[WCUSP] "Queer" As A Tool Of Colonial Oppression: The Case Of Israel/palestine

[Kate Zaidan]

ZNet | Feminism/Gender

"queer" As A Tool Of Colonial Oppression: The Case Of Israel/palestine by
Blair Kuntz; August 13, 2006

As the second Palestinian Intifada erupted in the autumn of 2000, a
curious and persistent argument began being employed by supporters of the
Israeli state. At many talks with guest speakers sympathetic to the
Palestinian cause, Zionist supporters of Israel, many of them
rather macho young men who never identified themselves as gay and who
almost certainly never lived in an Arab or Muslim country, would stand up
and decry the lack of gay rights in the Palestinian Territories compared
to their view of the enlightened policies of Israel.

Given the frequency of the attacks, it was obvious that they were part
of a concerted campaign to demonize Palestinians. Indeed, citing a
sensationalized report printed in the pro-Israeli New Republic
magazine which suggested that the Palestinian Authority was conducting a
vicious campaign against homosexuals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip [1],
one pro-Israeli writer stated that as a result hundreds of
Palestinians had been forced to flee to Israel, concluding that "if any
gay solidarity exists it must be to defend the nations that permit us to
live and denounce the regimes that do not," as he then went on ironically
to defend the policies of homophobe George W. Bush's vision as "the only
hope for freedom in the Middle East [2]."

This year, as World Pride Day (held in Jerusalem in August 2006) edged
closer, mainstream North American Zionist Jewish organizations such as
United Jewish Communities organized the National LGBT Pride in Israel
Mission. Such organizations promised organized all expenses paid "gay
tours" for the members of the "gay elite" so that they could witness
first-hand Israel's enlightened gay society by touring sites
"specifically significant to gays and lesbians [3]."

The presence of such a concerted campaign by many people not normally
motivated to speak out on behalf of gay rights is clearly designed to
portray Israel as humane and tolerant, while demonstrating that their
Arab, specifically their Palestinian, neighbors are not. Like Western
arguments used to justify the West's "war on terror", this argument is an
obvious attempt to legitimize Israeli racism and war crimes, and to
present Israel as a beacon of human rights and democracy when in fact, as
this paper will demonstrate, Israel in practice displays as little concern
for the rights of gay Palestinians as it does for heterosexual
Palestinians. Aside from the ludicrous proposition that Israel has somehow
rid itself of homophobia, it is even more absurd to suggest that somehow
Palestinian gays and lesbians should willingly bow down and thank the
Israeli government for having passing gay rights laws in Israel as they
witness the carnage of this summer's grotesquely-named "Summer Rain"
campaign in Gaza and applaud as they view relatives and friends killed as
"collateral damage" by Israeli Apache helicopters. It is as if Palestinian
gays and lesbians should whisper quiet notes of thanks to the benevolent
Israeli government as they wait together for hours with their heterosexual
brothers and sisters at racist
check-points.

Such statements, naturally, are designed to appeal to the worst
Orientalist stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims as a people hopelessly mired
in a barbaric past dooming them to intolerance and backwardness. In
justifying war crimes by the fact that Israel has granted queers civil
rights, Israeli supporters have wrapped the word "queer" in a bright and
shiny package shorn of all reference to past queer
struggles. Seemingly, it is a package Israel can now export-perhaps along
with the arms shipments that make the country the world's third largest
arms exporter [4]-to justify Israeli colonialism. As we shall see, the
package has serious defects. As the American anti-occupation queer group
QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism) notes: "The government of
Israel is not building a wall around an entire country because it is
attempting to create a queer safe space [5]."

The first defect in the argument is that it neglects Israel's own
homophobic past. This is important because we should remember that
Israel's Jewish holocaust survivors shared a common experience with gays
under Hitler's rule. Like Jews, "Aryan" gays were also targeted for
deportation and murder; however, we should remember that the
oppression of German gay men began earlier than that of any other
group. Gay men, who wore a pink triangle, were treated worse than any
other group, subjected to castration, torture, and beatings, were
subjected to the lowest position in the camp hierarchy, and subjected to
abuse by both guards and fellow prisoners. When the camps were
liberated, American soldiers often berated gay prisoners for their
perversion. Other gay prisoners were liberated only to be thrown back into
jail as they were considered dangerous sex offenders, while
others were left to perish [6].

