His story, narrated in the interesting documentary “The invisible men” of the Israeli director Yariv Mozer, has touched the world: Rawashda Abdu, 24 years old, was arrested and tortured by Palestinian security forces on suspicion of being an Israeli spy. But his only “crime” was to have relationships with Israeli boys. After managing to leave from the Middle East, Abdu was granted political asylum in Norway, where he became an activist for the LGBTQ* rights and for the human rights of Palestinians. He supports also Queers4Palestine, a network of LGBTQ* activists, which demands respect for the essential rights of the Palestinian people and for the UN resolutions related to Palestine.
What’s the status of LGBTQ* people in Palestine?
There’s no status: we exist, but secretly.
Israeli law explicitly denies the possibility of granting political asylum to any Palestinian and imposes heavy penalties for those who help illegal refugees. “The invisible men” showed the terrible conditions of gay Palestinians in Israel, as reported also by the Israeli human rights associations. However, many people are convinced that Israel is the only salvation for LGBTQ* Palestinians, because “it grants them asylum”…
No, it isn’t true: Israel sends gay Palestinians back to the Palestinian territories. Don’t believe to propaganda: Israel is the worst country for LGBTQ* Palestinians!
We can’t forget that in Palestine women’s and LGBTQ* rights are daily violated…
We’re suffering a lot, but I think the most important thing for us as Palestinians is to get liberated from the occupation: only then we’ll can liberate ourselves and our minds.
Many people think that to criticize Israeli government’s policies, including bombings, means to not recognize the Israelis’s right of life, to want to destroy their state, to side with Ahmadinejad, to be anti-Semites…
I hate Ahmadi-fucking-nejad and I don’t want to destroy Israel as a state, but I want to destroy Zionism as the ideology that is driving Israel to the hell. My best friends are Jews and Israelis, but they aren’t Zionists.
How many gays live in Palestine?
More than 400,000.
How many Palestinian gays live in Israel?
Israelian organizations estimate quite 300.
It's the 0,07% of the total.
How many Palestinian gays in Israel obtained asylum or the right to live there or to be not persecuted as "infiltrates"?
0.
The 0.0% of the total.
These are the numbers of the state that is describe as the biggest helper for Palestinian gays!
Marco