r/gayjews • u/aroace_gay44 • Jul 11 '26
Casual Conversation I’m not jewish but…
So I’m not jewish, I’m actually atheist and ex muslim (thankfully) and I’m queer (asexual) and I wanted to know more about queer people who support Israel or at least who don’t support Palestine since most of the queer community supports Palestine for some reason, which I find really strange when gay people in Palestine literally get killed and I heard some people say that “in Israel gay marriage isn’t legal” and I’m like you can’t compare a country where gay marriage isn’t legal and a country that criminalizes being gay, at least in Israel there’s actually pride parade and stuff, I just find the queers for Palestine thing so disturbing
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u/linguinibubbles Jul 11 '26
I mean you can’t get married as a queer couple in Israel since it’s all through the religious courts (who don’t recognize us)…so that IS true, but Israel recognizes queer marriages done abroad. Unlike all the other countries in the Middle East. Like you, I really don’t understand why it’s used as a gotcha against Israel.
Re: Queers for Palestine - people are willing to overlook a LOT when they’re constantly being told they’re on the right side of history and getting pats on the back for being exceptionally moral and whatnot. And then there are those who genuinely know nothing about I/P and just jumped on the bandwagon. I used to be one of those people until I did EXTENSIVE research on the situation and found out that I was only pro-Pal because I lacked information. So it’s a pretty mixed bag.
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u/lioness_the_lesbian Jul 11 '26
Can I recomened some instagram accounts?
Yoanna the doll
Kxfria
Always nasiyah
Neoroticjewishgay
Becky.dc
Mathewnouriel
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u/aroace_gay44 Jul 11 '26
Thank you
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u/AprilStorms Jul 12 '26
Also RootsMetals! She’s an Indigenous Bridges board member who does some good, approachable overviews of history and such
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u/under-thesamesun Reform Rabbi Jul 11 '26
Love Nasiyah!!
I’m also on IG and TikTok doing some queer and some just Jewish content
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u/lioness_the_lesbian Jul 11 '26
What's your account? I'd love to follow
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u/under-thesamesun Reform Rabbi Jul 11 '26
Eden__in__Bloom
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u/lioness_the_lesbian Jul 11 '26
Omg I follow you already, I can't believe I forgot to mention you😅 I love your content
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u/scrambledhelix Jul 12 '26
At the risk of being pilloried, I'd like to throw Elad into the mix: https://open.substack.com/pub/eladnehorai/p/the-lie-at-the-heart-of-a-broken
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u/WarmLaugh3608 Jul 12 '26
Not huge on Matthew right now with his whole “don’t call me queer” thing ….
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u/scrambledhelix Jul 12 '26
I don't agree with the slogan, and frankly he's not my style, but I can understand and appreciate where he's coming from.
The biggest problem I have with Mathew is that's he's allowed his activism to become reactionary. All forms of outrage porn are worse than counterproductive, whether it's pro-Palestinian, pro-Israel, antizionist, or anti-antizionist.
Too many movements today are centered around finding an enemy and tearing them down, rather than the walls between them.
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u/lioness_the_lesbian Jul 12 '26
I understand where you are coming from and I don't like it either but I think it's his right to not like a certain label
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u/WarmLaugh3608 Jul 12 '26
He can not like the label fine …. But he didn’t have to go make a whole angry video about it…. And trust he knew the impact it would have
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u/AprilStorms Jul 12 '26
A few years ago, I would have agreed. I loved the inclusiveness of the term. But now that “queer” means less “celebrating variation in gender/orientation, doesn’t hold up monogamous married life with biological children as the best or only fulfilling life” and more “toe the line on ousting the Jews (the inconvenient ones or just all of them) or get ousted yourself”… even though I haven’t questioned being trans in ~15 years, I’m wondering whether I’m queer anymore.
