00:00:00.000So about a week ago, the official Twitter account for the state of Israel at Israel, which, by the way, the fact that a country has its own social media platforms to speak on behalf of that country is bizarre to me.
00:00:15.880You know, on the official Instagram account of the state of Israel, they have been going after specific celebrities who have stood in their support for Palestine over the last months, including a series of Instagram stories posted by at Israel about Gigi Hadid, which resulted in Gigi Hadid's phone number getting leaked and her getting like hundreds and hundreds of death threats, which she ended up sharing a while later.
00:00:41.040and I thought the whole thing is just so bizarre because what does the social media manager of the
00:00:46.480state of Israel expect from Gigi Hadid, who is a Palestinian woman? But anyway, the official
00:00:53.300Twitter account for the state of Israel, at Israel, posted two photos earlier this week
00:00:59.080with the caption, the first ever pride flag raised in Gaza. And I'm going to describe to you the two
00:01:05.940photos. So the first one is an IDF soldier. IDF is the Israeli Defense Force. It's the Israeli
00:01:12.660military. It's a male white IDF soldier standing in front of this huge tank and holding what is
00:01:22.060both an Israeli flag and a pride flag. And then the other photo is the same soldier standing in
00:01:29.460what is presumably Gazan rubble after an airstrike that Israel administered onto Gaza, holding a
00:01:36.540rainbow pride flag that is written on in black marker and says, in the name of love. These two
00:01:41.920images circulated the internet really quickly with an intense response. The kind of Zionist
00:01:48.720social media activist Eve Barlow posted them on her Instagram with the caption,
00:01:53.980For the first time in history, pride flags flew in Gaza today. The IDF is bringing democracy to
00:02:00.640the Palestinian people. My condolences to all the queers for free Palestine you're losing.
00:02:06.520Over the last month, like so many people, I've had a lot of really strong emotions about everything
00:02:12.900that's happening in Gaza. And the emotional reaction that these images of an IDF soldier
00:02:20.880holding a pride flag over rubble in a recently bombed Gaza really just brought something out of
00:02:28.060me that I did not recognize in myself. Namely, confusion. You know, I'm thinking, how can you
00:02:34.780bring pride to a place by decimating it? How can Palestinians have democracy, according to Eve
00:02:41.780Barlow, if they're dead? And as a gay person and as a Jew, I was just wondering, like, was this
00:02:48.460meant to be a win for people like me, for any gay person. To use the pride flag, you know,
00:02:54.320something that was born out of oppression to celebrate the visibility of a community that
00:02:59.100was systematically made invisible. To use it in the context of war, of conquest, of bombing homes
00:03:05.220and flattening communities and hospitals, of thousands of dead Palestinian children.
00:03:10.940Over the last month, I've had so many people from my personal life, people who I grew up with,
00:03:16.060People who have never once reached out to me to express concern about the state of queer rights or, you know, the freefall of trans rights in this country over the last two years have been reaching out to me to remind me that, you know, hey, you know, you would be murdered if you went to Gaza as a gay person.
00:03:34.260And it's just weird because I live in the U.S. and here in the U.S. over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in legislatures since the start of this year.
00:03:45.420You have trans people in Florida who are starting Kickstarter campaigns so they can flee their home state because it's not safe to be trans there anymore.
00:03:54.480The Republican Party has made their hatred for queer people and their conflation of queer people with pedophilia, which is very 1970s, by the way, a core pillar of their campaign messaging for 2024.
00:04:08.960And I have no desire to compare the state of queer rights here versus those in Palestine or frankly anywhere else. This is not the oppression Olympics. And I, for one, am extraordinarily aware of my privilege living in a place like New York as a queer person.
00:04:27.760But it does just make me wonder, right? Like, are these people who are reaching out to me to remind me that for sure I'd be murdered if I went to Gaza as a gay person? Are they really concerned about the hypothetical safety of me if I were to take a trip to Gaza?
00:04:41.340are they really concerned, more importantly, with the safety of actual Palestinian queer people who
00:04:47.080do live in Gaza? Or is this homophobia being wielded as a tool, as a crutch in their argument
00:04:54.480for why I should feel okay with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from a land that
00:05:00.560they once called home? This has all felt like such a distortion of values, values like queer
00:05:06.160liberation and Jewishness, values that I'm so familiar with because of who I am. So I started
00:05:12.700reading some more. And what I was witnessing play out in front of me, you know, the parading around
00:05:19.080of queer identities to essentially justify and sometimes glorify the ongoing massacre of
00:05:24.520Palestinians, started to make a lot more sense. The basis for this episode is a book that I read
00:05:29.520called Israel, Palestine, and the Queer International, which was written by Sarah
00:05:33.780Schulman in 2012. Sarah is a 65-year-old queer Jewish writer, academic, and activist, and I
00:05:40.920actually asked her to be on this episode, and she couldn't because she's getting surgery, but she did
00:05:46.560respond to me, and I absolutely fangirled because, you know, we all have those people who are
00:05:52.260celebrities to us specifically, and that's kind of who Sarah Schulman is to me. So thanks for
00:05:58.060responding, Sarah. Anyway, the book is about this. It's about the intersections of queer
00:06:03.580solidarity and the occupation and ongoing violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the
00:06:09.300West Bank, and dispelling the myth that these are entirely separate issues that are at odds with
00:06:15.540each other, when actually they go hand in hand, because as Sarah Schulman writes, justice is
00:06:20.400universal. So before we get into the meat of the episode, I want to explain to you two concepts
00:06:24.640which are really, really important for understanding what we're going to talk about
00:06:28.220in this episode. And those two concepts are homonationalism and pinkwashing. These are
00:06:34.160two words that you might have heard of before and not quite totally know what they mean.
