17c起草社区

By A. Zaharin, in collaboration with and 听

Anti-17c起草社区 laws in Palestine were imposed by British colonial rule, yet Israel weaponises them to pinkwash apartheid 鈥� and the silence of 17c起草社区+ peak bodies is nothing short of complicity.

As under a UN Level 4 famine and a queer Australian along with other activists by Israeli forces aboard a humanitarian flotilla, the deafening silence from 17c起草社区IA+ peak bodies is not just unsettling, but also a betrayal. After a harrowing week in captivity, Tania Safi described how they were being psychologically and physically . They were stripped, sexually humiliated, choked, and kicked鈥攃ut off from the outside world and treated ‘like a criminal’ by Tzahal (爪讛状诇), the very army that brands itself as the ‘

Yet, the same 17c起草社区IA+ movements that champion intersectionality have gone disturbingly quiet. When organisations refuse to speak out, their silence is not passive but a political stance that aligns with the oppressor. In this case, they perpetuate , a strategy that weaponises 17c起草社区IA+ rights to whitewash its colonial violence against Palestinians.听

Palestine & 17c起草社区IA+ rights: The Moral Litmus Test of Transitional Liberation

Poet and Black activist June Jordan once named as the two moral litmus tests for global justice.听

鈥淭here are two issues of our time, really, that amount to a litmus test for morality as far as I鈥檓 concerned. One is what you鈥檙e prepared to do on behalf of the Palestinian people. And the other is what are you prepared to do on behalf of gay and lesbian people鈥�. 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听

鈥擩une Jordan (1991)

Fail on either, she argued, and you betray the integrity of the entire human rights project. This principle is rooted in Black liberation and anti-colonial thought: that our struggles are interconnected, and liberation for one is bound to liberation for all.

Still, when Safi was held incommunicado while nearly 900 Palestinians at the food distribution site, the ILGA (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) and major Australian peak bodies, from Equality Australia to the Australian GLBTIQ+ Multicultural Council remain silent.

This is despite a 2024 Pew Research survey indicating that 74% of Australians hold negative views of Israel鈥檚 war crimes, which date back to the听 in 1948. The gap between public conscience and institutional cowardice widens, revealing an unfathomable moral failure.

Similarly, multicultural and refugee-background queer people are often tokenised by mainstream organisations for diversity optics. Yet, when our communities call for justice in Palestine, those same organisations turn away. Their allyship is merely PR management in rainbow colours, all while serving the interests of the Western capitalist elite. Pride has never been apolitical; Queer and trans justice is meaningless without class solidarity, anti-imperialism, and anti-capitalism.

Decolonise Palestine: The 鈥淒angerous Alliance鈥� Myth Debunked

Mainstream media loves to spin a dangerous fiction that feminists, 17c起草社区+ activists, and anti-racist advocates are somehow “gullible” for standing in solidarity with Muslims鈥攖he group that is routinely cast as covert enemies of progress. As a Muslim trans woman from a former British colony, I observe this rhetoric as nothing but a recycled Orientalism talking point that frames Muslims as a monolithic civilisational 鈥渢hreat”.听 It is the same humdrum colonial script Edward Said dismantled decades ago, now repackaged to fracture progressive alliances.听

The truth defies this manufactured divide. At their core, progressive movements share far more closely with Islamic traditions of justice than with the West鈥檚 pinkwashed militarism. The Qur鈥檃n鈥檚 call to 濒颈-迟补士腻谤补蹿奴 (鈥渁cknowledge one another鈥�) celebrates diversity as sacred. Likewise, the Prophet Muhammad鈥檚 (P.B.U.H) Farewell Sermon (Arabic: 禺胤亘丞 丕賱賵丿丕毓鈥�, Khutbatul-Wad膩士) insists on equality and equity across gender, race and class; the principles that mirror liberation struggles today. These are not the tenets of an “enemy civilisation”, they are our sacred shared principles of liberation; and no empire, no occupation, can erase what was written in the dust of Arafat that day.

