I’ve been in a lot of VCs on Discord over the past few weeks. On one server, you have the ability to select a flair role of I Stand With Israel, I Stand With Palestine, or I Stand With Lockheed-Martin (presumably as a joke). I selected I Stand With Palestine, because I do. Invariably, I get a truly shocking number of people who notice I chose this role, see that I also have queer roles, and decide to confront me about it.
How can you support Palestine? Don’t you know they would have you killed? At least in Israel, you could actually get married.
Bozos on Discord
I have a lot of thoughts on this question, and a lot of thoughts on how revealing it is of the thought processes of the people who ask it.
First, I’ll address what the asker would expect from me. Assumed in the question is that, because Palestinians are largely Muslim, I should not support their right not to be slaughtered by Israel’s overzealous genocidal response to the horrific attack Hamas levied against them starting October 7th. That I should, because I am queer, instead support Israel’s actions, or at least not be bothered by what has been done to them for decades and continues to be done in more and more extreme ways as time passes. Or, at a minimum, I should not take a side in the matter at all.
Let me be crystal clear. My opposition to the brutalization of any class of people will persist regardless of what they think about me. Let’s say black Americans have historically, statistically, had a disproportionate opposition to gay liberation. Would this mean I should not oppose their institutionalized oppression? Should I not oppose the disproportionate cruelty incurred against them by our police systems? Should I perhaps have no position on it?
Let me be even clearer. My opposition to the brutaliziation of any individual will persist regardless of what they think of me. If someone kidnapped Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull herself, the fascist genocidal nutjob known as Posie Parker, and proceeded to brutally torture her because of her positions on the existence of queer people in society and her work to oppose our existence, I would speak out in her defense. Absolutely no one should be tortured, even if they have directly harmed me, or have directly harmed members of my community. Should she face consequences for her deeds? Sure, and we can have that conversation. But not torture. Not death. A more apt comparison to the Bozo’s Gambit is that not only KJK but also her entire extended family was also kidnapped and tortured.
What would these Discord bozos expect me to say? That I should be okay with their terrorization? That it makes me a traitor to my people to try to stop this abuse from occuring?
What kind of psychopathic tribalism is this?
To say nothing of the fact that queer people do exist in Gaza, oppressed in their own communities. I would fight for their right to live freely. But right now I can’t do that, because all of their homes are being bombed, and they are being forcibly displaced into a smaller and smaller open-air concentration camp with no meaningful supplies forthcoming. The ongoing situation is a set of conditions incompatible with life. Until life can be preserved from the obvious perpetrator of this overwhelming violent force, other considerations are going to take a back seat. There is no point in fighting for civil rights when there may be no life there to exercise those rights. This is war.
Preserve life. Stop the ethnic cleansing. Then we can talk. But there can be no discussion until Israel stops its apartheid oppression of Palestinian people, and until its genocidal intentions are staved. There is no justification for the deliberate murder of thousands of children. That the victims may be Muslim has no bearing on my position.
To suggest that it should have any bearing whatsoever is indicative that these bozos have an understanding of morality entirely alien to me. This sense of morality is utterly incompatible with any definition of morality I can understand. Anyone who poses this question is completely and utterly blind to anything beyond the end of their nose. They are racists, they are bigots, they are never operating in good faith, and they do not see as a possibility that we as people can collectively work together to lift each other out of our respective struggles. Not if one of the people is brown, or prays to Allah, or lives in the Middle East.
Fuck these bozos. I Stand With Palestine.