As fellow victims of the Nazi Holocaust, gays might have thought that
the establishment of the nascent Jewish state would have been
sympathetic to gays within the new state. Instead, the newly-created
entity enacted its own anti-sodomy law, and because of the influence of
religious Judaism, lesbian and gay Jews were denied the right to aliya or
the right of Jewish return. Moreover, the decades following the
establishment of the Jewish state emphasized family and
reproduction to increase the Jewish population and were hardly a
paradise for gays and lesbians. This is true especially if one can judge
by a paper written on homosexuality on Israeli kibbutzes in
which all of the gays interviewed recalled that homosexuality was a topic
that was almost never discussed [7]. Instead, gays and lesbians were
rendered invisible and subject to societal disapproval.

Israel's anti-sodomy law was only removed in 1988, far after many
other western nations had removed theirs [8]. Even then, to pass the law,
liberal Knesset members called the vote in the middle of the
night when they knew that religious Knesset members would not be
present [9]. Many years after the law was passed, Israeli politicians
routinely uttered homophobic remarks, most prominently Israeli
president Ezer Weizman who denounced homosexuals in 1996 while
addressing high-school students stating:

"Homosexuality is abnormal from a social point of view…I personally do
not accept this business of everyone coming out of the closet. It
seems to me to be weird [10]." In 1999, then Health Minister Schlomo
Benirzi, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, proclaimed Dana
International, the transsexual singer who won the Eurovison song
festival, "an abomination" [11]." Most recently, this year an Israeli
rabbi, David Basri, has blamed avian flu on election campaigns
promoting gay marriage [12], while leaflets advocating "death to
Sodomites" have been distributed in Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox Jewish
neighborhoods. Clearly, despite the passage of gay rights laws, there are
still many people in Israel who don't like lgbt people.

Given that homosexuality was hardly universally accepted in Israel,
and indeed was more likely to be the object of disdain, many academics
have posited that instead of demonstrating remarkable tolerance, the
granting of gay rights can be explained as Hagai El-Ad, the Executive
Director of Jerusalem's lgbt community center The Open House notes, "the
closing of the ranks among the Jewish majority in the face of a common
Arab enemy [13]." Jewish gay activists gained acceptance by convincing the
wider public that they were patriotic citizens. As Ruti Kadih notes,
lesbians presented themselves as mothers who have
performed their Zionist task, while gay males presented themselves as
soldiers who wanted to serve their country like everyone else [14]. Thus,
as Joshua Gamson explains: "Gays and lesbians have fast become not-Other
by emphasizing not just their similarity to straights but their difference
from the ultimate Other [i.e. the Arabs] in Israel [15]."

Indeed, the need for Jewish bodies to defend the Jewish state (for
only Druze and Bedouin Arabs are allowed to join the Israeli Offense
Forces) cannot be over-emphasized as two studies by Israeli
researchers suggest. One states, for example, that "there is no
evidence that the long-standing inclusion of homosexuals in the IDF has
harmed operational effectiveness, combat readiness, unit cohesion or
morale in the Israeli military [16]" while another found "no common
adjustment problems relating to these [gay] men's sexual orientation
[17]". But, as one paper notes, while the law has been changed to
allow gays and lesbians to serve in the Army, the vast majority still
choose to hide their sexual orientation from their fellow combatants, and
instead adapt to the masculine and heterosexual norms of the Army [18].

Meanwhile, other gay activists, especially from the Israeli group
Black Laundry, an lgbt group fighting for equality for Israel's
Palestinian citizens and against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza refuses to legitimize Israeli racism and announces that "the
oppression of all minorities within Israel is fed by the same racism,
chauvinism, and militarism that causes the dispossession of the
Palestinian people to continue [19]". Furthermore, as Hagai El-Ad
argues, while Israel has passed gay rights laws there is still no
government commitment to financing a gay youth shelter in Tel Aviv or
opening up high schools across the country to the lecture services of
Israel's gay organizations. As El-Ad continues: "Will gays and
lesbians choose now to close ranks with the oppressive majority, or will
we understand that a future of freedom is possible for us only if it's
possible for everyone? [20]"

The argument concerning the granting of gay rights in the face of a
common Arab enemy is further buttressed by the May 2006 ruling of the
Israeli Supreme Court that upheld a controversial law amendment to the
Citizenship Law that prevents "family unification" of Palestinians married
to Arab citizens of Israel or Arab Jerusamlemites [21]. Thus, while gay
rights are granted largely for the benefit of Israel's
Jewish citizens, under the tenure of Ariel Sharon as prime minister, new
forms of discriminatory legislation were passed for the country's Arab
citizens. As usual, the Israeli government claims the law is
necessary for "security" reasons, but according to HAKOMED Center for the
Defense of the Individual, the real reason is a demographic one, and the
organization quotes former Interior Minister, Eli Yishai who stated that
non-Jews "threaten the Jewish character of the State of Israel [22]."
Furthermore, senior officials in the Population
Administration contended at the time that family unification
effectively constituted the "realization of the right of return in a
roundabout way [23]."

