing of young gay Palestinian

JERUSALEM (AP) — The severed head and decapitated torso of a 25-year-old Palestinian were discovered on the side of a road in the occupied West Bank, police said Friday, confirming gruesome details of a killing that shocked Palestinian society.

But accounts that the victim, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, was a gay man who feared persecution for his sexuality and had sought asylum in Israel two years ago turned the terrible crime into a socially and politically explosive case.

It was unclear how Abu Murkhiyeh wound up in Hebron, the conservative West Bank city that he had reportedly fled. Palestinian police officials told The Associated Press on Friday that Abu Murkhiyeh’s head and torso were found near his family’s house.

Col. Loay Irzekat, a police spokesman, said authorities arrested a Palestinian acquaintance of Abu Murkhiyeh as a suspect in the killing, but declined to ascribe a motive or elaborate on their relationship pending the investigation.

Palestinian social media was gripped by the grisly killing, but silent on the question of Abu Murkhiyeh’s sexuality. Homosexuality remains deeply taboo in the Palestinian territories, where traditional norms play a prominent role in social and political life.

Still there was plenty of outrage across the West Bank. Graphic footage taken by Palestinian youths who happened upon Abu Murkhiyeh’s dismembered body on a hillside rippled through WhatsApp groups, provoking shock and horror, before being taken down.

“This is a very ugly crime,” an older relative, also named Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, told the Palestinian radio station Al Karama. “Such a thing should not be discussed.”

Abu Murkhiyeh’s family released a statement of mourning, offering blessings and asking for privacy after “this heinous, unprecedented crime that shook the homeland.”

The family claimed that Abu Murkhiyeh lived and worked between Hebron and neighboring Jordan, where his late father was from.

As news of Abu Murkhiyeh's death spread, a starkly different version of events emerged from Israel. LGBT organizations and emergency shelters helping gay asylum seekers said they knew he was gay and desperate to escape the Palestinian territories, where he was a target.

Rita Petrenko, founder of Al Bait Al Mokhtalef, an Israeli gay rights organization catering to the Arab community, said Abu Murkhiyeh's fear was distinct when they met in 2020.

“He told me people not only in his family but in the village wanted to kill him,” she said, adding that he fled to Israel as word of his sexual orientation spread through Hebron two years ago. “He was scared of his brothers, his uncles, his cousins.”

Abu Murkhiyeh bounced around from shelter to shelter and scraped by on occasional restaurant jobs in Tel Aviv, Petrenko said, while she helped him apply for resettlement to Canada.

He had no prospects in Israel. On temporary status, he was barred from working until last July, when Israel started granting work permits to Palestinians who have sought refuge due to violence and persecution for their sexual orientation, Petrenko said.

“The situation was horrible for all of them,” said Ibtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset who petitioned the Supreme Court to grant gay Palestinian asylum seekers work visas.

Israel frequently promotes its tolerance on issues of sexual orientation, despite the rejection of homosexuality in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. But Tel Aviv is proud of its reputation as a top destination for gay and lesbian travelers.

Just hours before Abu Murkhiyeh was killed on Wednesday, he spoke to volunteers at his shelter in Tel Aviv for a regular check-in, Petrenko said. Nothing was amiss. The next day, the story of his beheading dominated the media.

From Tel Aviv, there was an outpouring of anguish.

“We are heartbroken ... will always remember you, Isu," said Elem, a group that helped Abu Murkhiyeh, addressing him by a nickname. “We will never stop fighting so that others like you can live freely like any other human being.”

At the shelter where he most recently stayed, staff lit a candle for Abu Murkhiyeh during a solemn vigil Friday.

Petrenko said she had no idea how he turned up in Hebron. “He never felt safe,” she said.

Gay Palestinians tend to be careful for fear of drawing unwanted attention from their socially conservative community and backlash from authorities. Palestinian Authority police in 2019 barred gay and transgender rights group from holding events in the West Bank and threatened to arrest participants.

Gay people within Israel’s Arab minority have also faced violence and ostracism in their communities.

West Bank Palestinians like Abu Murkhiyeh have long had to cross into Israel to live openly. There are nearly 100 such Palestinians living under asylum, said Mara’ana-Menuhin, the lawmaker, but the number is likely far higher.

“It's not that these people even come out of the closet. They're found and they're hunted,” said Hila Peer from Aguda, an Israeli LGBT rights organization. “Ahmad’s case is just another example of how bad the situation is and how seriously dangerous it is.”

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, October 7, 2022

🔊 POST TITLE EXPLAINED: 

Sharia law enforcement in IS-controlled territories (Iraq, Syria and Libya) mandated capital punishment for homosexuality. Homosexuals caught engaging in consensual same-sex acts, men suspected of being homosexuals or reported as being homosexuals were thrown from rooftops after sham trials. If they did not die on impact, they were stoned to death by the attending crowd. Readers are reminded that Hamas — which enforces Sharia 2.0 (i.e., death penalty, flogging, amputations, etc.) — has regularly executed men for being gay or for allegedly being gay. 

Source: My Narrow Corner, Editor, November 2023

Killed in the name of Allah - Just imagine the terror...

Killed in the name of Allah for being gay

The above execution video was made by Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists
in the Fallujah region of Iraq in July 2015.

Warning: Graphic Content.

I stand with Israel

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