The Left Will Ignore This Story

In this Friday, Oct. 26, 2018 photo, Palestinian contestants wait to perform on stage during a local bodybuilding competition, in Gaza City. Glistening with oil and toned to perfection, young men with buff bodies lined the stage, flexing their muscles and posing for the judges at a contest organized by the Palestinian Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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The Squadristi¹ totally support the Palestinian cause, because, well, just because. Our college campuses seem to be full of ‘woke‘ students who are just appalled at the plight of the poor, benighted Palestinians.

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But the Palestinians are anything but ‘woke’ themselves, and the left would, were they not totally ignorant, be aghast if they realized that the Palestinians are anything but Western liberals. From The Jerusalem Post:

Palestinian Authority bans LGBTQ activities in West Bank

The ban came after LGBTQ group Al-Qaws was planing to hold a gathering for its members in Nablus.

By Khaled abu Toameh | August 19, 2019 00:49

The Palestinian Authority (PA) banned members of the Palestinian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community from carrying out any activities in the West Bank.

The ban came after the grassroots group Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society (Arabic for “the bow”), which engages and supports Palestinians who identify as LGBTQ, was planning to hold a gathering for its members in Nablus at the end of the month. The group operates both in the West Bank and among Arab-Israelis.

Earlier this month, Al-Qaws held an event in Nablus about sexual and gender diversity in Palestinian society. The PA police, however, learned about the event only days after it was held.

Al-Qaws is a civil society organization established in 2001 with the goal of “fighting for vibrant Palestinian cultural and social change, building LGBTQ communities and promoting new ideas about the role of gender and sexual diversity in political activism, civil society institutions, media, and everyday life.”

The group has offices only in east Jerusalem and Haifa.

Explaining the decision to ban the LGBTQ group from operating in PA-controlled areas, Luay Zreikat, spokesperson for the PA Police, said that such activities are “harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society.”

Zreikat said that the group’s activities were completely “unrelated to religions and Palestinian traditions and customs, especially in the city of Nablus.”

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There’s more at the original, but you get the idea: Arabic culture and Islamic faith ban homosexual conduct, and the people are not opposed to that ban. We’ve all heard of Da’ish executing suspected homosexuals by throwing them from rooftops, and that’s actually merciful compared to Iran’s policy of hanging them, not by the ‘drop,’ but by raising the condemned by cranes, to strangle to death rather than die from a broken neck.

The problem is a simple one, really. The American left, who like to see themselves as so much more educated, so much smarter than the rubes in flyover country, are actually so insularly egocentric, so culturally snobbish, that they cannot understand how other people could believe differently from them. The oh-so-nobly multiculturalist left don’t understand that yes, some people really do think differently from them. As William F Buckley, Jr, once said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to find out that there are other views.” It’s kind of like Hillary Clinton’s yelled question, “Why aren’t I fifty points ahead?”

Well, shocked and offended isn’t particularly intellectual, and doesn’t normally give rise to understanding or reasoned debate. The American left support the Palestinians because they see them as oppressed, and all oppressed people must be noble victims. And that, in this case, leads them to support people who would happily throw them in prison . . . if not simply cut their throats.

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The truth is not always a pleasant thing for some people, but the truth is that the only country in the Middle East which gives any support at all to homosexual rights is Israel. The only country in the Middle East in which homosexuals can be “out,” in public, without being in real danger, is Israel. In all of the Arab countries, being a known homosexual risks assaults and beatings at the very least, and criminal penalties in most of them. Among the Palestinians themselves:

According to a 2010 compendium of laws against homosexuality produced by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and Intersex Association (ILGA), the decriminalization of homosexuality in Palestine is patchwork. On the one hand, same-sex acts were decriminalized in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank in 1951 and remain so to this day. On the other hand, in the Gaza Strip, the British Mandate Criminal Code Ordinance, No. 74 of 1936 remains in force and continues to outlaw same-sex acts between men, although lesbian women are not subjects of the code and their relations are thus, technically, not unlawful. Palestine has no civil rights laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination or harassment.

So, if homosexual activity is not specifically against the law in Judea and Samaria, it was still there in which the PA banned homosexuals “from carrying out any activities in the West Bank.” For homosexual rights activists, for the left in general, supporting the Palestinians specifically, or the Arabs in general is akin to Jews supporting the Nazi Party in Germany.
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¹ – The “Squad” is an informal political grouping of four congresswomen elected in the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections, made up of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. I refer to them as Squadristi, the name of Benitoi Mussolini’s “Blackshirts,” because their proposals are all fascist.
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Please visit my Red State story archive for more of my articles.
My personal website, The First Street Journal, includes articles not necessarily in Red State’s paradigm.
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