00:06:39.180And I very much feel like homonationalism and pinkwashing fall into that category of like
00:06:43.620academic left wing vocabulary that conservatives are definitely like, those are made up words to
00:06:48.980describe problems that you're making up. You know, it's very like homonationalism,
00:06:53.020trans misogyny, they're just making shit up to complain. But I think these words are actually
00:06:58.100extremely helpful to understand, especially right now. And I'm going to try to distill a bunch of
00:07:05.020academia into like the easiest possible explanations of these concepts. So I want to give you Sarah
00:07:10.460Shulman's definition of homonationalism. She wrote, homonationalism is where white gays,
00:07:16.440lesbians and bisexuals, and in some cases, transsexuals, have won a full range of legal
00:07:21.240rights. Through marriage, parenthood, and family, they become accepted and realigned with patriotic
00:07:26.540or nationalistic ideologies of their countries. Instead of being feared as the threat to family
00:07:31.680and nation that they were once seen to be, this new integration under the most normative of terms
00:07:36.480is held up as a symbol of that country's commitment to progress and modernity. Some then identify with
00:07:41.720the racial and religious hegemony of their countries and join movements opposing immigration
00:07:46.180or racial and cultural difference. They construct the other, often Muslims of Arab or South Asian,
00:07:52.540Turkish or African origin, as homophobic and fanatically heterosexual. So that's pretty
00:07:58.880academic. And basically, in my words, what that means is in a place like the United States,
00:08:04.320right, where gays have recently won certain very hard fought victories in the realm of human rights
00:08:10.580that are specifically Western, right, like being able to marry, being able to serve in the military,
00:08:16.180we, and by we, I mean Western gays and white liberal allies, cling to those very specific
00:08:23.320wins and turn them into a symbol of what it means to be, say, American. And so our identities as
00:08:30.320queer or queer-friendly get wrapped up in our national identity as Americans or British people
00:08:35.920or any other Westerner, hence homo-nationalist. So we start to frame these white Western countries
00:08:43.340as fundamentally progressive, and we identify with that, while contrasting those feelings with
00:08:48.200Muslim-majority brown countries, which we view as barbaric, uncivilized, and homophobic. And I say
00:08:55.420Muslim countries because homonationalism is almost always applied this way. It's a racialized
00:09:01.840viewpoint because it's only ever applied to Muslim homophobia and not, say, Christian homophobia,
00:09:07.360which is also extremely well-documented. Sarah Shulman wrote, quote,
00:09:11.420anti-Muslim racists can express some concern for the well-being of gays only when the homophobia
00:09:16.560is Islamic and not, for example, Catholic. And Muslim homophobia is considered far more
00:09:22.180destructive than Jewish, Hindu, or Christian homophobia. And by extension, the US war crimes
00:09:27.700against Arabs and Muslims are ignored. Now, as a white American gay person, I recognize these
00:09:34.140feelings in myself, which is why these words jumped out at me because I have been that person,
00:09:39.760you know, reading the list of countries where homosexuality is criminalized and subconsciously
00:09:45.080letting that justify my own internalized racism, which is bad because you can't racism away
00:09:51.880homophobia because all of these struggles are interconnected. And when I started reading about
00:09:57.780this, I felt embarrassed. Maybe you feel embarrassed right now, but I think that discomfort is part of
00:10:05.140the process, is a necessary part of the process of evolving your thinking. All right, are you still
00:10:10.120with me? Now we're going to get into pinkwashing. So some people think homonationalism and pinkwashing
00:10:15.300are the same thing, but there's sort of a fine difference, which I do think is an important one.
00:10:20.360Homonationalism is an attitude, right? Pinkwashing is when a government exploits
00:10:25.340homonationalistic ideas through policy, legislation, and marketing. So back to Sarah
00:10:30.860Schulman, she wrote, while homonationalism is a product of white culture and emerges unconsciously
00:10:35.940whenever white gay people and their admirers assimilate into racist power structures, it is
00:10:41.500not deliberate government policy. However, nowhere has homonationalism been more consciously
00:10:47.260harnessed by governments than in Israel, where the maneuvering of gay rights to support racist
00:10:52.080agendas evolve strategically from marketing impulses. So essentially, pinkwashing is when
00:10:57.840governments are like, hey, we can exploit the homo-nationalist ideas that our citizens have
00:11:03.360and turn that into legislation that projects onto the world a modern, civilized, gay-friendly
00:11:08.860view of our country that may be true to an extent, but that also might aid in covering up these
00:11:15.640otherwise very flagrant and obvious human rights abuses that we're committing. So Ayal Gross,
00:11:21.220who is an Israeli law professor at the University of Tel Aviv, wrote that, quote,
00:11:25.160gay rights have essentially become a public relations tool in Israel, even though conservative
00:11:29.620and especially religious politicians remain fiercely homophobic. And so you might be asking,
00:11:34.280like, doesn't the United States do that too? And back to Sarah Shulman for a second,
00:11:39.600she would say yes. In an article she wrote for the New York Times, she added,
00:11:44.120quote, in Israel, gay soldiers and the relative openness of Tel Aviv are incomplete indicators of
00:11:49.540human rights, just as in America, the expansion of gay rights in some states does not offset
00:11:54.780human rights violations like mass incarceration. The long-sought realization of some rights for
00:11:59.980some gays should not blind us to the struggles against racism in Europe and in the United States
00:12:05.140or to the Palestinians' insistence on a land to call home. Syed Atshan, a Palestinian anthropologist,
00:12:11.320said that pinkwashing relies on four basic pillars of logic. One, highlighting gay rights in Israel
00:12:16.780while ignoring Israeli homophobia. Two, highlighting Palestinian homophobia while ignoring any agency
00:12:23.100of queer people in Palestine. Three, juxtaposing these contrasting queer experiences in Israeli
00:12:28.760and Palestinian societies as civilizational discourse aimed at highlighting the superior
00:12:33.280humanity of Israel and the subhumanity of Palestine. And four, representing Israel as a
00:12:39.160gay haven for Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals in order to attract tourism
00:12:43.580and other forms of solidarity and support. Okay, that was a lot, but I do think that
00:12:49.020homonationalism and pinkwashing are really important concepts to understand so that we can
00:12:53.820first of all better address them in ourselves and also see them when they're showing up in
00:12:59.140this moment in the world and also to better digest the conversations we're about to have.
00:13:06.080Real quick before we continue, this podcast takes a lot of work and I am so grateful for
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00:14:24.880slash fruity. So today we are joined by Mo Debach, who is a gay Palestinian American. He has family
00:14:36.520in Gaza. His parents are both from Gaza. He has a personal tie to Gaza and to this moment,
00:14:43.680which I will let him tell you more about. Mo, welcome to A Bit Fruity, and thank you so much
00:14:49.440for being here. Thanks for having me, Matt. Of course. So where were you born and raised?
00:14:56.680So I was actually born and raised in New York, out in Bay Ridge. It's a huge Muslim and Arab
00:15:03.300community. My mom had just moved to New York to have an arranged marriage with my dad
00:15:10.900from Gaza herself. She'd only been in the country about six months.
00:15:16.660And both of your parents are from Gaza?
00:15:19.040Yeah. So he moved, my dad moved over here after he went to college in Turkey. So in his mid-20s
00:15:24.540or so. And my mom moved over when she was 19. She was the first of her family to ever go to the US.
00:15:31.760It was her first time being on an airplane.
00:15:34.480Honestly, when I look back at it and reflect on it, I think it's just so brave of her to
00:18:22.900But I have really, really, really positive memories of being there as a kid, despite just some of the challenges of being there.