Meanwhile, gays who have fled the Palestinian territories will never
be granted the rights of refugees because granting such rights to
Palestinian gays is also seen as attempting to gain a "creeping right of
return." Indeed, while gay men have fled the West Bank and Gaza-and
meanwhile, far more gays probably go to Amman, Jordan than to
Israel-what is less documented is Israel's own role in creating
homophobia in Palestinian society through the blackmailing of gay
Palestinians. As with Palestinian children, recruiting Palestinian gays as
collaborators is part and parcel of Israel's policy to
maintain control over Palestinian territory. The Israeli secret police
often exploit gay Palestinians by coercing them into working
undercover to gather information about other Palestinians [24]. Those
accused of being collaborators are at risk of stigmatization,
exclusion, and occasionally retaliation. Gays identified as
collaborators stigmatize gay men in general, and collaborators of all
stripes are shown little mercy, especially when they are connected to
serious incidents leading to the death of other Palestinians. Thus, if
gays meet a violent end it is not clear whether they are killed
because they are gay or because they are seen as informers.

Unfortunately, while Israeli defenders laud their country's liberal
gay rights policies, Israel has done nothing to protect gay runaways. Most
runaways came during the period of the Oslo accords, but none have been
granted official residence status or asylum. In fact,
Israeli police have expelled several dozen gay runaways at West Bank and
Gaza checkpoints, and have arrested Palestinian gay runaways and sent them
back to the West Bank. Persecution for sexual orientation warrants asylum
under the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees covenant to which Israel is a signatory, but it has never
accepted a gay Palestinian's refugee appeal. Indeed, Israel has never
granted refugee asylum to any Palestinian, gay or straight, not even to
those who make a credible claim that they will be killed if they are sent
back to the West Bank or Gaza. As Kathleen Peratis of Human Rights Watch
notes, the only exception for this is for people who
"identify with the State of Israel and its goals" and who "performed a
material act to advance the security of the state"-in other words,
collaborators [25].

The Nationality and Entry into Israel law, the same law which denies
the rights of Israeli Arab citizens to marry Palestinians living in the
West Bank and Gaza, according to Human Rights Watch, has in fact led to a
crackdown on gay Palestinians in Israel. Now, no official status is
possible, so most gays who do find their way to Israel soon find
themselves objects of police protection and are arrested and
summarily expelled. Obviously, in contrast to the claims of
pro-Israeli defenders, Palestinian gays are no more welcome or
protected in Israel than heterosexual Palestinians. Both are seen as
demographic threats to the Jewish population, and all of Israel's
high-sounding words about protecting gays are revealed as empty
rhetoric.

Furthermore, as Israeli defenders decry their Arab neighbors supposed
contempt for gays and women, they never acknowledge the role Israel has
played in encouraging both Islamic and Christian religious
fundamentalists hostile to gay rights. Just as the United States
promoted and funded religious fundamentalist movements such as the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt, the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaida, and the
Ayotollah Khomeni in Iran while over the years actively helping to
overthrow or de-stabilize secular governments in Iran, Iraq, and
Egypt, Israel too has played the role of the sorcerer's apprentice in
encouraging Islamic fundamentalism, trying to defeat, as former
intelligence director for the Defense Intelligence Agency, states, "Arab
nationalism using Muslim zealots [26]". As Charles Freeman, a veteran U.S.
diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia,
states: "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet [the
Israeli domestic intelligence agency], which had a feeling that they could
use it to hem in the PLO [27] (Dreyfuss, p. 191]." Though it would later
assassinate Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in 2004, after 1967 Israel saw Yassin and
the Muslim Brotherhood as valuable allies against the PLO and watched
benignly as it created charity organizations and
religious endowments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1973, while
Shin Bet looked on, Yassin founded the Islamic Center which
became the Islamic Association. Manachem Begin formally licensed the
Association and the Israeli governor of the Gaza Strip, Yitzhak Segev has
admitted to financing the Islamic movement as a counterweight to the PLO
and the Communists [28] (Dreyfuss, p. 197)." Besides promoting Hamas,
Israel has also actively supported the Muslim Brotherhood in its campaign
against the Bath Party in Syria and shipped arms and
provided intelligence information to Iran's fundamentalist mullahs during
the Iran-Iraq war.