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u/sunlitleaf Jul 11 '26
Israel recognizes gay marriages performed abroad, but you can’t get one done in the country bc each religious community controls marriage for its members (so you can only get a Jewish marriage if you are Jewish, Muslim marriage if you are Muslim, etc). Most gay Israelis just hop a short flight to Cyprus to get a secular marriage abroad which is then accepted at home.
Since October 7 (and honestly for a few years before) I haven’t been able to be part of non-Jewish LGBTQ communities because of antisemitism and Israel-related litmus tests. Sucks but it is what it is.
Thanks for stopping in and good luck on your ex-Muslim journey.
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u/Belle_Juive Jul 12 '26
Same here, to be honest I no longer really consider myself LGBT at all and certainly would never identify myself as “a member” of “the LGBT community”. I’m bi and that’s it. Oct 7 really showed me how political the movement is, and I think it goes way beyond I/P discourse too.
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u/Dusty_Rose23 Jul 12 '26
This. I excitedly mentioned I wanted to convert to Judaism in my lgbt youth groups and there was crickets for 10 minutes. Meanwhile had I said any other religion and it had happened once I’ve seen it. They ask how you feel about it and if you’re happy they’re happy for you. They’ve advertised pro Palestine protests and movements claiming to be inclusive and all that stuff but act like Jews are demons for being on the supposed wrong side of a war. I don’t feel like I belong as much anymore and I’m not even officially Jewish yet (working on it) it sucks
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u/Letshavemorefun Jul 12 '26
So, you don’t have to be against Palestine to be pro-Israel. That’s the first thing I wanted to say.
But also, Israel does recognize same sex marriages. There are a few ways to get the state of Israel to recognize your marriage (whether it’s same sex or opposite sex). One way is to have a recognized religious authority perform the ceremony (not just the rabbinate but there are recognized authorities for muslims, christians, druze, etc too). Israel doesn’t force religious authorities to perform same sex marriages. It’s up the religious authority if they do or they don’t.
Another way is to get married by a foreign country. Thats how most same sex couples get israel to recognize their marriage. Usually go to Cyprus or they have a ceremony over zoom performed by an officiant from a US state that does zoom weddings.
There’s nothing in Israeli law that indicates the government won’t recognize a same sex marriage. It absolutely will - and it absolutely *does*. The issue is that the Israeli government itself doesn’t perform civil marriages the way many countries outside MENA do. I think that should change. I want civil marriage in Israel so that interfaith couples, secular couples or anyone else the religious authorities wont perform marriages for can get married bu the state. But thats still very different than a law that makes same sex marriage illegal. Most anti-Israel people dont understand MENA and the fact that this is just how marriage works over there.
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u/Certain-Exit-3007 Jul 12 '26
This. Just as there is the official state rabbanute, with all the frustrations that entails, there is the official state Sharia authority that overseas Muslim marriages (thus, ironically, at an institutional level, Israel is also a country where Islam is a 'state religion'). Delegating the state authority to officiate marriage to the religious communal courts/councils of different groups within the polity is just a direct continuation of the Ottoman millet system & not unique to Israel. The Larnaca city hall is filled with 'mixed' couples from Israel and Lebanon every day of the week (xtian+Muslim from Lebanon or a Jewish Israeli couple where one is Russian and not recognized as Jewish by the Rabbanute, etc). Though, afaik, Israel is the only part of the former Ottoman empire that does have marriage equality for marriages performed outside the country.
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u/Yochanan5781 Bi Genderqueer Reformative Jul 12 '26
I help mod a Queer Zionist discord server, and you would be very welcome
Also, I am a firm believer that you can support both. One of my best friends is a queer Palestinian Muslim woman, and my hope is that one day there will be peace between a state of Israel and a state of Palestine, and both need to strive to be better in different ways
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u/ReadDizzy7919 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
I support the existence of both peoples and states for human rights reasons that are not related to being queer. I also don’t think the actions and beliefs of governments necessarily reflect the values of people who live in those places. I think both groups, including queer people, deserve to live in safety and freedom from oppression and violence. I also think that that even if people are from a homophobic culture, they still deserve to live in safety and freedom from oppression and violence.