00:18:29.620I think it's because the resilience is really embodied in everyone there, in Palestinian people there, but also in the diaspora, I'd say, in my mom, in my friend's families,
00:18:40.660who have had to, who have either just moved away when they had the opportunity or those that were
00:18:46.500displaced years and years and years ago. And I think that's just something so special about the
00:18:50.480people there. And I'll tell you a bit more about my family that's still on the ground who I'm in
00:18:55.120touch with later on when we get to it, but just how their continued resilience, despite what's
00:18:59.740been going on the past few weeks, continues to show. Yeah, I was actually just going to get to
00:19:03.680it. You have a large extended family living in Gaza still, right? Yes. Well, the numbers are
00:19:10.640you know, are shifting. So both my parents are from there. My dad's side is the Dabakh side,
00:19:17.600that's my last name. My mom's side is Abu Saif, is their last name. And getting updates from
00:19:24.080either side of the family has been really tricky just because of access to electricity,
00:19:29.920to Wi-Fi, etc. You hear about it every day. So since October 15th, that was when the first
00:19:37.280recorded casualties happened on my mom's side of the family um till now we are at 49 members of
00:19:43.360the abusa family that have been killed thus far um so that includes mainly my mom's cousins and
00:19:49.360their children and their grandchildren we haven't yet heard of any um deaths of our immediate first
00:19:58.160cousins or my mom's sisters so we actually heard from my mom's sister today this morning she made
00:20:03.120They've been in the north this entire time, which has been really stressful for us just because it's where the ground invasion is actively happening right now.
00:20:11.860But we heard that she made it to Rafa. So she's by the Egypt border. Not sure how she made it there. The messages come in sparingly.
00:20:20.120She did say in her last note that her access to Wi-Fi is a really long walk.
00:20:24.640So we probably won't hear from her unless we call her on international calls, which we've been trying to do.
00:20:31.000It's worth every penny, but it depends on if her phone is either charged or on.
00:20:36.040So fortunately for now, at least my mom's immediate siblings and our first cousins are
00:21:39.740And I wasn't as close to Sammy before that war.
00:21:42.560We just started talking a lot more just to keep in touch
00:21:45.640and keep up with what was happening on the ground.
00:21:48.000Because this was before we had the voices
00:21:51.440that are currently kind of reporting on everything happening,
00:21:54.120like Plastia, like Mataz, for example, like Bisan.
00:21:58.320I'm not sure where he is right now. He hasn't clarified. I asked him. I received a text from him this morning, which was the first time I've heard from him in over two weeks. And he said it was 8 a.m. our time. So mid-afternoon there's here. The situation's very dangerous. Oh, and he writes to me in English because he wants me to understand it, despite the fact that I'm very capable of translating. I can also read Arabic, but he wants to make sure that I'm able to understand what's happening.
00:22:24.380The situation is very dangerous. We're surrounded by tanks and soldiers. There's no internet, no food and even little drinking water and navigation is not suitable for water. The family is sick from the smell of death. And that's all he said.
00:22:37.640so he didn't really indicate like any signs of being in a better situation anytime soon
00:22:46.680um if he's with if the soldiers and tanks are around that means he's in the north i just don't
00:22:52.120know in which part i don't know if he's hiding or if he's safe enough to you know exist amongst them
00:22:59.640and get access to wi-fi it's really unclear so i wrote him back just waiting to to learn more but
00:23:04.900again it's like you want to be mindful because him sharing the updates with me I can only do so
00:23:10.700much right like I want him to be able to maybe reach his family on the ground that's still
00:23:14.420remaining right you know what I mean yeah so how do you and and I guess also I mean your mother like
00:23:23.58049 members of your extended family how do you even make sense of that have you made sense of that
00:23:29.840yeah it's really tough because you know we're seeing a lot of messaging that's like these
00:23:34.760are real people they're not just numbers but when it gets when the numbers keep increasing like that
00:23:40.100like yeah you kind of start losing sight of the individual humans but what's been helpful to me
00:23:45.760and what really kind of gutted me was um it's also like a game of telephone my uncles live in
00:23:50.700and they have access to or have the contact information for more members of the extended
00:23:55.760family that i've never met so they get kind of that information piecemeal but they've started
00:24:00.300sharing the names of all uh of all our family members that have been killed that have been
00:24:04.900martyred and so those lists will come to me in arabic and i want to you know read through them
00:24:09.640and and translate them to english so i can have my own list to um really reflect on and memorialize
00:24:17.200these people and so i remember being on the train uh two weeks ago i was going to a dinner for
00:24:22.920members of the muslim and arab communities in creative spaces it was really it's been really
00:24:28.220nice kind of reconnecting with the culture and meeting new people that just get it and on the
00:24:33.620train I was doing those translations and as you go through each line and read you know each
00:24:40.520individual's full name and it really kind of sets in like that like just like the sheer impact of
00:24:47.900what this is right like you're reading my cousin Hatem Awad Abu Saif the wife of my cousin Huda
00:24:54.820Mustafa Abu Saif their children Muhammad like you know it starts to just become very very real
00:25:01.200and um yeah that really killed me on that train ride and it's not about me at all and that's
00:25:05.820something I was saying to you earlier like it's just you then start feeling bad that or kind of
00:25:10.920guilty it's the survivor's guilt of it all right right it's like how can I be so upset about this
00:25:15.860I'm on my way to a dinner right and it's like you kind of feel guilty about not the mourning aspect
00:25:22.300of it, but for feeling kind of weak and helpless over it.
00:25:26.340When Biden made those statements about, when multiple governing bodies made those statements
00:25:31.740about the lists being inaccurate because Hamas controls everything about that, including
00:25:38.400the Ministry of Health, I turned to those documents that ended up being released by
00:25:43.560the Gaza Ministry of Health to look up some of these names.
