A big thank you to Bureau volunteers Evan B. and Junsik Lee for working with Bureau co-founder Greg Newton on making this zine a reality!
Stop by the Bureau whenever we’re open (Weds-Sun, 1 to 7 PM) to get your free copy of the zine.
Full text of the zine:
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division recognizes Palestinian liberation as a fundamental part of our collective queer liberation.
Our struggle for queer liberation has never stood in isolation from other struggles. Queer liberation movements were inspired by and are intimately bound up with movements for the liberation of Black people, women, poor people, disabled people, immigrants and refugees, and colonized indigenous peoples all over the planet.
We embrace and celebrate the long history of queer solidarity with Palestinians that includes James Baldwin, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Leslie Feinberg, Judith Butler, Sarah Schulman, and many others, as well as organizations like ACT UP.
As queer people, we know the pain of being cast out. We have been and continue to be despised by many—even by our own parents, families, and communities of origin. We have been and continue to be deemed deserving of death. This reality evokes in many of us a deep empathy with and compassion for others who are likewise seen not as fully human, but as problems to be solved, questions for which the answer is ultimately elimination and erasure.
Palestinians are not an exception. As we watch the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by the state of Israel—carried out with the full support of our government and funded by our tax dollars—we witness the inevitable results of defining a people solely as a threat to the safety and well-being of those deemed inherently worthy of life. This horror compels us to speak out, not only against the current bombardment and siege of Gaza by the state of Israel, but against the historical and ongoing violent displacement of Palestinians by Zionists and the conditions of occupation and apartheid under which Palestinians have been forced to live for over 75 years.
We urge all members of our queer communities around the globe
- to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians;
- to reject the arguments that seek to justify this genocide by claiming Palestinians are inherently homophobic, transphobic, and/or misogynistic;
- to reject Israel’s pinkwashing efforts;
- and to work towards the liberation of all Palestinians from Israeli occupation.
We especially encourage our fellow U.S. citizens to demand that our own government
- stop arming Israel;
- stop providing it with diplomatic protection;
- and stop enabling it to continue displacing, imprisoning, torturing, starving, terrorizing, and murdering Palestinians and seizing their land.
Defenders of Israel frequently attempt to stifle queer support for Palestinians by claiming that Palestinian society is homophobic, while ignoring the voices of queer Palestinians who they supposedly care about. If one actually listens, the resounding message is that the greatest obstacle to queer freedom is the Israeli occupation. In the words of Dr. Sa’ed Atshan, a queer Palestinian-American anthropologist: “Homophobia, transphobia, heteronormativity, patriarchy, sexism, gender and sexuality-based violence; these are realities that we have to grapple with all around the world. It’s very dangerous to pathologize Palestinian society as uniquely homophobic or that homophobia is endemic to the society without this broader context, as well as without understanding the ways that life under brutal military occupation exacerbates homophobia within Palestinian society as well. In order for us to deal with questions of how queer people are treated in Palestine, we have to address the broader landscape of the denial of freedom to Palestinians more generally speaking.”[1]
Furthermore, such rhetoric ignores the progress that has been made by queer Palestinian activists. In the words of the queer activist group AlQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity and Queers in Palestinian Society, founded in 2007: “Queer liberatory politics assert that we, as queer and trans Palestinians, are an integral part of our society and our struggle. Our analysis of Israeli colonialism is incomplete if it does not incorporate a deep understanding of gender and sexual politics. Centering the experiences and analysis of marginalized groups allows us to build a stronger movement and a more inclusive horizon for liberation.”[2]
They also speak out against attempts to weaponize LGBTQ+ rights to divide Palestinians: “Israeli settler colonialism, and tactics such as ‘pinkwashing’ weaponize our queer experiences to place us in opposition to our own society and communities. Pinkwashing is a form of colonial violence. It promotes harmful narratives and policies that alienate queer Palestinians from our own communities. Our answer to pinkwashing is to say that liberation is indivisible, and that there will be a place for all of us at the rendezvous of victory.”[2]
We encourage everyone to learn about the intertwined histories of Zionism, of European antisemitism and Islamophobia, of Palestine and the surrounding region, of European colonialism, of white Christian supremacy, and of U.S. imperialism. But no expertise or historical context is needed to condemn the forced displacement and genocide of any people.
In our longing for a very different reality, we take inspiration from the words of José Esteban Muñoz, who wrote, “Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”[3]
[1] Dr. Sa’ed Atshan, in “Why Queer Solidarity With Palestine Is Not ‘Chickens for KFC,’” Sal Tamarkin, Them, November 22, 2023: https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-solidarity-palestine-saed-atshan
[2] AlQaws, “Queer Liberation and Palestine,” May 26, 2021: https://www.alqaws.org/articles/Queer-Liberation-Palestine
[3] José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, NYU Press, 2009, 1.
Queer Books on Palestine, Arabs, and Muslims available at the Bureau
We Have Always Been Here, Samra Habib (Viking, 2019)
Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, Sarah Schulman (Duke UP, 2012)
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, Sa’ed Atshan (Duke UP, 2020)
Blood Orange, Yaffa (Meraj Publishing, 2023)
This Arab Is Queer, Elias Jahshan (Saqi Books, 2022)
You Exist Too Much, Zaina Arafat (Catapult, 2021)
Love Is an Ex-Country: A Memoir, Randa Jarrar (Catapult, 2023)
Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir, Lamya H (Dial Press, 2024)
The Queer Arab Glossary, Marwan Kaabour, ed. (Saqui Books, 2024)
Postscript:
Years ago, the Bureau began making a land acknowledgment at the outset of every event we hosted:
The Bureau acknowledges that our organization operates on the unceded land of the Munsee Lenape. We encourage you to join the Bureau in signing up to make a monthly donation to the American Indian Community House’s Manahatta Fund.
“The Manna-hatta Fund,” according to its website, “is an invitation to all settlers and non-Native people who wish to acknowledge the legacy of theft and genocide that comprise the history of New York City and the United States.
And you can find out more at: mannahattafund.org
By November of 2023, we felt compelled to follow our land acknowledgment with a call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The collective punishment that Israel meted out in Gaza—in response to the attacks by Hamas and other groups on October 7, 2023—showed no signs of stopping, and our government’s support was unwavering. We could no longer recognize the genocidal history of our own city and our own nation, without mentioning an unfolding genocide that our government was sponsoring and enabling.
In February 2024, at the invitation of Writers Against the War on Gaza, we committed to following the guidelines for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), and we endorsed the larger Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This zine is an elaboration of the statement we made in announcing our commitment to PACBI.
