A Rutgers University professor told a seminar on the conflict between Israel and Hamas that it is “violent” and “homophobic” to raise the issue of how LGBT people are treated in Gaza.
Maya Mikdashi, an associate professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the State University of New Jersey, told students earlier this month that people at pro-Palestine protests approached her and told her that Hamas would treat her horribly.
“So I was at protests where they later said to me, ‘Don’t you know what Hamas would do to you if you were in Palestine?'” he said.
‘We have to start calling this homophobic. You cannot practice violence with queer people. It’s violent.
The event, titled ‘Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle’, took place on March 20 and was co-hosted by Nadine Naber of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Maya Mikdashi, associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (left) with co-host Nadine Naber of the University of Illinois at Chicago (right)
The ‘Queers for Palestine’ events and marches have been criticized as a misguided show of support for a regime that does not support gay rights.
“If you said you were experiencing sexism in the SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine), they would say ‘there go those Palestinians again, silencing women in their communities,'” Naber told attendees.
‘So no one is going to say it. And if you say so (others) will say that you are a “traitor and collaborator of Zionism.”
Naber also argued that rape had been well documented at the founding of Israel.
Reading the text, he said: ‘in fact, the practices of rape and sexual assault that have been well documented during the founding of Israel and continue today are neither an exception nor a secondary impact of colonial violence.
“(They) are part of Israel’s colonial and white supremacist logics and practices that conflate colonized women with the land and nature and assume that, therefore, to dominate the land it is necessary to dominate the bodies of Palestinian women and their reproductive capabilities from 1948 to today,” she explained.
Speaking further about why the event focuses on queer people within the Palestinian movement, Naber said: “We are going to need our organization to focus on queer and trans people not only because they are especially vulnerable to colonial violence, racism and doxxing, but they also embody an exceptionally nuanced wisdom about Zionism because they live it in all its complexity.’
Queers for Palestine events and marches, which have proliferated across the United States since the start of the war, have been criticized as a misguided show of support for a regime that does not support gay rights.
The Islamic State of the Middle East follows Sharia law and, as Amnesty International noted, is not safe for the queer community.
The October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel involved rape and sexual violence, a new United Nations report concludes. Pictured: An Israeli soldier walks among objects left behind by fleeing festival-goers at the site of the Nova music festival, October 12.
Based on a body of evidence, the UN said there was clear and convincing information showing that members of the Palestinian terrorist group committed conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape. Pictured: IDF troops patrol Kibbutz Be’eri on October 11.
Pramila Patten, a UN envoy focused on sexual violence in conflict, detailed witness accounts of two incidents involving the rape of women’s corpses.
Others see the fight for queer rights and anti-colonialism as intertwined because anti-gay laws were passed first. introduced into Palestine by Great Britain in 1885, although former colonial powers have since abolished such legislation in their own countries.
Furthermore, the brutal rapes of Israeli prisoners committed by Hamas during and after the October 7 terrorist attacks have been widely reported, including by the United Nations.
Based on a body of evidence, the international organization said there was “clear and convincing” information showing that members of the Palestinian terrorist group committed conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape.
He said such attacks were carried out in at least three locations in southern Israel, including the Nova music festival, the site of one of several Oct. 7 massacres.
Pramila Patten, a UN envoy dedicated to sexual violence in conflict, also detailed witness accounts of two incidents involving the rape of women’s corpses.
In addition to her findings related to the Oct. 7 attack, Patten also said her team “found clear and convincing information” that some women and children during their captivity were subjected to the same sexual violence related to the conflict.
This included rape and “sexualized torture,” he claimed.
This evidence was based on first-hand accounts from freed hostages, he said, adding that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”
Patten visited Israel and the West Bank from January 29 to February 14 with a nine-member technical team.
The report comes almost five months after the Oct. 7 attacks, which left around 1,200 people dead and about 250 more taken hostage.
Since then, Israel’s war against Hamas has devastated the Gaza Strip, killing more than 30,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The UN says a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people face hunger.
Hamas has rejected previous accusations that its fighters committed sexual assaults.