00:25:46.120That was my first time getting access to any kind of documentation of these deaths before
00:25:51.660the family group chat started going off with full-on lists. And that was really, really
00:25:56.020hard to see because, again, it's not like they're more than just numbers. And that painted a very,
00:26:02.560very real picture for all of us. So in the theme of what we're talking about more specifically
00:26:07.900today, which is homonationalism and pinkwashing and this projected idea of what gay life is like
00:26:17.980for Palestinians versus um what it actually is and the context of it and all of that stuff like
00:26:23.900I want to return to your cousin Sammy who lives in Gaza who you have a relationship with at this
00:26:28.440point like presumably he knows that you're gay yeah I don't I don't really hide it on the internet
00:26:33.600so yeah my cousins my cousins there that are that I'm connected to on social and my cousins you know
00:26:40.760that live in other parts of the world mostly in the Middle East or in Turkey um all are well aware
00:26:45.700and have never, um, expressed anything negative about it. And I think from my cousins, from Sammy,
00:26:55.260I've gotten nothing but support for, uh, the life I'm leading. He hasn't specifically said I support
00:27:00.120you as a gay person necessarily, but he's happy to see that I'm happy, which, uh, just feels really
00:27:08.500special to me. But yeah, that's been the extent of, of, uh, those conversations. We're really
00:27:13.760keeping most of the of the conversation focused on their overall health and safety yeah absolutely
00:27:20.820and that totally makes sense and for what it's worth i mean it sounds like that exchange is
00:27:24.660also the description of like most white american christian queer people with their families
00:27:30.680you know on the good side that their families are like fine with it but they don't talk about it
00:27:35.820for the most part i want to talk about pink washing can we talk about pink washing yeah let's
00:27:40.240do it let's do it so sarah shulman who is a jewish queer writer uh she wrote in the new york times
00:27:47.840an article about pinkwashing where she describes it as a deliberate strategy to conceal the
00:27:53.500continuing violations of palestinians human rights behind an image of modernity signified by israeli
00:27:59.560gay life and so pinkwashing to me and correct me if i'm wrong on this because you have been
00:28:05.600presumably aware of the pinkwashing that Israel does as a marketing tool for their own global
00:28:11.900image. But to me, it's like a look over there sort of thing, where they assume that every
00:28:19.080kind of Western country will judge how progressive or how advanced any other country is based solely
00:28:27.340on where that country stands on gay rights, which is really interesting. Because then Israel can
00:28:33.960say, look, well, we have pride parades. And if that's the only measurement of advancement that
00:28:40.720you're using to judge another country's progress, then you will ignore the fact that they treat
00:28:48.320Palestinians in an incredibly inhumane way, that you will ignore the fact that racism between Jews
00:28:54.080and Arabs, between different kinds of Jews is like an extraordinarily prevalent problem in Israel.
00:28:58.160And also, even if you just ignored the way that Israel treats Palestinians and those human rights abuses, Israel's government is extraordinarily right-wing in its own right. And so it feels like the whole progressiveness of Israel, this Tel Aviv being a haven for gay people, it feels like it's all an inch deep.
00:29:22.260So, Mo, like, when did you first become aware of pinkwashing? And like, how does it show up in your life? How has it shown up in your life or the way that people form assumptions about your life?
00:29:33.040I think I first became aware of it, or I first started really paying attention to it might have been in 2021, because it really comes out when the Israeli government wants to suppress and influence, suppress support for Palestinian people from the gay community and influence, you know, that train of thought and that support.
00:29:55.440And as a proud queer person, as someone who has really found community here in New York and as an adult, it's just been really disappointing to see that because it's so targeted to our community.
00:30:09.800And so you said it perfectly, the look over there tactic, it's really meant to distract, but it's also meant to really divide.
00:30:17.160and like parts of it are also intended to pit Palestinians against supporting its own people
00:30:24.760a lot of that messaging you know says like and I've received a bunch of comments on I did a
00:30:31.140video for them a couple weeks ago and a lot of comments from people I don't know could be bots
00:30:35.220are telling me like oh look it's an American Palestinian I bet he wouldn't go to Palestine
00:30:41.940but he wouldn't go to gaza or i'd like to see him go wave a rainbow flag in gaza and that's just so
00:30:47.780offensive because i would go do those things right or i would go do or i would go be myself
00:30:53.700in gaza right i'm going to respect the cultural norms there just like i would um you know any
00:30:59.380other conservative country or you know i might be a bit more cautious just like i would in certain
00:31:06.100parts of the u.s south right but to to use those as as uh tactics against me and influencing like
00:31:14.860where my support lies is just if it's it's so messed up and i can't believe that like you have
00:31:20.840a governmental body behind it and that puts money behind it too i've also seen um some folks post
00:31:27.880things like oh you've been to tel aviv pride where's your support for israel now and it's like
00:31:35.500these people didn't necessarily go to tel aviv pride to support israel to begin with some gays
00:31:40.700are just on the circuit and it's not fair to suggest that because they've gone somewhere to
00:31:46.620party that they're gonna unequivocally support the host of that party right um and it's just
00:31:53.060it's it's such a weird way to influence yeah i've had i've had a great time in miami before
00:31:57.800exactly i've had great times in miami before i'm not endorsing ron de santis
00:32:06.380I mean, but it is such an interesting thing, though, right?
00:32:08.480Because the tone of those comments that you'll receive, right?
00:32:12.240The why don't you go to Gaza and wave a flag there?
00:32:15.300Or let's see what happens if you go to Gaza.
00:32:17.120Or don't you know what happens to your type of people in Gaza?
00:32:20.020Not only is the tone of that this very racialized, it's perpetuating this very racialized vision of Arabs, of Palestinians, of brown people as being barbaric.
00:32:33.980in contrast to the cosmopolitan, sexy, progressive white Israeli. But it's using that vision as
00:32:44.040justification for whatever's going on there, they deserve it because they look at how they treat
00:32:48.600their own people. And it's just really interesting because I have no desire to directly compare the
00:32:54.400state of queerness and queer life and queer people in Palestine to that in the US or anywhere else.
00:33:00.840because I think a lot of times we get caught up in trying to judge different nations and
00:33:05.500different views on gay rights by a Western standard, which is really hard to apply across
00:33:09.580the board. Like in the West, we view the pinnacle of gay rights as having achieved gay marriage,
00:33:14.680but that's not what it means in a lot of places to live freely as a queer person is not to get
00:33:19.940married. It's just crazy to me because you could very easily look at the state of queer rights in
00:33:27.220certain parts of the united states and view them rightfully as barbaric like the the revoking of
00:33:35.000trans kids access to health care um of trans kids ability to use restrooms of frankly an increasing
00:33:44.640number of bills and and popular mainstream conservative ideas around the united states to
00:33:49.340restrict queer people's ability to work anywhere in the public sector without being humiliated
00:33:54.480online. And it's just weird, because I've never seen any of these people use that as justification
00:34:01.300for why we should, for example, blow up Florida. Yeah, totally. Actually, on November 3,
00:34:08.180the UN Human Rights Committee criticized the US over its anti LGBTQ discrimination. So the new
00:34:14.620report cited numerous human and civil rights abuses. They reported concern over an unchecked
00:34:22.480anti-lgbtq discrimination by state governments they've called out the laws that ban and in
00:34:27.620some instances criminalize gender affirming health care for transgender persons and that
00:34:32.280limit the discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools like they don't say
00:34:37.220gay uh law in florida and so if the u.n it's it's crazy because the u.n is calling out what's
00:34:45.300happening here in the u.s it's calling out israel for what it's doing and we're just rejecting all
00:34:50.440of that something that's been really challenging throughout all of this is just the dehumanization
00:34:55.960of palestinians in general and that weighs on me because that's that's my identity and it's
00:35:01.800you know have family there and so we're seeing like the conversation from benjamin netanyahu
00:35:07.280prime minister of israel say um there's a struggle between the children of light and the children of
00:35:13.760darkness between humanity and the law of the jungle that's basically the civilized and the
00:35:17.760barbaric and you know of course the barbarians don't have um you know uh queer people are
00:35:24.600suppressed in gaza so they're not important and we should be fighting that and it justifies
00:35:29.460everything that we're doing i think a couple days ago we saw an idf soldier raising a rainbow flag
00:35:36.620that's what i'm starting this episode with oh it's analyzing that image but feel free to talk
00:35:43.360about it that image of the idf soldier on the ground in gaza waving the rainbow flag
00:35:47.520It's just crazy to think like that feels like a success and that they've done something.
