Rainbow progressives whitewash Hamas’s evil homophobia

Participants hold up Free Palestine posters as they take part in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade.

There’s obvious public concern over the suffering we’ve seen in Israel and Gaza emerging from the current conflict. Some community groups have made statements of support for a perceived side they regard as being more worthy.

We saw one disturbing example of this last weekend. Eight people have been charged with using violence to cause fear in a group when they gatecrashed the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. The pro-Palestinian protesters let off flares just in front of the NSW Premier Chris Minns and disrupted the proceedings.

Jumping over the barrier, the masked protesters carried a banner that read “Queer solidarity with Palestinian resistance” and lit red and green flares.

“As a queer person I feel that it’s our responsibility to express support and solidarity here at Mardi Gras with Palestinians resisting the settler-colonial Zionist entity and its genocidal violence,” a Queers in Solidarity with Palestinian Resistance member said. “The Labor Party do not deserve to be celebrated here; they deserve to be held accountable for their active support of the Zionist state.”

The position taken by such Pride in Protest groups is incomprehensible. Throughout the Middle East and North Africa homosexuality is outlawed, directly or through offences described vaguely as debauchery or indecency.

Penalties range from imprisonment to execution. Executions in Iran usually involve hanging people from cranes in a public square.

Beyond this official level is a brutal universe of persecution and vigilante violence. This extrajudicial violence has been particularly inspired by Islamist extremism. Islamic State celebrated its execution of homosexuals by throwing them from rooftops to amplify suffering. It saved bullets.

This technique has been preferred by Hamas in Gaza, but it also has resorted to beheadings and shootings.

By contrast, at any given time, there are around 2000 gay Palestinians sheltering, primarily, in Tel Aviv and Netanya. Israel runs an asylum-seeker program so these persecuted people can be placed in safe countries.

One of these individuals was a 25-year-old man, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh. He was due to be placed in Canada. But he decided to return briefly to visit his family in Hebron to say goodbye.

Instead he was abducted and beheaded in October 2022. The gruesome ritual was videoed and posted online. Hamas even shot dead one of its own al-Qassam Brigade commanders, Mahmoud Ishtiwi, in Gaza in 2016 on suspicion of him being homosexual.

Throughout the more fundamentalist Islamic world and among Islamist extremist groups, homosexuality is considered unnatural to their people. If it occurs it’s because of the intrusion of perverted Western ideology.

The Hamas covenant spells out the group’s abhorrence of such Western influence and its determination to eradicate it across the caliphate it seeks to establish across the Middle East.

Israel, on the other hand, has the most progressive attitude towards LGBTIQA+ communities in the Middle East.

They’re protected by anti-discrimination laws. They have adoption and same-sex inheritance rights. Israel recognises same-sex marriages. It has allowed gay people to serve in the military since 1993. There’s a large annual gay pride march in Tel Aviv, drawing about 300,00 people. It’s one of the largest in the world. You won’t see this anywhere else across the region.

In 2020 the Knesset debated a bill to outlaw gay conversion therapy. The bill received majority support, although the Islamic State Movement component of the United Arab List (before it withdrew in 2021), together with some Jewish conservatives, voted against it. The Israeli Health Ministry has banned the practice, making it the first country in the Middle East to do so. Gay conversion therapy hasn’t been banned nationwide in Australia.

The Knesset now has its first openly gay Speaker, Amir Ohana. Last month Sheila Weinberg, a transgender person and activist, was elected to the Kiryat Tivon council, southeast of Haifa.

If you value LGBTIQA+ rights and safety, including that of gay Palestinians, then you’d better fervently hope for the survival of Israel and oppose Hamas with all your strength.

Mike Kelly is co-founder of the Labor Friends of Israel group. Anthony Bergin is a senior fellow at Strategic Analysis Australia.