When Muslims Oppress Gays, It's the Fault of the Jews
Sharia, or Islamic law, imposes the death penalty on homosexuality. That’s the way it is from Qatar to Iran, and Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. So it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise when a gathering by Al-Qaws, a gay right group operating under Palestinian Authority rule, was met with severe threats.
The Palestinian Authority police, a paramilitary terror organization which draws its personnel from supporters of Fatah, the core group of the PLO, warned that gay activists would be arrested and tried.
A spokesman for the PA police said that gay rights were “harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society” and “unrelated to religions and Palestinian traditions and customs.” That was a convoluted way of saying that homosexuality was unacceptable under Islam and Islamic law.
While the PA urged locals to turn in members of Al-Qaws and ‘Palestinians’ denounced them and called for their deaths, the Soros-funded gay rights organization jumped into action and blamed Israel.
In an official Twitter statement, Al-Qaws claimed that "singling out incidents of homophobia in Palestinian society ignores the complexities of Israel's colonization and military occupation being a contributing factor to Palestinian LGBTQ oppression." And it told foreign journalists to "situate Palestinian LGBTQ oppression within the larger context of Israeli occupation."
Somehow, Muslim terrorists targeting gay people is the fault of the Jews.
Groups advocating for abused women in the Palestinian Authority routinely blame Muslim men hitting their wives on Israel. It makes just as much sense for Al-Qaws to blame threats from the Palestinian Authority on Israel. If it wasn’t for the “occupation”, the Muslims of Gaza and the West Bank would enjoy the same standard of gay rights, from floggings to hangings, of Islamic countries around the world.
The PA police is going after Al-Qaws because, as its constitution says, Islam is the official religion and the laws are based on Sharia. The existence of the modern state of Israel has as much to do with the Islamic position on homosexuality, as it does with the Islamic support for wife-beating or beheading infidels.
But Al-Qaws is just coming off a $100,000 grant from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. A decade of cash has poured in from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, whose longtime head was Katherine Acey, an Arab activist, who had chaired the National Executive Committee of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, had served as an Open Society Foundation advisory board member, and a member of the Arab Women’s Gathering Organizing Committee.
The real business of Al-Qaws was attacking Israel.
In 2017, Haneen Maikey, the head of Al-Qaws, put out a Newsweek editorial calling for BDSing the gay parade in Tel Aviv. Maikey claimed that the gay parade was “deployed to divert attention from the occupation of Palestinian lands.” Maikey’s rant failed to list any alternative gay parades under PLO or Hamas rule. Instead she claimed that the existence of the parade was an example of “pinkwashing”.
Pinkwashing is a term used by anti-Israel activists to claim that Israel’s failure to treat a gay parade the way that the PLO or Hamas would is a conspiracy to divert attention from its oppression of terrorists.
Last year, when Eurovision came to Israel, Maikey claimed that gay rights was part of “Israel’s propaganda campaign”, and insisted that gay people should boycott Israel because the “struggles for queer and Palestinian liberation are inseparable.” But, according to the Palestinian Authority, they are extremely separable. But they’re also entirely separable for Maikey and Al-Qaws.
And “queer” liberation has to take a seat at the very back of the “Palestinian liberation” bus.
Al-Qaws isn’t arguing that gay rights are better in the Palestinian Authority than in Israel. Its real argument is that gay rights is much less important than creating an Islamic terror state in Israel.
That’s not even ‘pinkwashing’. It’s pinktrashing.
In countless anti-Israel editorials and petitions, Al-Qaws failed to mention the rights of the people it claims to be advocating for. Instead it put out strident Arab nationalist screeds while claiming that intersectionality meant gay rights and the rights of Islamic terrorists are somehow intertwined.
The irony is that Al-Qaws, which accuses Israel of ‘pinkwashing’, is the ultimately pinkwasher. Its interest in gay rights is always subsidiary to the centrality of its Arab nationalism and hatred for Israel. Its gay identity is only used as a weapon to advocate for a ‘Palestinian’ cause that eliminates gay rights.
That’s why Al-Qaws responded to the Palestinian Authority crackdown by trying to blame Israel.
Pro-Israel gay rights activists are accused of ‘pinkwashing’ for pointing out the vast difference in civil rights between Israel and the Islamic terrorist entity in Ramallah. Al-Qaws can’t do that. It can’t even safely hold events in the Islamic terrorist state on whose behalf it demands a boycott of Israel.
And yet, in response to the crackdown on itself, it insisted that the idea that Israel offers more rights is “factually baseless.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar responded to the Palestinian Authority crackdown on Al-Qaws by warning that it might be a “distraction”. Then she retweeted Al-Qaws’ claims that it’s really Israel’s fault.
Omar’s use of “distraction” echoes Maikey’s use of diversion to describe the issue of gay rights.
Describing gay rights as a distraction or diversion is an interesting position for a House Democrat and a gay rights activist to take. But it’s the same way that the Left responds to accusations of anti-Semitism.
The underlying message is that there is a central cause and there are lesser causes. In certain contexts, gay rights may be a valid cause. But it cannot be allowed to distract from the central cause.
Maikey’s use of intersectionality positions Arab and Islamic nationalism as the central cause, while gay rights is a lesser cause. Gay rights is a legitimate cause when challenging the Republican leadership in Alabama, but not when it comes to an Islamic regime in the Middle East. That’s when gay rights, a compelling issue in the United States, becomes a distraction, as Rep. Omar put it. Or, ‘pinkwashing’.
Gay rights cannot be allowed to distract from supporting an Islamic terrorist state against Israel.
Likewise, anti-Semitism is a legitimate accusation when directed at Republicans, but not Democrats. Accusing Rep. Omar or Rep. Tlaib of anti-Semitism is a distraction or diversion from the true cause.
Al-Qaws and Maikey are eager for the current wave of controversy to pass so that they can refocus on urging British musicians to boycott Israel, while accusing the Israelis, who don’t lock up gay rights groups, of pinkwashing their oppression of Islamic terrorists by not acting like Islamic terrorists.
Men and women waving ‘Queers for BDS’ and ‘Queers for Palestine’ signs will flock to rallies in New York, San Francisco and London. They just know better than to wave their little signs in Ramallah.
The ‘Queers for Killing Jews in Palestine’ can rename themselves, ‘Queers for Killing Queers in Palestine’.
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Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an investigative journalist and writer focusing on radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Tags: Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish, When Muslims Oppress Gays, It's the Fault of the Jews To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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