00:35:52.380It's like the bullets, the bombs, like they've probably killed queer people.
00:35:57.740So to just wave that as if you've done something to improve the lives of queer people in Palestine,
00:36:04.340Infaza specifically, is just so delusional.
00:36:08.680Something that I've learned and that I've like internalized honestly for the first time
00:36:13.800through researching for this episode is just that like this idea that you can win rights for,
00:36:20.820you know, for example, Palestinian queer people by colonizing them, by displacing them from their
00:36:27.860homes. It sounds absurd, but that's literally the ideology running through so much of this argument
00:36:34.080online and in the media is that, you know, it's like setting the rainbow Israeli flag
00:36:39.240amidst the rubble, which is what that IDF soldier did. And it's like, we're finally
00:36:44.680bringing a pride flag to Gaza. And it's like, this is what we mean when we say that all forms
00:36:51.520of oppression are interconnected, and that you cannot bring certain forms of justice without
00:36:55.820others. Liberation for some people is not liberation. It just makes no sense. When you
00:37:04.120put it all out in front of you, like the idea that all of our liberation is interconnected as
00:37:08.380queer people as palestinians as human beings freedom from occupation freedom from homophobia
00:37:13.880freedom from racism freedom from transphobia all of these things are literally connected to one
00:37:18.820another and we can't have one at the expense of another that's not how freedom works mo have you
00:37:24.120heard of this thing called brand israel i have that's really fascinating it brand israel okay
00:37:30.160so for the listener who presumably doesn't know what this is because i didn't um until i started
00:37:36.560researching for this episode this was the moment where i when i learned what brand israel was that
00:37:41.280i felt like i was wearing a tinfoil hat like i felt like a conspiracy theorist i felt like
00:37:46.380i was like i don't know i felt like i was like doing like q and on or something that i was just
00:37:51.120like making shit up because this sounds so bizarre and so hard to believe but it's real and it's
00:37:59.120extremely out there so brand israel is a public relations campaign it's a marketing campaign that
00:38:06.000was that continues to be run by the israeli government that's it started in 2005 and the
00:38:11.860whole idea of brand israel was to improve the image of the state of israel the goal of the
00:38:17.360campaign this is from its wikipedia page the goal of the campaign is to establish israel as a
00:38:21.900cosmopolitan progressive westernized and democratic society contrasting it with the islamic homophobic
00:38:28.580and regressive surrounding nations and that's really important that it's not just about israel
00:38:33.420being a great place it's about contrasting it with all of its surrounding countries chiefly
00:38:38.580Palestine um being you know the opposite of everything it aspires to be and this is an
00:38:45.960extraordinarily well-funded marketing campaign which by the way it was inspired by American
00:38:52.960marketing executives who in 2003 were like we need the you know the image of Israel is fully
00:38:59.960associated with war and with apartheid and with ethnic cleansing and we need to do something to
00:39:04.840get that image to be something else and so it has had funding in the tens of millions of dollars
00:39:12.700and um i wanted to like i wanted to look at some images that have been produced by this kind of
00:39:20.860like grand marketing campaign which has stretched on since 2005 through now um with you mo if that's
00:39:28.200okay yeah sure so i don't i just i was looking at some of these and it's like when you realize
00:39:35.540you're it's the kind of thing that when you realize you're looking at propaganda it's just
00:39:38.400like whoa this is wild in 2007 brand israel did a campaign in maxim magazine which is like a
00:39:47.540playboy adjacent you know and they basically did this very long kind of photo shoot spread
00:39:53.900story in Maxim about female soldiers of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, which is the Israeli
00:40:01.480military, which is, you know, enforces the regime that oppresses Palestinians. Maxim is an American
00:40:07.300men's magazine, by the way. And the purpose of this photo shoot was to show Israel in a context
00:40:15.620that was something other than war, which is ironic because they're just showing female soldiers,
00:40:21.340but this time like in bikinis um and the headline of this spread was quote they're drop-dead gorgeous
00:40:28.800and can take apart an uzi in seconds are the women of the israeli defense forces the world's
00:40:34.440sexiest soldiers so i'm like okay what were the photos this is one of the images
00:40:39.620do you want to describe what's going on here yeah that is really really wild so you have
00:40:47.380they said this is an idf soldier yeah do you know specifically who that is
00:40:51.500it's gal gadot is it gal gadot it's gal gadot
00:40:55.540it's gal gadot i think it's is it gal gadot or gal gadot
00:41:00.760i always thought it was gado it really doesn't matter with her but
00:41:04.300she's in a bikini she's in a bikini with heels on lying on the edge of a
00:41:11.640rooftop and then you see the city in the background this is so odd because it's so
00:41:19.100misogynistic too oh it's maxim so that makes sense but it really ought to be talking about
00:41:24.540a country's defense forces in this way or depicting them in this way right i mean it's
00:41:30.660it's crazy and there there are like tons and tons of these photos i mean this was like a really
00:41:37.740large-scale photo shoot with all of these like hot idf soldiers and it's absurd to look at right
00:41:45.140like the absurdity is so plain and simple but it's so dark separate from brand israel because they
00:41:50.640still the state of israel still employs the same tactics in different ways mainly through social
00:41:56.200media i'd say especially their twitter um the taylor swift bodyguard thing yes so wait do you
00:42:03.820want to describe that yeah so the so basically it's a photo of taylor swift at a concert and
00:42:09.060her bodyguard escorting her and i forget the name of the bodyguard um but he was he was uh
00:42:16.780called to you know uh go to war called back to israel he was an israeli guy yes and so the tweet
00:42:24.680was um basically like telling swifties to to pray for this bodyguard and how taylor swift will never
00:42:31.660have a bodyguard ever like him again and how hot he is and the thing about this tweet is that it
00:42:38.940didn't name him properly um and the other thing is he wasn't even her actual like full-time bodyguard
00:42:46.360he was just for that one specific show right so it's really like sexualizing and idolizing
00:42:53.700soldiers uh to the general public it's such a yeah it's really really bizarre i've never seen
00:42:59.200anything like it yeah they were like look at this hunky sexy taylor swift bodyguard like
00:43:04.460swifties this is your call to arms to stand with israel and yeah i mean the guy wasn't even taylor
00:43:10.740swift's bodyguard he was like it was like some stadium and he was the bodyguard like at that
00:43:14.900stadium who happened to be caught in one screenshot from like a cctv footage video where he was
00:43:20.600standing next to her and it's so interesting because yeah like you said i mean the ongoing
00:43:26.440efforts of brand israel now through social media then through maxim it reminds me of like it's like
00:43:32.740the darkest version of that meme you know that meme it's the guy with the skateboard and he's
00:43:36.460like how do you do fellow kids it's like the darkest possible version of that of like some
00:43:42.720like adult war criminal being like how do you do swifties time to commit some war crimes in the
00:43:48.980name of taylor swift exactly it's really fucking bizarre i think just on that note like
00:43:56.360the whole social media strategy has been so bizarre to watch. And I'm really, really glad
00:44:02.200that a lot of young Americans, and I'm seeing it a lot on TikTok, are seeing right through it,
00:44:08.340right? Like, why are we doing Get Ready With Me's to go to the front lines?