Nor has the Israeli government shied away from forming ties with
virulently homophobic pro-Israeli Christian Zionist fundamentalists, whose
hate speech against gays (shorn of its Biblical references)
would have found favor with the Nazis. These fundamentalists include such
men as Pat Robertson, whom the Zionist Organization of America has honored
with its State of Israel Friendship Award, and Jerry
Falwell to whom former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin presented the
Jabotinsky Centennial medal for his work on behalf of Israel [29]. The
Christian Zionist fundamentalists' support stems from their belief in the
"end days" which will only happen when the Jews return to
Israel and build the Third Temple over the al-Aqsa mosque in
Jerusalem. When this happens, the final battle, Armageddon, will be fought
and all righteous believers will be "raptured" into heaven. Those who
don't convert will perish.

Although this scenario theoretically will result in the eradication of
the Jewish people, the Israeli government continues to court the
evangelists for their economic and political support for Israel, and as
the United States, influenced by the Christian fundamentalists' political
clout, joins Iran in 2006 in voting against granting two European gay
rights groups UN observer status, Israel, supposedly a great friend of
gays, remains silent. Meanwhile, the United States' and Israel's support
for fundamentalist Islamic groups to the
detriment of secular governments has important ramifications for the lives
of lgbt people in the region. As Ali Hili, a gay Muslim Iraqi living in
exile in Britain has stated, during Saddam Hussein's regime Iraqi gays
enjoyed some acceptance, especially in theatre, in
entertainment and media. Since the American invasion of Iraq, however, and
the subsequent rise to power of Shia fundamentalists such as the Ayatollah
al-Sistani (who has issued a death fatwa against gays),
death squads have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for
persecution and execution. When gay activists go to U.S. authorities in
the Green Zone for help, the American officials, who we must
remember take their orders from an openly homophobic administration, treat
the gays who ask for protection with contempt and derision [30].

Indeed, when the pro-Israeli supporters deride homophobia in the
Moslem world, they reveal-often comically-their own racism and obvious
ignorance. Certainly, for example, the American actions at Abu Ghraib
prison in which American soldiers fixated on simulating homosexual
relations among Iraqi male prisoners reveal more about Americans'
repressed homosexual desires than they will ever reveal about Arabs or
Moslems. Furthermore, a cursory look at the history of same-sex
relations in the Muslim world would reveal that until recently, at least,
Muslim cultures have demonstrated a far greater tolerance for same-sex
relations than their Judeo-Christian counterparts [31]. In contrast to
their Christian counterparts there is no similar history of medieval
witch-hunts and the burning of homosexuals at the stake. In contrast, as
Assad Abu Khalil notes, "the regularity and apparent legitimacy of
homosexual relations were seen by Medieval Christians as evidence of the
moral decadence of Moslems [32]." The region of the world with the most
visible and diverse homosexualities was not
Europe, but North Africa and southwestern Asia [33].

Islamic poetry has many examples in Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Urdu
in which the poet expresses an idealized love of boys while elsewhere in
Islamic history one finds the sexual use of young male
entertainers, dancers, and military cadets. In societies where male sexual
pleasure is seen as positive and where male sexual urges
require the release of accumulated semen and where sexes are
segregated, and where women are expected to be virgins until they are
married, same-sex relations are unsurprisingly common. Although
homosexuality often was seen as an act, rather than an identity, with the
male who assumed the passive female role seen as inferior, as
Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe conclude: "Many of the factors
credited with fostering the emergence of modern Western homosexual
patterns such as western labeling practices, the popular belief that
homosexuality is a character trait, the association of non-masculinity of
homosexual desire, and the possibility of urban networks or
subcultures were present in historical Islamic societies [34]. The
historical pattern continues to the present day, and same-sex
relations are likely to be met with a "will not to know" [35] and as long
as the relations do not interfere with societal and familial
responsibilities, the relations are likely to be overlooked.
Naturally, there are problems with this social model, but in contrast to
Western societies, much affection is allowed between men in most Moslem
cultures. And while the western press (like the New Republic's sensational
focus on the treatment of Palestinian gays) typically
focuses on news items such as beheadings in Saudi Arabia, as gay
journalist Mubarak Dahir notes, "from what I was able to discover
while in Saudi Arabia, it seems unlikely that simply being discovered to
be gay is sufficient to get you beheaded." He observed that most of the
gay men he met were worried about other matters such as how to meet others
for sex and companionship rather than being beheaded [36].