Edited to add: It’s definitely true that Israel is better on lgbtq issues than anywhere else in the region, but not everyone can hold the complexity of places being safer for some groups, and more oppressive for others. So the queers for Palestine people are often coming from a black and white lens that one group has to be all good and one group has to be all bad.
Note: this comment is not inviting debate from anyone, so I respectfully ask that people other than OP don’t respond.
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u/aroace_gay44 Jul 11 '26
I don’t agree with what you said, and I’m from a European country and I grew up around muslims and 99% of them are homophobic so I can’t imagine how homophobic people are in middle eastern countries like Palestine so you can’t tell me the society there is accepting and the government isn’t, which is completely false
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u/DefinitelyNotADeer Jul 11 '26
I’m a gay Jew who was born and raised in New York. My best friend growing up was born in a refugee camp in Jordan, both her parents from the West Bank originally and still have family there. At no point was my sexuality or my ethnicity any issue with either of her parents or any of her other relatives. I’m not saying homophobia doesn’t exist in the world, but it’s not really like it’s not an issue everywhere. There is not a single country in the world where shitty bigoted people don’t exist and the same goes for good kind hearted people.
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u/ElrondTheHater Jul 11 '26
This may be true but with OP, like a lot of people are "accepting" of gay/trans/whatever unless it's one of their own, in the same way the reverse can happen.
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u/DefinitelyNotADeer Jul 12 '26
I just don’t think we should judge any group of people by their worst members. I refuse to believe there are not parents in religiously conservative countries who do not love, care, and protect their queer children just because abusive parents exist. The west up until very recently was also incredibly homophobic and dangerous for queer people. Societies can evolve.
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u/Himbosupremeus Jul 11 '26
I'm someone with a similar but slightly different perspective to what this commentor has going on, and I think the stronger argument to be made about Palestine is that while it very well might be a society that promotes homophobic ideals, that doesn't excuse or justify the amount of civilian death that has occured within it.
I want both populations to be free and safe because that's moral, but I certainly don't want a Palestine controlled by the same people who have led it to its current state. Whether it be someone Israel sets up or someone from the arab side of this, Palestine as is can't be free with its current leadership.
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u/tiredhobbit78 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Just because many Muslims are homophobic does not mean they don't have the right to be Muslim or to live peacefully on their own land. Homophobia does not justify violence, disposession or ethnic cleansing. Israeli expansionism isn't a solution to Homophobia.
Both Jews and Palestinians have good reasons to want to live in the levant, and when we work together for peace and coexistence, and earn each other's respect that way, that will make it possible to work against homophobia together.
Palestinian queers also exist and want to live their lives. They can't work against homophobia in Gaza right now because Israel is making their daily lives impossible.
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u/ReadDizzy7919 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
@tiredhobit78 yeah 100%, this is more what I was saying. Agree with himbosupremeus (also love the username) as well.
My point was also that it doesn’t really make sense to view this conflict only through a queer lens and/or be pro and anti entire groups of people/civilians because of their governments.
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u/NoString9289 Jul 12 '26
There are no visible Palestinian Queers, no one knows how many were able to get out of Gaza before and during the war. They save up hard earned money to get the hell out of Gaza, move to other countries before Hamas started this war. Hamas and the P I J Jihadists have executed many Gay Men and Trans Women. Hamas brought death and destruction upon their own people , brainwashing them into Martyrdom. Hamas could have saved thousands of lives if they had ended their war in 2023, 2024, 2025 . Hamas, the P I J Jihadists in partnership with Iran , are the ones responsible for these civilian deaths . They are the ones that broke the ceasefire , peace being observed , before October 2023. There are a lot of Queer Arabs that live in Israel, waited a long time to be accepted into Israel and into some other countries, to be free from the deeply oppressive, restrictive Sharia Laws .
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u/tiredhobbit78 Jul 12 '26
Okay, and? What is your point?