00:44:14.220Why are you going? I mean, like, a full beat to go to the front lines sounds cool in theory,
00:44:19.660but it's just such a weird thing for a government to be promoting through its soldiers.
00:44:25.900It creates this like crazy dichotomy of like beautiful and civilized and glamorous versus barbaric and what is it, children of darkness and of the jungle.
00:44:40.440and i'm really really really grateful that like social media is is there are some good and a lot
00:44:47.520of good and bad to social media but like it's allowing people to see right through this stuff
00:44:52.660in real time rather than just relying on what gets printed in the newspapers or on our in our
00:44:59.520you know on mainstream media um because it's truly truly i keep using the word bizarre that's
00:45:06.920exactly what it is it also feels really desperate it is extremely bizarre and it's so desperate and
00:45:11.980it feels like their understanding of what the youths on social media want is so shallow like
00:45:18.060if i was the brand like the social media manager for brand israel i feel like like you said it's
00:45:24.220like they're literally doing like get ready with me hot soldier goes to the front lines i think
00:45:29.040they want like twitter savvy gen z people to just be like hell yeah she's getting she's serving to
00:45:35.080serve exactly but it's like we all know that what they're getting ready to do is commit war crimes
00:45:44.580and i don't even say that in a cutesy like war crimes like they're committing by the definition
00:45:49.240as created by the united nations war crimes they are committing collective punishment they are
00:45:54.500doing war crimes i don't care what eyeliner they're wearing or like the story of their gay
00:46:01.280flag that they're planting in the rubble i don't care you're committing war crimes another thing
00:46:05.240that brand israel did in 2010 brand israel launched a month-long festival in san francisco
00:46:12.040called out in israel a month long that is crazy yeah it was like a month-long kind of like tour
00:46:18.280that happened around san francisco to promote kind of this lgbtq friendly vision of israel to
00:46:25.300Californians, basically. And again, the aim was to create a media narrative, an American media
00:46:32.240narrative for Israel that was less about war. But also it was to counter something which had
00:46:37.740just happened in Israel not long before, which was a shooting at a gay center in Tel Aviv where
00:46:44.940LGBTQ youth were meeting, which resulted in two deaths and 15 injuries. And so they were like,
00:46:51.500oh, we had a homophobic shooting at an LGBT center in Tel Aviv. Now we have to go around
00:46:57.180to the rest of the world and remind them how gay friendly we are. And it's like, it's so
00:47:01.400transparent. I think that was the shocking thing to me when I was researching all of this,
00:47:05.720especially about Brand Israel and its enduring efforts to launder Israel's image as a state
00:47:15.020that commits war crimes regularly, is when you look at all of this in succession, when you look
00:47:20.980at the events that the anti-gay shooting followed by a very clear campaign to market israel as like
00:47:27.340a sexy gay place to visit it's so transparent and this is where i have to be like matt like you're
00:47:33.300not wearing a tin hat you're not going crazy like this is really what's happening which is part of
00:47:38.240why i'm making this episode because once you're aware that so much of this image of israel as a
00:47:45.260place that we should all support because it's so progressive on human rights allegedly because it's
00:47:50.440so cosmopolitan, that is something that you can pay marketing executives to create for you.
00:47:56.460Whether you're a brand, whether you're Lockheed Martin, whether you're a country with a marketing
00:48:04.520budget, which by the way, pays off because when thousands and thousands of people travel every
00:48:10.540year to Tel Aviv Pride, that is money that's going into the Israeli economy. So Israel isn't
00:48:15.880just doing this by the way listeners Israel isn't just doing this to look and feel good on the
00:48:22.260global stage they are seeing returns on this this is an investment that they are seeing returns on
00:48:28.960but it has as you've noted I mean like people are more and more seeing through it and especially
00:48:35.200with the advent of social media um and and criticisms of brand Israel and pink washing
00:48:41.280in general coming to light the tide is turning so in 2016 the israeli government and we've seen
00:48:47.960this a lot with celebrities they'll offer these celebrities vacations basically so celebrities
00:48:53.100will post and be like i'm at the beach in israel like you know look at this perfect utopian place
00:48:58.800they offered trips to leo dicaprio sylvester stallone mark rylance kate blanchett jennifer
00:49:05.560Lawrence, Matt Damon, and Kate Winslet. And the trips were valued at $55,000 each, which for
00:49:14.160these celebrities is nothing, but also it's a lot of money that they were being comped. And there
00:49:20.020was pretty swift backlash and none of the celebrities went, which I just thought was
00:49:24.040interesting. None. That's amazing. I didn't know that. I do think a lot of other celebrities have
00:49:30.240gone though on these branded trips for sure yeah yeah i think um what i was doing quick search on
00:49:37.140brand israel too and i saw like uh 2016 or 2017 they announced the winning team of the super bowl
00:49:43.560was going to get a trip to israel um but then more than half of them pulled out
00:49:48.380and like put out this big letter and they had like you know the support of activists like
00:49:54.000angela davis speak out to help influence their decision so i think when we look at when we look
00:49:59.520these examples and we look at how people are engaging now it's important to really lead by
00:50:04.160example with and be really conscious of even as like an everyday person like how you're consuming
00:50:10.000whether it's purchases you make the the movies you support the trips you decide to go on like
00:50:17.300Tel Aviv Pride looks lit like that looks fun beautiful people it's um my uh but I can't go
00:50:25.160there because um i can't support that economy i can't um if i'm gonna spend all this money to fly
00:50:32.700all the way to tel aviv i need to just go to gaza i need to find a way to get there like that's where
00:50:37.120my heart is and those are the people that i need to really be spending my time with and supporting
00:50:40.600but also like it's hard for me to go to a place like tel aviv because uh my grandparents are from
00:50:46.200yaffa and they were displaced um you know after the nakba they were not from gaza originally
00:50:53.420and i think it's really important for a lot of people to understand is most of the folks there
00:50:57.600are refugees to begin with and it's happening all over again we've seen photos of um there's
00:51:03.460an elderly woman's photo that just went viral or video of her doing the walk from the north to the
00:51:08.200south and she's already done this um and i think like we all have such a responsibility as not as
00:51:16.620just queer people but as consumers and people that have influence regardless of your following
00:51:21.780You can have 300 followers. You can have 3 million to really show where you stand. And I think if you really care about these human rights, show it. Right. Because you can't say you care for human rights while also not condemning the fact that we're bombing those very same humans and destroying their homes with our tax dollars as American citizens.