In choosing to go ahead with World Pride in Jerusalem, InterPride, the
organization which sponsored World Pride, appeared to have closed
ranks with the oppressor rather than insisting on freedom and human rights
for everyone. While World Pride used the all-embracing theme "Love Without
Borders" to express a liberal and tolerant image, in fact, as the group
Queers for Palestine noted, the title was truly ironic given the fact that
it was chosen as the Israeli government was building its apartheid wall
cutting off approximately 200,000
Palestinians in East Jerusalem from the West Bank [37]. Indeed, while
World Pride celebrated a supposed "Love Without Borders," most
Palestinian gays couldn't attend due to the system of checkpoints and
closure. Other Middle Eastern lgbt people such as those in the
Lebanese group Helem (Dream) weren't able to attend: first, because they
were automatically excluded from attending Israel, and second, because
their country was being torn apart and destroyed by a horrific Israeli
military invasion. In keeping with its western-oriented
mandate to spread the international-or should we say western-"gay
uniform", InterPride, distributed thousands of DVDs in San Francisco and
New York promoting the "great parties" and "beautiful women" in Israel,
and focused on the Israeli government allowing openly gay men and women to
serve (never discussing the role this force plays in
denying the rights of Palestinians). It did, however, condemn the
Palestinian Authority for its treatment of lesbian and gay people
[38].

As the Latin American queer group Grupo de Trabajo por los Derechos
Sexuales en America Latina observed before the event: "The state of Israel
is going to make use of the Pride celebration-like the
Argentinean junta did during the World Soccer Cup in 1978-to collect
revenues and show the world how Israel is a free and tolerant country, in
opposition to its "barbaric" neighbors who could benefit from
invasion if that is the price to bring the 'joys of civilization'
[39]."

Indeed, if groups such as InterPride wished to promote queer rights in
the Middle East, surely they could have thought of a better strategy than
bringing groups of consumerist lgbt westerners to Israel, while
Palestinians, both gay and straight, suffered the humanitarian
catastrophe resulting from the "diet" laughingly imposed upon them by an
Israeli government punishing them for practicing the democratic rights
Israel rhetorically talks about but doesn't practice.

If greater tolerance for lgbt people develops, it won't be a result of
the empty pronouncements of Irshad Manji, a lesbian pro-Israeli
supporter who celebrates Israel's "diversity" (wouldn't true diversity
mean a one-state solution?) while whitewashing the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians as she supports colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while
spreading her message of support for the powerful on the
hate-mongering FOX TV [40].

Increased lgbt acceptance in the Middle East will more likely result
instead from gay groups in the Middle East working in their
traditional cultures, while true solidarity from abroad will be
demonstrated by lgbt groups of integrity and honesty such as QUIT, Queers
for Palestine, the Grupo de Trabajo por los Derechos Sexuales en America
Latina, and the South African group Engender which oppose militarism and
colonialism and which realize that in their own
countries gays are still murdered purely because of their sexuality, gay
teenagers are still expelled from their homes, and as in my home country
Canada, citizens are still capable of electing a vehemently homophobic
government-a government which must be stressed firmly
supports Israeli war crimes-determined to take away queer rights.

If we are truly concerned about lgbt rights, we should recognize that
civil rights for lgbt people in one place does not excuse oppression or
war crimes in another. In short, it demands that we join with the many
brave Jews who oppose and refuse the Israeli government
narrative, the refuseniks who refuse to be co-opted by Israeli war
machine, and stand up and shout: "Not in our name!"

