Sanctuary for Gays: Ignored or Jeered at by West
by Khaled Abu Toameh • December 6, 2019 at 5:00 am
"Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different." – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the U.S. Senate, 2011.
Adam and Rami are among scores of Palestinian members of the LTBGQ community who, in the past few decades, have fled their homes to seek shelter in Israel. Yet, their plight is totally ignored not only by human rights organizations, but by but by people who purport to be advocates of gay rights. This is part of a far more malignant story: when Israel looks good, the international community looks away.
Hate for Israel has blinded people to the point where they align themselves with their own executioners.
alQaws pointed out that some Palestinian groups actually celebrated the police threat against the LTBGQ community, "raising (yet again) disturbing questions about the Palestinian Authority's commitment to human rights."
Palestinian gays have two choices: hide their sexual preferences and lead double lives in their villages, or flee to Israel and live as normal human beings. Groups such as Queers for Palestine, though, are too busy bashing Israel on college campuses and the streets of San Francisco to take much notice of the sanctuary to which their gay Palestinian friends have chosen to relocate.
Members of the Palestinian LTBGQ community continue to flee to Israel, where, unlike under the Hamas and Palestinian Authority regimes, they are free to lead normal lives.
The gay community in the West, however, has evidently chosen to ignore the plight of their friends living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Remarkably, rather than reaching out to help the Palestinian LTBGQ members, several gay groups in the West, including in the US, continue to spout hate against Israel, the only country in the Middle East where the LTBGQ community feels safe and secure.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a 2011 speech to the US Senate:
"Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different."
