Bizarre moment Rutgers gender study professor tells seminar that
it's 'homophobic and violent' to flag how badly LGBT people are treated
in Gaza
The lecture entitled 'Palestine is a
Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle', argued that the
pro-Palestine movement should 'center queer and trans people'
Daily Mail
Mar 30, 2024
Maya Mikdashi, Rutgers associate
Professor of Women's, Gender , and Sexuality Studies (left) with
co-host the University of Illinois at Chicago 's Nadine Naber (right)
A Rutgers University professor told a
seminar discussing the Israel-Hamas conflict that it is 'violent' and
'homophobic' to raise the issue of how LGBT people are treated in Gaza.
Maya Mikdashi, associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at New Jersey's
State University, told students earlier this month that she has been
approached by people at pro-Palestine protests who tell her that she
would be treated horribly by Hamas.
'So
I've been at protests where I'm then told "don't you know what Hamas
would do to you, if you were in Palestine",' she said.
'We have to start naming this as homophobic. You cannot rehearse violence to queer people. It's violent.
The event, entitled 'Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle', took place on March 20 and was co-hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago's Nadine Naber.
'Queers for Palestine' events and
marches have been criticized as a misguided show of support for a
regime that does not support gay rights
'If you were to say you were experiencing
sexism in the SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] they would say
"there goes those Palestinian's again, silencing women in their
communities",' Naber told attendees.
'So no one is going to say it. And if you do say it [others] will say you're a "traitor and collaborating with Zionism".'
Naber also argued that rape had been well-documented in the founding of Israel.
Reading
from text she said, 'indeed the practices of rape and sexual assault
that have been well-documented during the founding of Israel and
continued today are not an exception or a secondary impact of colonial
violence.
'[They] are part of the
settler, colonial white supremacist logics and practices of Israel that
conflate colonized women with the land and nature and assume that
therefore to dominate the land necessitates dominating Palestinian
women's bodies and their reproductive capacities from 1948 until today,'
she explained.
Speaking more on why
the event focuses on queer people within the Palestinian movement, Naber
said: 'We're going to need our organizing to center queer and trans
people not only because they are especially vulnerable to colonial
violence and the racism and the doxxing, but they also embody
exceptionally nuanced wisdom about Zionism because they are living it in
all its complexity.'
Queers for Palestine' events and marches,
which have proliferated across the US since the start of the war, have
been criticized as a misguided show of support for a regime that does
not support gay rights.
The Islamic
Middle Eastern state follows sharia law, and as noted by Amnesty
International, it is not safe for the queer community.
Hamas 's October 7 terror attack
on Israel did involve rape and sexual violence, a new report from the
United Nations has concluded. Pictured: An Israeli soldier walks through
items left by fleeing festival goers at the site of the Nova music
festival, October 12
Based on a range of evidence, the
UN said there was clear and convincing' information to show
conflict-related sexual violence was committed by members of the
Palestinian terror group - including rape and gang rape. Pictured: IDF
troops patrol Kibbutz Be'eri on October 11
Pramila Patten, the UN envoy
focusing on sexual violence in conflict, detailed witness accounts of
two incidents involving the rape of women's corpses
Others see the fight for queer rights and anti-colonialism as intertwined because anti-gay laws were first introduced in Palestine by Britain in 1885 - though former colonial powers have since abolished such legislation in their own countries.
Moreover, Hamas' brutal rapes of Israeli prisoners on and after the terror attacks of October 7 have been widely reported including by the United Nations.
Based
on a range of evidence, the international organization said there was
'clear and convincing' information to show conflict-related sexual
violence was committed by members of the Palestinian terror group -
including rape and gang rape.
It said
such attacks were carried out in at least three locations across
southern Israel, including the Nova music festival, the site of one of
several October 7 massacres.
Pramila
Patten, the UN envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict, also
detailed witness accounts of two incidents involving the rape of women's
corpses.
In addition to its findings
relating to the October 7 attack, Patten also said her team 'found clear
and convincing information' that some women and children during their
captivity were subjected to the same conflict-related sexual violence.
This included rape and 'sexualized torture' she said.
This
evidence was based on first-hand accounts of released hostages, she
said, adding there are 'reasonable grounds to believe that such violence
may be ongoing'.
Patten visited Israel and the West Bank from January 29 to February 14 with a nine-member technical team.
The
report comes nearly five months after the Oct. 7 attacks, which left
about 1,200 people dead and some 250 others taken hostage.
Israel's
war against Hamas has since laid waste to the Gaza Strip, killing more
than 30,000 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
The UN says a quarter of Gaza's 2.3 million people face starvation.
Hamas has rejected earlier allegations that its fighters committed sexual assault.
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