00:51:43.680Yeah, that's another thing is, I mean, so many people are insisting that it's not my place to talk about this or, you know, I'm not involved enough to talk about this. And I'm not here to legislate who should talk about what. But I will say on a very basic level, if your tax dollars are funding something, you have a right to talk about it. That's my belief.
00:52:04.340I think it's also really unfair for folks to say, like, well, if you're gonna, you know, not support Israel and support the Palestinian people, then you need to give this up. And why aren't you speaking out against this? And why aren't you speaking out against that? And the whataboutism? Is that how you say it?
00:52:20.660what about ism yeah what about ism it's just like such a deflection tool and it's like well
00:52:27.220those things are wrong too but like am i asking you to get on here and um not only condemn hamas
00:52:34.460but condemn x y and z like let's just focus on this issue at hand right it's just it takes away
00:52:40.340from um the point you're trying to make and the one i'm trying to make to begin with
00:52:44.540and i feel like that's been really discouraging to like these tactics of
00:52:48.960not only shaming people but getting them to um be silenced because they don't have all the answers
00:52:56.480or um you know making them feel like they haven't done all the research it's not complicated it's
00:53:02.640pretty simple you either stand for humanity or you don't you either care about human rights or
00:53:06.600you don't and if you care about queer rights then you need to first and foremost care about
00:53:10.820the lives of these people they can't have rights if they're dead yeah or if their family and if
00:53:17.600their families are dead i don't think their concerns are you know being able to wave a pride
00:53:23.280flag when they don't have a house to wave it from it's really really beautifully put so you've
00:53:29.560probably seen this like i feel like queers for palestine has become like a meme for a lot of
00:53:36.320the internet especially the right-wing internet and the basic idea is that at a lot of the protests
00:53:41.020for palestinian liberation that have been showing up around the world and especially in the u.s
00:53:45.540There have been, at any number of them, there have been queer people, usually queer Americans, holding posters, you know, queers for Palestine, queers in solidarity with Palestine.
00:53:56.340And these photos have been turned into memes.
00:53:59.620Like, I don't know if you've seen this, Mo, but like people have collaged them with images of chickens holding up a sign that says chickens for KFC or like cows for burgers or whatever.
00:54:12.160and the idea being that you know how could you be a queer for palestine queer rights are completely
00:54:20.180at odds with palestinian rights and palestinian liberation and i i've i've seen that image that
00:54:26.700the chickens for kfc thing over and over and over again and what's amazing is that every person who
00:54:30.880shares it on twitter every person who replies to all of my tweets with it thinks that they're like
00:54:35.440breaking new ground or showing me something that i haven't seen before but what what do you make of
00:54:40.500that of that whole argument yeah so i actually hadn't seen the image um before i started seeing
00:54:46.680it in the comments on posts on instagram and some of my own posts um and i thought it was just such
00:54:55.720a narrow way to look at this right it's like i think what's frustrating about um the chickens
00:55:03.420for KFC, you know, angle is that like, you're suggesting that like, we shouldn't care about
00:55:10.420human rights, because if we live in that society, we wouldn't have the rights that were afforded
00:55:14.760here, which, you know, those are slowly being pulled away from us. So it's, it's really unfair
00:55:21.180that like, we're being told not to care. Basically, I'm just saying like, human rights at their core
00:55:29.160should matter to all of us, regardless of whether or not the rights you have to exist in the free
00:55:35.280way that you're privileged to have here in the U.S. might not be granted. Yeah. If you actually
00:55:43.660supported queer people and you cared about queer rights and liberation, you would really be
00:55:50.000advocating for human rights to begin with. So the other thing, the other point I want to make is that
00:55:54.940as a queer person you don't have to support the Palestinian people just because uh you're the
00:56:00.660queer part of your identity you can just you can support them and care for them just as fellow
00:56:05.120human beings yeah you know what I mean like I care about um various different communities
00:56:12.040that don't reflect who I am whether it's racially sexuality wise political party sometimes right
00:56:20.040just because we need to have more care for one another and I think that's the root of a lot of
00:56:24.920all of these issues there is a lot of hate and a lot of hate being spread and division yeah
00:56:31.380and it just does nothing to help the the situation in fact it just all it does is continue to pick
00:56:39.300groups uh against one another and to dehumanize one over the other it's very colonialist yeah
00:56:46.900i mean i just want to say like when i first saw the banner saying queers for palestine
00:56:53.820there was a knee-jerk reaction i had which was to question the legitimacy of something like that
00:57:01.960right like a part of me look i'm a white i'm a white american gay and i was grown in the air
00:57:09.100of homonationalism and which i've had to unlearn and you know a part of me has long bought into
00:57:17.720this idea of like, how could I as a queer person support justice for people who don't care about me
00:57:24.860or who I've been told don't care about me? And I no longer feel conflicted at all about my position
00:57:30.940on this. I am absolutely, as it were, a queer for Palestine. And I really don't like these sort of
00:57:37.900like the hand wringing that's being done by conservatives, by conservative gays, by conservative
00:57:43.720of white gaze about how surely I must be dumb to hold that position. I must be stupid. I must be
00:57:50.700unaware of how horribly they treat gay people. I'm not unaware of any of those things. What I am
00:57:58.380aware of is the fact that all forms of oppression are interconnected, that you cannot bomb people's
00:58:05.680homes and displace them permanently and cut off their water and kill them in the name of human
00:58:13.440rights. You can't do it in the name of gay rights because none of those rights will exist if that's
00:58:20.260the method that you're taking to achieve them. That's not how human rights are fought for.