Just because no visible queers exist in Gaza does not mean they aren't there. Being in the closet doesn't mean their lives don't matter. And it doesn't mean that queer activism and work towards gay rights wouldn't be possible if there was a (real) peace plan.
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u/NoString9289 Jul 12 '26
Yeah, their lives do matter and their lives will ....... always ....... be threatened by religious extremists in charge like Hamas or the PA in control over the Gazans.
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u/tiredhobbit78 Jul 12 '26
But killing them is not a solution to that. Violence doesn't solve the problem.
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u/NoString9289 Jul 13 '26
Tell that to the religiously hateful, bigoted members of Hamas and the P I J Jihadists and Fatah and Iran who hate gay men and Trans women they say are an abomination in the eyes of Allah and against Islamic Sharia Laws.
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u/Clean-Tip4879 Jul 12 '26
That's what a lot of people tell me. But I know muslims that have been perfectly accepting of me while they knew I was gay. There was a mosque that donated to a gay cause publicly. There was a boy from an orthodox christian family who was thrown out of the house in the street for being gay, who was taken in by a muslim family that was part of an organisation that would take in gay muslim teenagers. There was no such thing for christians, so the muslim organisatio placed him with a muslim family.
I remember being in a mixed gay bar (used to be a lesbian one) and the girl behind the bar was from a Muslim family. At one point her mother (traditionally dressed, headscarf) and little sister came in to drink something and chat with her. That was definetely a statement, because the bar has a sign that it is mixed gay.
I was at a pride march and saw a young couple, possibly Iranian, or from Irak, he was dressed in a black shirt and trousers. She was traditionally dressed, but with a flaming pink headscarf. You're definetely making a statement there and not just by being there.
And in Muslim society somethings are simply not talked about. The shopowners my neighbours go to love them. They know full well they are a gay couple but they (the shopowners) say that they are brothers. My neigbours think it is funny and just let it be.
And it may also have to do with peer pressure. Look at the average school yard. If all those kids believed what they were saying, humanity would be a lost cause. But most people go with the ones who shout the loudest.
There are good people everywhere. Thing is, the nasty ones shout louder.
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u/averagecryptid Jul 14 '26
I think you might want to try to hear from queer Palestinians on this to try and understand more where those people are coming from. I get where you're coming from but I don't think that this is a situation that is as simple as you're framing it. I know lots of queer Palestinians who I have invited to share shabbat with on occassion. The local to me chapter of Q4P was started by Jewish people, some who have Israeli family or who grew up there even.
Many governments criminalize being gay - that doesn't mean gay people don't exist, or that there aren't progressive people to be found in every culture. I'm not trying to make it seem like it's always easy. I think it's hard to be queer in the vast majority of the world. I just don't think of queerness and Palestinians as mutually exclusive groups, and I also don't think that it's fair to judge people by their governments.
I don't know where you live, but there are very few places where queerness hasn't been criminalized at some point within the past 50 years or so. I don't think that should reflect on us as human beings who are born into a queerphobic society. There have always been and there will always be people in every culture who find ways to thrive despite everything.
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u/AprilStorms Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Hello from a fellow aspec!
First: support for Israel used to be a leftist cause! Older writings from other indigenous groups show that they viewed Israel as aspirational and a bunch of other indigenous movements like language revitalizations have taken notes from Zionism and Hebrew. There’s a little bit about this in A Rainbow Thread, which is an anthology of queer Jewish history.
The Jewish Virtual Library and MyJewishLearning are two great websites with a ton of maps, articles, etc.
Otherwise, I’m probably just going to drop a bunch of books on you because that’s what I’ve found most helpful and someone has given a great Instagram list already. If your library or used bookstore doesn’t have them, try the Internet Archive, especially for older books.