Endnotes

1. Halevi, Yossi Klein. "Gay Palestinians' plight" in The New
Republic, issues 4, 570 and 4, 571, August 19 and 26, 2002, p. 12.
2. Bernstein, David J. "Gay Palestinians suffer under Arafat" in
Hillel: the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life: cms.hillel.org,
November 27, 2002.
3. "Israel news." Baltimore Jewish Times.com. www.jewishtimes.com,
August 25, 2005.
4. "Arms unto the nations" in
www.arcuk.org/pages/arms_unto_the_nations.htm
5. Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism. "Apartheid Pride? No Thanks!"
BAR Newspaper, May 12, 2005.
6. Plant, Richard. The Pink Triangle: the Nazi War Against
Homosexuals. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1986: p. 181.
7. Ben-Ari, Adital Tirosh. "Experiences of 'not belonging' in
collectivistic communities: narratives of gays in kibbutzes," in
Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 42, issue 2, 2001: p. 101-125.
8. Walzer, Lee. "Queer in the land of Sodom," in TheGully.com,
February 21, 2002. www.thegully.com
9. Ibid.
10. International Lesbian and Gay Association. World Legal Survey.
www.ila.info
11. Gamson, Joshua. "The Officer and the Diva" in The Nation, June 28,
1999, p. 21.
12. "Bird flu God's wrath: rabbi" in www.news.com, March 21, 2006. 13.
El-Ad, Hagai. "Gay Israel: No Pride in Occupation" in
TheGully.com, February 21, 2002. www.thegully.com
14. Gamson, op cit., p. 21
15. Ibid.: p. 22.
16. Belkin, Aron and Melissa Levitt. "Homosexuality and the Israeli
Defense Forces: did lifting the gay ban undermine military
performance?" in Armed Forces and Society, vol. 27, no. 4, Summer
2001: p. 544.
17. Kaplan, Danny and Eylal Ben-Ari. "Brothers and others in arms:
managing gay identity in combat units of the Israeli Army" in Journal of
contemporary ethnography, vol. 29, no. 4, August 2000: p. 397.
18. Ibid.: p. 406.
19. www.blacklaudry.org/images/englishflyer.jpg
20. El-Ad, op cit., p. 4
21. "Court narrowly upholds 'family unification ban'" in Ha'aretz,
Sunday, May 14, 2006.
22. Stein, Yael. Forbidden families: family unification and child
registration in East Jerusalem. Jerusalem: HAKOMED Center for the
Defense of the Individual, 2004: p. 17.
23. Ibid.: p. 18.
24. "Palestinian gays flee to Israel," BBC News, October 22, 2003. 25.
Peratis, Kathleen. "Only human: for gay Palestinians, Tel Aviv is
Mecca," in Forward, February 24, 2006.
26. Dreyfuss, Robert. The Devil's game: how the United States helped
unleash fundamentalist Islam. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005: p. 206.
27. Ibid.: p. 191.
28. Ibid.: p. 197.
29. Horowitz, Craig. "Israel's Christian soldiers," in New York
magazine, September 29, 2003.
30. Ireland, Doug. "Iran exports anti-gay pogrom to Iraq" in In These
Times, May 31, 2006.
31. Dunne, Bruce. "Power and sexuality in the Middle East" in Middle
East Report, Spring 1998: p. 8.
32. Abu Khalil, Assad. "Gender boundaries and sexual categories in the
Arab world," in Feminist issues, 1997, vol. 15, no. 1-2.
33. Roscoe, Will and Stephen O. Murray. Introduction in Islamic
homosexualities: culture, history, and literature. New York: New York
University Press, 1997: p. 4.
34. Roscoe, Will and Stephen O. Murray. Conclusion in Islamic
homosexualities: culture, history, and literature. New York: New York
University Press, 1997: p. 314.
35. Murray, Stephen O. "The will not to know: Islamic accommodations
to male homosexuality" in Islamic homosexualities: culture, history, and
literature. New York: New York University Press, 1997: p. 14
36. Mubarak, Dahir. "Is beheading really the punishment for
homosexuality in Saudi Arabia?"in Sodomy laws,
www.sodomylaws.org/world/saudi_arabia/saudinews19.htm
37. Queers for Palestine. "Boycott World Pride in Jerusalem."
www.quitpalestine.org
38. Coalition to Boycott World Pride Jerusalem 2006.
www.boycottworldpride.org
39. Email distributed by ALITT (Associacion lucha por la identidad
travesti y transexual) and MULLABI (Grupo de Trabajo por los derechos
sexuales en America Latina), March 16, 2006.
40. Podur, Justin. "A multifaceted fraud: reviewing Irshad Manji's
'The Trouble With Islam', Part 1" in ZNet, December 5, 2003:
www.zmag.org


A modified version of this paper was presented at "Crossroads2006",
the biennial conference of the Association for Cultural Studies, in
Istanbul in July 2006.

Blair Kuntz is the Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies Librarian at the
University of Toronto Libraries.


-- 

Kate Zaidan
Program Coordinator
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section
1213 Race Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-563-7110
www.wilpf.org

The Israeli prime minister in a live speech has just said that they are fighting the enemies of peace of Lebanon. I see. So those children that have been incinerated in Lebanon by Israeli bombing must have been enemies of peace. I will try to inform their parents.

As'ad'Abukhalil
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/