Category Archives: Arab-Israeli Conflict

Queers for Palestine

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Gender and Sexuality, Israel, Palestine

Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza on October 27th, launched in response to an attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7th, there have been thousands of demonstrations held worldwide. Some of these demonstrations have included LGBTQ+ groups, voicing their support for a free Palestine, calling for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation. Pundits and laymen alike have reacted to this, often portraying queer solidarity with Palestine as a contradiction, calling it “bizarre” or jokingly comparing it to “chickens for KFC.”

These reactions prompted a group of more than 300 Swedish LGBTQ people to write a response, published in the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan, explaining that their support for Palestine may only appear bizarre to those who view human rights as conditional. The article is published in Swedish, but what follows here is a summary in English.

The group highlights the strategic rhetorical manoeuvre of equating support for Palestine with support for Hamas, similarly to how critique of Israel is equated with antisemitism. In fact, many LGBTQ groups have criticised Hamas and brought attention to the marginalisation of LGBTQ people in Gaza. Meanwhile, those pundits who ridicule Queers for Palestine have rarely showed any interest in LGBTQ rights in the past, and only do so now in order to defend Israel against its critics rather than to defend queer Palestinians.

Furthermore, the argument that queer Palestinians can find refuge in Israel is at best a half-truth. Israel has long banned any Palestinian – regardless of sexuality or gender identity – from working or settling permanently in Israel. Only in 2022 they decided to permit LGBTQ Palestinians from the West Bank temporary work permits. These, however, are short term and need to be renewed every other month, with the intention that Palestinian LGBTQ migrants eventually move to a third country. Israel does not recognise Palestinians’ right to asylum, although a court order in January 2024 ruled that LGBTQ Palestinians may request asylum. This decision is something that the current Interior Minister wants to see reversed.

The article also responds to the claim that Israel supports LGBTQ rights. This is part of what is called “pink washing,” meaning that Israels actions are justified with reference to their LGBTQ politics. This claim does not account for how the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has been blackmailing queer Palestinians, forcing them to act as informants under threat of being “outed” (that the person’s sexuality or identity is revealed to others without their consent). In other words, Israel has been using LGBTQ people as pawns, constituting a direct threat against their lives but also contributing to a distrust against the queer community in Palestine, worsening their situation.

Notably, same-sex relations were decriminalised on the West Bank some 37 years before Israel (1951 compared to 1988), and it was due to Israeli occupation and application of Israeli law that same-sex relations were criminalised again on the West Bank. Of course, today it is easier to live openly as a gay person in Tel Aviv than it is in Gaza or the West Bank, but it is not on equal grounds. There are also several Palestinian organisations working to improve LGBTQ rights in Palestine whose works are impeded and made immensely more difficult by Israels continued and intensified occupation.

Lastly, the article affirms that queer support for Palestinians’ right to live in peace and free from occupation is not conditional on Palestinians’ views on LGBTQ rights. It is irrelevant whether or not those suffering under Israel’s invasion and blockade of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank believe homosexuality is immoral and should be banned. Neither Israel nor any outsider may dictate which party should rule in Palestine. However, the war, blockade and occupation constitutes the biggest obstacle to the liberation of LGBTQ Palestinians. The signatories of the article say that no liberation can be achieved under war and occupation.

The full text, in Swedish, can be read here.

The full list of signatories can be read here.

New CyberOrient Issue

Anthropology/Sociology, Arab-Israeli Conflict, CyberOrient, Gender and Sexuality, Islam in Europe, Journalism and Media, Palestine, Saudi Arabia

The latest issue of CyberOrient is now available online: 

Joel W. Abdelmoez >> Good Tidings for Saudi Women? Techno-Orientalism, Gender, and Saudi Politics in Global Media Discourse

Anna Piela, Joanna Krotofil, Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska, Beata Abdallah-Krzepkowska >> The Role of the Internet in the Formation of Muslim Subjectivity Among Polish Female Converts to Islam

and two reviews:

Omneya Ibrahim >> Review: Stein, Rebecca L. 2021. Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine. Stanford University Press.

Michaela Slussareff >> Review: O’Neil, Cathy. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Picturing Palestine

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Architecture, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Ottoman Empire, Palestine, Photography

This is a fabulous new book from the University of California Press discussing photographs from late 19th and early 20th century Palestine from seven notebooks by Wasif Jawhariyyeh (1904–1972) that contained some 900 images. And it is available for download as open access. Below is one of the images, as well as a flyer for a concert in Jerusalem by Umm Kalthum. Check it out…

Who Owns the Holy Land?