00:58:25.820Liberation is all or nothing. And you can't liberate some at the expense of others. And
00:58:33.660that was the end of my tangent. Yeah. Something I really love about
00:58:38.760what you've said in one of your most recent Instagram posts is why does everyone suddenly
00:58:44.520want to remind me that Gaza is not a safe space to be queer? Is it out of genuine concern for the
00:58:50.560well-being of queer people or is it a wielding of homophobia as a tool to justify the mass slaughter
00:58:55.960of Palestinians? And it definitely feels like the latter because like you just said, if there is a
00:59:02.840genuine concern for the well-being of queer people and the future of queer people, of queer
00:59:08.360Palestinians, you wouldn't be obliterating them. The other thing you said was there's a big
00:59:14.460difference between pointing out issues in a society in order to actually help the society
00:59:18.580versus portray it as savage and deserving of the violent oppression we've been seeing for weeks on
00:59:24.100end, for decades on end, honestly. And so when someone chimes in to tell us where we look dumb,
00:59:32.820We're chickens for KFC to be advocating for Palestinian lives.
00:59:37.920You're basically supporting what's happening to those Palestinian people, the violence that's against them.
00:59:43.620And you're saying that we shouldn't be standing up. We of all people have no right to.
00:59:46.960And I think the reason why Queers for Palestine exists, like that movement itself, is because of the multimillion dollar campaign that's been going on for decades now to brand Israel as a haven because of the pinkwashing that's happening.
01:00:09.940that's why we have an obligation as queer people to say like no you can't do this like like not in
01:00:14.740our name really like this is you're you're you're selling a false narrative to people that like
01:00:21.460might not have an awareness of what's actually going on and thank god more and more people are
01:00:27.060starting to do their own research they have access to the information to voices on the ground
01:00:32.020um otherwise you really would feel that palestinians their lives are just unworthy
01:00:39.460because they're such a barbaric group of people
01:01:09.000I will say, but I think the people that still haven't called out, you know, what the Israeli government's doing, the war crimes that are taking place every minute of every day, the over 10,000 lives that have been lost in a span of weeks, this message is for them.
01:01:27.860it's that Palestinians deserve life. We're all human. And it's not because, especially when we're
01:01:32.560talking in the context of queer liberation and Palestinian liberation, it's not because of their
01:01:36.900proximity to these colonial models of liberal humanity, right? Because they're not where we
01:01:45.460are as a society. And like I said, like what's slowly kind of being undone, all the progress
01:01:50.120we've made in this country, which really that's, if you care about queer rights, put all your might
01:01:54.940into fighting that, put all your might into combating what's going on in Florida and to
01:01:58.600countless states across the country, rather than suppressing us as a group of people saying no
01:02:04.900against what's happening to Palestinians in our name. I want to say that human rights should
01:02:11.420never be conditional, right? It's messed up and it's unfair to suggest because a society
01:02:21.640isn't as quote-unquote advanced or as liberal as ours is, that those people are undeserving of
01:02:28.180basic human rights, resources, safety. And then I'll close it out by saying queer liberation is
01:02:34.880Palestinian liberation. I said this in my video for them. I say this to anyone that wants to have
01:02:40.860a conversation about this because you can't have queer liberation in Palestine without
01:02:46.660a liberated Palestine, and with Palestinians in Gaza. So if you're losing them, you're losing
01:02:54.360all of us. Yeah, sorry. That was kind of long-winded. No, that was perfect. Mo, thank you
01:03:01.520so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. So to round out today's show, I want to read
01:03:06.700you two quick little things. The first one is a quote from an article published by Al-Khaz. Al-Khaz,
01:03:12.600which in Arabic means the rainbow, is a Palestinian organization working to build
01:03:17.740LGBTQ communities and promote new ideas about gender and sexual diversity in the media and
01:03:23.200in everyday Palestinian life. Bet you didn't know that such an organization existed.
01:03:28.700I didn't, but it has since 2007. Anyway, they published an article written by Hanin Meiki
01:03:35.200and Jason Ritchie in 2009, where they wrote, quote,
01:03:38.740As in most societies, homophobia is a problem in Palestinian society, but there is not some
01:03:44.180organized widespread campaign of violence against gay and lesbian Palestinians. Of course, there
01:03:49.360are occasional acts of violence, and the social norms and mores about gender and sexuality that
01:03:54.600give rise to such violence create a climate in which many queer Palestinians cannot live their
01:03:59.560lives openly and honestly. But at the same time, there are many openly gay and lesbian Palestinians,
01:04:04.660and they are actively engaged in changing the status quo in Palestinian society by promoting
01:04:09.480respect for sexual and gender diversity. The second thing I want to read to you is a newly
01:04:14.040published statement by an Instagram account called Queers in Palestine, which is anonymously run by
01:04:20.260a group that describes themselves as workers, students, farmers, and parents who are all queer
01:04:25.420Palestinians. So here's an excerpt from their statement. We refuse the instrumentalization of
01:04:31.080our queerness, our bodies, and the violence we face as queer people to demonize and dehumanize
01:04:36.340our communities, especially in service of imperial and genocidal acts. We refuse that Palestinian
01:04:42.780sexuality and Palestinian attitudes towards diverse sexualities become parameters for assigning
01:04:47.880humanity to any colonized society. We deserve life because we are human, with the multitude of our
01:04:53.960imperfections and not because of our proximity to colonial modes of liberal humanity. We refuse
01:04:59.700colonial and imperialist tactics that seek to alienate us from our society and alienate our
01:05:04.700society from us on the basis of our queerness. We are fighting interconnected systems of oppression,
01:05:10.420including patriarchy and capitalism, and our dreams of autonomy, community, and liberation
01:05:15.660are inherently tied to our desire for self-determination. No queer liberation can
01:05:20.620be achieved with settler colonialization, and no queer solidarity can be fostered if it stands
01:05:25.700blind to the racialized capitalist fascist and imperial structures that dominate us so that's
01:05:31.880our show today i want to give you the listener a huge thank you if you've made it this far or you
01:05:39.420know even if you haven't made it this far thanks anyway i want to give a huge thank you to mo for
01:05:44.100so generously joining us and giving us his story and his viewpoint during a time which i can only
01:05:51.400imagine has been incredibly painful and distressing for him. And yeah, you know, don't be afraid to
01:06:00.700change your attitudes upon learning new information. And don't be afraid to challenge
01:06:05.720yourself. That's something that I've had to do a lot in my life in the last month. And don't be
01:06:13.000afraid to stand in your truth if you know that you're doing the right thing. And with that,
01:06:17.420I will say, I love you. Thank you for listening. And until next time, stay fruity.