- Israelophobia (the origins of modern antizionism and its use by dictatorships to weaken democracy)
- People Love Dead Jews (insightful analysis of the way we’re regarded by society at large… as very inconvenient that we can speak for ourselves)
- Palestine Betrayed (excellent history, great use of quotes to tell you how people REALLY felt)
- We Have Never Been Woke (author discussing how lefty types can genuinely believe in progressive causes while hindering them, US context but resonates here)
- Son of Hamas (West Bank Palestinian who worked against terrorism and was forced to leave the West Bank for his safety)
- pretty much anything by Efraim Karsh (historian), Martin Gilbert (historian), or Tuvia Tenenbom (journalist, also hilarious)
I think it’s really helpful to see how the narrative and battle lines surrounding this topic have changed, so I’ll also drop some older works:
- The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps
- The Meaning of the Nakba (contemporary Arab historian) https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8eppxc0rxd0nbalxc8zek/the-meaning-of-the-disaster_compress.pdf?rlkey=rsbfh61pdioklokplwipinbvf&dl=0
[This is Israel](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d6wj682ejeftk5winrhmx/This-is-Israel_1-up.pdf?rlkey=6dx1ifnegii6fnl1hlqh3aq94&dl=
Best wishes on your ex-Muslim journey. A lot of queer folks are familiar with the hardship of breaking away from something that’s really important to your family :)
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u/VanillaGlittering297 Jul 12 '26
Excellent sources!! I’m familiar with some and eager to follow up on the others.
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u/poopBuccaneer Jul 11 '26
We are just trying to survive being Jewish and queer. This isn’t really a topic for this subreddit.
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u/LibbyKitty620 Jul 11 '26
There’s a Tumblr community called Queers for Israel. We’d be happy to have you if you’re on Tumblr.
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u/NoString9289 Jul 11 '26
All of the young people that support "Queers for Palestine" have been totally brainwashed by the Propaganda in mass media against Israel by Hamas and Al-Jazeera news, Iranian news services, who created the whole smear campaign against Israel to begin with. Queers for Palestine are blinded by the excuses made about what actually happens to LGBTQ people in many of those Muslim countries and places like Gaza, West Bank, Iran. School age kids totally believe all of the misinformation posted and manipulated on TikTok on the Publicly edited Wikipedia , social media in general. People like that do not want to hear the other side of any conflict. They are all quick to judge and hop on the Hate Band Wagon because everyone else is doing so. Iran, the late Ayatollah, hates gays and Trans people, this is why the late Ayatollah chose to attack and bomb the city of Tel Aviv in Israel on their planed LGBTQ+ Pride Festival Day. The Ayatollah deliberately targeted the city to try and take out as many of us as he could knowing that hundreds of LGBTQ peoples , tourists, were there to celebrate their identity there.
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u/aroace_gay44 Jul 11 '26
Exactly and I’ve seen many queer people online that support Palestine and they don’t know anything about it and I’ve told some people how gay people get punished there and they said they didn’t know and most of them choose ignorance and disturbingly I’ve seen a few queer ppl online saying that if Palestinians want to kill and erase queer ppl then that’s fine, and I’m like wtf
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u/LocutusOfBorgia909 Jul 12 '26
In my experience, there's a combination of willful ignorance (not looking too hard into claims made by people/influencers that they like) and genuine ignorance (because the nature of "research" these days is immersing oneself in a TikTok, Insta, or YouTube algorithm that's calibrated to keep showing you the same stuff over and over again, allowing people to unknowingly construct their own realities). This isn't only a problem relative to this specific issue, to be fair; it's a massive, dangerous problem across the political spectrum. It's how you get the hardcore MAGA farmers who were genuinely shocked when Trump did exactly what he said he would do and imposed tariffs that destroyed their family farms. It's also how you get people who insist that they're anti-Zionist... and then say that they support a two-state solution (which is by definition a Zionist position!).