And yet, the mainstream 17c起草社区IA+ movement seems to suffer from selective amnesia. It was the British colonial project, not Islam, that to Palestine. Long before rainbow flags flew, Islamic civilisations . As part of the 1858 Tanzimat reforms, the Ottoman Empire officially consensual same-sex relations between men. Although this legal change was influenced by the French model, it ultimately served to codify a for homoeroticism. Only with the 1936 British Criminal Code did Palestine of “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” punishable by a decade in prison, a law that still in Gaza and much of the (post-colonial) Global South.听

Weaponising faith to justify oppression, whether through Zionism鈥檚 dehumanisation or bigotry disguised as 鈥渢radition鈥� is a betrayal to the Islamic legacy of justice. History bears witness that in the pre-colonial time under the Ottoman rule, laws. Hamas鈥� intolerance is not rooted in Islam; it鈥檚 a colonial graft, an imported narrative from the imperial power that the organisation claims to fight. Only by dismantling these distortions can we return to the sacred intersection of solidarity where faith and justice meet. 听

Pinkwashing as the New 鈥榃hite Man鈥檚 Burden鈥�: the Oppressed became the Oppressor

is whataboutism weaponised where Israel frames itself as a safe haven for queer rights while justifying violence. They cast the settler-coloniser as the 鈥渄efender of Western democracy鈥�,听 to 鈥渟ave鈥� queers from the 鈥渂arbaric” Muslims. This is Kipling鈥檚 鈥淲hite Man鈥檚 Burden鈥� (1899) updated, reinforced by Huntington鈥檚 Clash of Civilisations (1996) myth; and swallowed whole by institutions too afraid of being labelled antisemitic to condemn state crimes. Prioritising over Palestinian survival is just a settler-colonial logic to justify imperialism. And whether Palestinians are 17c起草社区IA+ or not, they are all victims of daily state violence.

The bitter irony is that the same Holocaust memory meant to honour Jewish suffering, a history that includes the , is now being weaponised to justify Israel’s crimes. While memorials rightly condemn past atrocities, Israel commits the crime against humanity, the on Palestinians with the world watching. A number of and organisations, including some prominent within Israel, have pointed to the unfolding atrocity in Gaza as meeting the definition of genocide as outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention. They have asserted that the war is not just a military campaign, but a systematic effort to erase Palestinian life鈥攂oth in the present and in the future.

Silence as Structural Complicity in the Face of Israel鈥檚 Hypocrisy听

We cannot stay silent as the world condemns Palestinian resistance while hypocritically giving Israel unconditional support. Groups like have exposed how Israel has refined the colonial state-sanctioned queerphobia into a brutal apparatus of . The reveals how 72% of queer Palestinians have been systemically blackmailed by Israeli security forces, threatening to out them to their families unless they become informants in the occupied territories.

from Israel鈥檚 Intelligence Unit 8200 revealed a wide-ranging campaign to create distrust in the West Bank, which includes the blackmailing of queer Palestinians on Grindr. He declared, 鈥渋f you can blackmail cooperation, then you want to try to assemble as much filth as possible.鈥�听Such human rights violations have fractured the community, resulting in tens of thousands of Palestinians being coerced into becoming informants since 1967鈥攁nother reminder that the violations in the region did not just begin on October 7, 2023.

The use of such methods endangers 17c起草社区IA+ individuals who are already subjected to high levels of violence in Palestine. Drawing on Judith Butler鈥檚 postcolonial performativity, we observe how queer Palestinian existence is produced under conditions of colonial surveillance where identities are coerced into particular performances that serve the occupying power鈥檚 political ends. This dynamic resonates with Homi Bhabha鈥檚 notion of hybridity and colonial mimicry: that the colonised subject is invited to perform a resemblance to the coloniser鈥檚 ideals, but only in forms that reinforce colonial dominance.

