Sexuality Obsession of Pro-Israel, Jackson Township, May 19

EDITORS NOTE:

On May 19 in Jackson Township participants in a peace event calling for Cease Fire and to Save Gaza attended by adults and children were confronted by dozens of hateful pro-Israel advocates. They espoused the exterminationist doctrine that “there are no innocents in Gaza From the Cradle to the Grave” – apparently as a defense of the 1000s of infants and babies that have been slaughtered by US and Israel since October.

There was a great deal of rudeness and ridicule espoused by the pro-Israel supporters. One frequent area of harassment was about the sexuality of those who were there to end US – Israel genocide. The pro-Israel supporters made frequent comments to those there for peace and an end to genocide about our hair style, clothing, appearance – all around suggestions of being “gay”. They would start by suggesting that we might be gay and that we would be thrown off of a roof in Gaza. I must have heard them talking about throwing gays off of rooves two dozen times – in between them fraternizing with the fascist Proud Boy – an organization that is on war footing against LGBT – bashing up gay events and promoting hate agenda pressure on local school boards. They must think the world is naive to act as if they care about LGBT while playing footsy with the anti-LGBT Proud Boys – right at the exact same time!

Their narrative is that only Israel can protect LGBT (Israel slaughters all regardless of sexual identity obviously). However they did an awful lot of talking about throwing gays off of roofs for acting as if they cared – usually while smirking and laughing with the suggestion and dropping insults on the person’s appearance. The method of acting like an anti-LGBT bigot while trying to say that they are protective of LGBT does not seem to be working. The question is why are they so obsessed with everybody’s sexuality and publicly challenging anyone they think ‘looks gay’ by ideating about throwing them off roofs? These are questions that they themselves might want to consider deeply and untangle from their political positioning.  You’re welcome!

All the while they are flying mock bombing missions over our protest and pretending as if they are slaughtering our protest over and over with two planes! We 

know who are the haters!

Below is a description by one of the participants at the recent Jackson Township event who with another participant were subjected to similar harassments..

I was one of the last to leave, and as I was heading to my car, some of them started yelling– I guess after something confirmed that an ally was LGBTQ+– about how if we’re queer and support Palestine we should go to Gaza and they’d kill us straight away. They kept going on about this too.

Now, from the perspective of someone who is also queer, this never sits right with me. So many people in the US get hate-crimed all the time for being LGBTQ+. I also know for a fact, that there are LGBTQ+ Palestinians as well who are not being killed by their neighbors for being gay, but are instead being bombed, shot, and starved to death by the IDF. And if the Palestinians were all prejudiced– that’s a big if– does that still mean they all deserve to die?? Does that mean the children– the babies– are deserving of death, because I am queer and some of their neighbors don’t support me? I would still advocate for their lives regardless of their stance on my sexuality– because it’s the right thing to do!!

It truly, truly irks me when people use being queer as a way to justify this, acting as though they actually give a fuck about my rights, and my right to live– but never speak up about the injustices happening here. Never saying a peep about the hundreds of laws currently in circulation in the US that are in some way, shape, or form discriminating against me and my community– but taking the first opportunity to say I shouldn’t be advocating for an end to genocide because some of them would spit on me for being gay.

Does that mean every homophobic person deserves what the Palestinians are going through right now?

I couldn’t help but shout back at those trying to weaponize the LGBTQ+ community for their agenda, that we aren’t even allowed to go to Gaza right now because the IDF won’t even let food in! I couldn’t handle much more of their jeers and shut them out after that, finally leaving.

The whole rally, in my opinion, was not even a fraction of what the Israelis put the Palestinian people through on a daily basis. But dealing with their awful antics for just a couple hours really was just awful. I truly don’t understand how these people can live with themselves. Shouting about nonsense, criminalizing us, as we are shouting about ending a genocide– advocating for life, not death.

How are they not aware of just how awful they look when they spit vile things out to us as we are the ones advocating for life?