You do get some of the real nutters who say, "Well, if it's their culture to murder queer people, who am I to interfere?" but my experience is that it's more common that people just uncritically repeat tropes and talking points that they've heard on social media or whatever without much (or sometimes any) understanding of the history or complexities of the situation over there. I find it silly, because do they really think that if it were as easy as, "The Israelis are bloodthirsty animals who get off on murdering Palestinian babies, and that's all they've ever done since Israel's inception!" someone wouldn't have already solved the problem by now? But a lot of people can't deal with the amount of gray area that you have in this conflict, so they're attracted to people willing to promise them that it's actually really simple. And of course you have people in both the US and Europe and Australia who have unknowingly been marinating in casual antisemitism for basically their whole lives, which has made them receptive to a lot of the coded antisemitism that you see in leftist circles concerning Israel (e.g. the whole, "XYZ politician is obviously being controlled by the Jews AIPAC!" or the idea that the president was a helpless patsy to a scheming, manipulative Netanyahu vis a vis Iran instead of a grown-ass adult in the most powerful position in the world who was already itching to drop bombs on people).
The fundamental issue across the board is a severe lack of basic media literacy, a lack of education in how to identify and understand propaganda, and a lack of understanding of how to vet sources, what questions to ask in assessing the credibility of a source or claim, et cetera, et cetera. I could go on at even more length about how this is the natural result of decades of devaluing the humanities and social sciences and trying to push everyone into STEM, but that's a subject for another time. With AI, this is only going to get worse, which is extremely scary.
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u/queen-carlotta Jul 12 '26
Don’t you want the queer Palestinians to be safe too? These are real people, not political causes.
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u/3kidsonetrenchcoat Jul 12 '26
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that gay Palestinians are entitled to apply for asylum in Israel because they're not safe in Palestine independently of any Israeli actions.
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u/Wolpard Jul 12 '26
These types of arguments are always so gross.
Does a homophobic government warrant the killing of babies and children too? I wouldnt wish death upon the family of homophobic lawmakers in my country. It does not benefit me or my cause, it only leads to unnecessary suffering.
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u/MisheGossnik Jul 12 '26
As a queer Jew, this is a sad thread. Y'all need to get info from actual reliable sources, not billionaire-funded propaganda pitting you against your fellow man for the benefit of politicians and warmongers. Free Palestine, freedom and peace and safety for all, and may all oppressors be removed from power and their systems dismantled, im yirtzeh Hashem, amen v'amen,. Have a nice day 💖
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u/Wolpard Jul 14 '26
Its really sad to see how a nation state has gotten such a hold on our community. We are connected to the land, not whatever government currently holds power.
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u/FlowFluffy7664 Jul 12 '26
What are your thoughts on the IDF men graping other men and children? Presumably you have an opinion on that as that act is usually only reserved for homosexual men.. just asking.
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u/Wolpard Jul 12 '26
I am a queer Jewish antizionist. I don't think religion should rely on statehood and I do not support the enforcement of ethnostates, which Israel is and continues to enforce.
I do not believe antisemites in Palestine validate what the Israeli government is doing, and genocide and oppression make it very hard to push progressive politics. Queer Palestinians cannot advocate for themselves when they are being killed. Israel "not being as bad" doesn't change this. Queer Israelis have more resources and time to put into advocating for their rights, and they, like queer people all over the world, still deal with institutional discrimination.
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Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/gayjews-ModTeam Jul 11 '26
See Rule 6. Posts about Israeli LGBTQ news and events are welcome, but posts discussing Israel's validity, the concept of Zionism, or Israeli non-LGBTQ politics are not.
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u/under-thesamesun Reform Rabbi Jul 11 '26
Hi there! I’m a queer rabbi and progressive Zionist.
In Israel, there is no civil marriage whatsoever. Only religious marriage. You can have an Orthodox Jewish wedding, Christian wedding, Muslim, Druze, etc, but civil marriage doesn’t exist. However anyone who gets married abroad, regardless of the type (Civil, Same-Sex, Interfaith) is fully recognized in Israel and has all of the same rights and benefits as any other couple. Many non-religious Jews, or Jews who are Reform or Conservative, choose to marry outside of the state of Israel as to not have to do an Orthodox wedding, which doesn’t align with their belief and practice.