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Humor and Satire, Israel, Palestine, Travel

As another year draws to a close, it is hard not to think in larger terms of the course of the last century. The world has seen two world wars and far too many atrocities to think of our technological and commercially driven age as golden. But in it all there has been humor. The American writer Mark Twain was a humorist with political insight. His greatest books belong to the century before, from the mother of all Holy Land travelogues, Innocents Abroad, to Huckleberry Finn and his adventurous friend Tom Sawyer. Surely one of the greatest humorists ever, Mark Twain did more than tell funny stories. His work survives in part because it uses humor to remind us of the unfairness and unwavering mundaneness of life.

In Tom Sawyer Abroad Twain offers a vivid critique of the kind of Orientalism that Edward Said rightly views as a style for dominating the Orient. Tom is not the ugly American abroad but the naive traveler finding out that the world has problems beyond flooding of the Mississippi. One of the more poignant passages goes straight to the core of the contemporary political crisis over Palestine. Who owns the Holy Land? The dialogue, as is often the case in Twain’s homespun rendering, speaks for itself:

Continue reading Who Owns the Holy Land? →

If only Abraham had known …

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Islam and Christianity, Israel, Palestine


The Sacrifice of Abraham, by Andrea del Sarto, ca. 1527-1528

A fable, dedicated to Mark Twain and all who really understand what it means to suffer

Abraham was sitting in his tent door near the oaks of Mamre. He was getting on in years and his son Ishmael would soon have to take over the family herds. So it was time to think about buying a burial site, perhaps the cave that Hittite had offered over near Hebron. Then he lifted up his eyes and three men stood before him. And though he did not realize it at the time, these were angels sent from God.

“Abraham,” said one of the angels, “God wants you to know what is going to happen to your descendants over the next three or four thousand years. So we are here to tell you. Are you sitting down?” Abraham was used to the flamboyance of this One God, so he made sure he stayed close to the ground.

“First of all,” said another angel, “your wife Sarah is going to have a son. I know she is a hundred years old and will probably think this is some kind of joke, but let me tell you that God doesn’t fool around when it comes to sex. You have to call this son “Isaac” and then just when you think things are going alright, God is going to ask you to take Isaac up on a mountain and kill him as a sacrifice.”

Abraham decided to keep quiet. Maybe there was more. Continue reading If only Abraham had known … →

Picturing the “Enemy”

Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Film and Video, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism and Media, Photography, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

My friend Karim Ben Khelifa, an award-winning photographic journalist who I met over a decade ago, has produced an extraordinary film (“The Enemy”) on his experience as a photographer of war and violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and El Salvador, as well as 80 countries overall. On Youtube there is a talk he gave in 2019 about his work. including a number of his photographs. His amazing skill as a photographer is matched by his passion to show the reality of treating other human beings as enemies.

Karim has also taken photographs in Yemen over a decade ago. Some of these are archived on the New York Times blog. One of my favorites is the image of the mammoth mosque built in Sanaa by the late President Ali Abdullah Salih.

Why it (Still) Makes Little Sense to Call ISIS Islamic

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, ISIS, IS, Da'ash, Islam and Christianity, Judaism, Syria


A member of ISIS poses in a fighter jet similar to those used in the Prophet’s time.

By Haroon Moghul, Religion Dispatches, August 24, 2015

Last week, The New York Times’ Rukmini Callimachi published “A Theology of Rape,” a report as important as it is horrifying. Unfortunately, like several recent exposés on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), including Graeme Wood’s website-busting What ISIS Really Wants, Callimachi’s reporting is unusually receptive to the movement’s claims. Namely, that plausible Islamic arguments can be made for slavery, rape, and other crimes.

In support of his own argument that ISIS isn’t just “Islamic,” but “very Islamic,” Wood cited Princeton academic Bernard Haykel who insists that anyone who denies ISIS’ Islamic authenticity is being disingenuous (who says this is never elaborated on). Wood then proceeded to analyze ISIS’ “Islamicity” based almost entirely on Haykel, several fringe Muslim scholars, ISIS sympathizers, and no mainstream voices.

This is a problem. Journalist Murtaza Hussain explains that, “We invariably view conflicts involving Muslim groups as being driven primarily by atavistic religious beliefs.” Which is why, he adds, we jump to “texts and ideology to explain contemporary events. We don’t do this with the recent Israeli war on Gaza, even though that conflict also contains clear religious connotations and justifications.”

Only weeks ago Jewish radicals lit a house on fire and burned a Palestinian child to death. Last year another Palestinian child was burned alive. Yet I don’t recall articles in the Times, the Atlantic or any other popular media assessing the act’s conformity with Judaism, or arguing that “price tag” attacks are not just “Jewish,” but “very Jewish.” There are, in fact, radical Jewish sects who preach indiscriminate violence citing G-d and the Torah, but these claims are not entertained as serious.

“ISIS,” laments Hussain, “has been granted full civilizational power to speak for and represent Islam.”

For the rest of this article, click here.