“Trans liberation cannot happen without Palestinian liberation. » This is the text recently displayed on a trans flag hung on top of a Canadian university. This is just one example of the outpouring of support the Palestinian cause is receiving from the LGBTQ+ community. The support of one minority for another is not shocking, it is even a rather laudable act you might say. Unfortunately, this support too often comes at the expense of Israeli victims who are almost forgotten, even minimized, by many members and representatives of the North American queer community.
As a transgender woman, Jewish, Israeli, and of North African descent, I can’t help but wonder how these self-proclaimed advocates of the widow and orphan remained silent on October 7. Women’s rights groups and other support groups for the LGBTQ+ community are silent in the face of the mass rapes of Israeli civilians and the murders of infants in front of their parents.
Even my friends in the community, whom I met here in Montreal, and with whom I shared moments of intense and sincere joy, did not deign to condemn the atrocities endured by my people on October 7. Where have you been ?
The arguments I hear most often from members of the queer sphere always start the same way: “no one condones rape, or even the October 7 massacre, but…” But what? The fact that too large a part of the gay and trans community understands that the condemnation of rape and murder can be followed by a “but” dismays me, and quite sincerely, ridicules their positions.
Heavy silence
The argument of the supposed pink-washing Israeli has become so redundant, even obsolete, that it seems more like an attempt to erase LGBTQ+ Israelis and their suffering in the face of the actions of Hamas. You defend the latter with all your might, calling it “resistance”. So the images of the massacre that they themselves filmed were not enough to condemn them? Isn’t it enough for you to note that Hamas refuses to release certain female hostages for fear that they will talk about the torture they suffered?
If only these same “minority advocates” were consistent in their support of queer Palestinian people, but even there their hypocrisy shows. Why weren’t we so vocal when Sammy, a Palestinian transgender woman, and two of her friends were brutally attacked by their peers near Ramallah? Or last year when Ahmad Abu Marhia, who had found refuge in Israel, was kidnapped and then beheaded by Palestinians in the West Bank? The list of these types of hate crimes is still long.
Your silence weighs on me and my compatriots in the LGBTQ+ community in Israel. It is this same silence that you choose every time a crime against members of the LGBTQ+ community is perpetrated in Gaza, in Ramallah, or in any other place where Islamist intolerance reigns. The same silence when LGBTQ+ flags are torn down during pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The same silence observed on October 7.
However, you know how to make noise when, among other things, you proudly tear down posters representing kidnapped Israelis, most of them women and children, including a baby barely ten months old. I still have not understood your ridiculous arguments which make this violence justifiable.
The rape, torture, and slaughter of innocent people is not justifiable, and never will be. The real problem is not supporting a cause, the problem is when that support leads to the glorification of terrorist acts and is used to justify actual war crimes against Israelis. My trans liberation is Israel.