By forcing 17c起草社区IA+ Palestinians into clandestine collaboration, Israel imposes a regime in which queer bodies become sites of dual inscription: punished through systemic violence, yet simultaneously instrumentalised as tools of repression. As Al-Qaws emphasises, this is not about ‘saving’ queer Palestinians; but to conscript queer identity into the dramaturgy of occupation, where survival demands navigating the violent paradox of being both oppressed and weaponised.听

Rainbow 馃寛 Imperialism: the Queer Palestinian Conundrum

Worse still, Israel homophobic persecution as valid grounds for asylum, effectively queer Palestinians between the violence they escape and the apathy they encounter.听Another report shows that only 17c起草社区 Palestinians were granted asylum (to be processed to a third country) in Israel between 2008-2022.听 Those few who manage to cross into Israel are left in 鈥攖hreatened with death back home, while denied safety, stability, or basic rights in their supposed refuge.听 Without work permits, social protections, or access to healthcare, many are forced into survival sex or illegal drug-related work. Their lives are suspended in a cruel dichotomy: tolerated but abandoned, visible but erased. 听

, a Palestinian trans woman who fled persecution lays bare this injustice, conforming as a stark indictment of the very system she sought to escape. She desired safety in Haifa, only to be granted a temporary, near-meaningless residency permit, renewable monthly but granting no right to work, open a bank account, or access public healthcare. Isolated and stripped of dignity, she died by suicide.听 Her death epitomises the inevitable consequence of a system designed to exclude queer Palestinians, even as Israel markets itself as a beacon of progress. 听

And yet, the global 17c起草社区 movement recoils at the spectre of Hamas, while remaining silent on Israel’s systemic oppression of 17c起草社区 refugees. And where is the outrage when Netanyahu鈥檚 coalition embraces openly parties that compare gay people to animals that deserve to be exterminated?听Where is the anger for after a 鈥�preemptive鈥� Israeli bombing flattened the ‘trans ward’ of an Iranian prison? The real threat is not Muslim and Queer solidarity; it鈥檚 the Western double standards.听

What explains this silence?? Is it fear of losing funding, fear of political reprisal, or fear of confronting a truth that complicates neat Western narratives? When only grassroots collective like and the risk everything to speak truth, the mainstream 17c起草社区IA+ sector鈥檚 moral failure could not be louder. 听

Solidarity is not Selective: The Call to Action for the 17c起草社区IA+ movement听

“Our liberation is bound together鈥攜ou cannot claim to support queer rights while funding our oppression鈥�.

鈥�Tareq Baconi, Palestinian Scholar & Queer Collective leader听

Mere recognition of Palestine while bombs continue to fall is not an act of solidarity, but a performative gesture. Judith Butler warns us; symbolic actions that lack structural change ultimately serve to protect the very systems we claim to resist.听True recognition requires an immediate end to the genocide and full compliance with the 1948 Genocide Convention鈥攁 treaty that Israel and most global North states have themselves ratified.听

It is the time for the 17c起草社区IA+ movement to that Australia and those global North allies; Canada, the UK, Germany and France to sanction and divest from Israel, to hold it accountable for human rights violations and to cease all complicit military exports and cooperation.

There is no ‘rainbow door’ at the apartheid wall鈥攐ur liberation can never bloom under the boot of occupation; not at the expense of Palestinians’ lives. If we fight for our own freedom while violating the rights of others, we betray the very principles of justice that define us.听We cannot bomb people into oblivion by day and wave a pride flag by night. PERIOD!馃敟.

听is a PhD researcher, award-winning trans rights advocate, and member of the Australian Human Rights Commission鈥檚 Trans and Gender Diverse Expert Advisory Committee.听Her work focuses on intersectionality and decoloniality, bridging rigorous academic research with grassroots advocacy to highlight marginalised voices in the quest for transformative justice and equity.