Palestinian Queers under Israeli surveillance – and threat
JVL Introduction
Israel with its “most moral army in the world” will stop at nothing in its commitment to control the land and the Palestinians. The club life in Tel Aviv, the supposed welcome to people from the LGBT communities clearly do not apply to Palestinians. Here the Journalist Theia Chatelle managed to get testimony from dozens of gay Palestinians who found themselves victims of blackmail from Israeli operatives who, through Israel’s sophisticated surveillance capacity, had been identified and then blackmailed for information. Of course, as Palestinian LGBTQ+ group Al Qaws, noted, it is not only those within the LGBT community who are blackmailed in this way; people who have needed medical treatment, for example, have sometimes been told their permits to travel will depend on them providing information that Israel demands. As reported here, a former Israeli intelligence official confirmed that Palestinians could be targeted for a number of different vulnerabilities. All are important and we think it is important to tell this story.
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This article was originally published by Drop Site Substack on Fri 30 Aug 2024. Read the original here.
How Israel's Elite Intelligence Unit Targets Queer Palestinians in the West Bank
For many years, it has been an open secret that Israeli spy agencies rely heavily on the blackmail of Palestinians to pressure them into becoming informants. The knock-on feature of the project, from Israel’s perspective, is to shred the social fabric of the community.
It’s hard, though, to report on this phenomenon, because of its very nature. What informant would want to talk about their role as an informant on their own community? And who would talk publicly about the thing that opened them up to blackmail in the first place? The effectiveness of blackmail lies in the shame of the secret in contention.
While the Israeli government often holds itself up as a beacon of freedom for the LGBT community, members of that very community are high on the list of targets for blackmail—though by no means are they alone on that list. Given the world-class nature of Israeli surveillance technology, it’s not hard for spy agencies to identify gay or lesbian Palestinians and ensnare them in their net.
Journalist Theia Chatelle spent months in the West Bank hoping to tell their stories. She was told it would be impossible. But over time, she found a number of victims of the program with the courage to speak out. She also identified members of the Israeli security agencies willing to admit to what’s going on.
A former intelligence official reveals the wide-ranging campaign to sow distrust across the West Bank
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Its important to emphasise there is a very strong conservative strand which runs through Palestinian society, which rejects “Queerness”. When I visited Palestine some 15 years ago, there were many young people in particular, who rejected Queerness for religious reasons, quoting the Koran or the Bible. Laws laid down during the British Mandate, which criminalised being “Queer” under the 1936 Criminal Code, still underlie discrimination and have had a lasting influence on the Queer community in Palestine. Even without the vile practices of blackmail and oppression by the occupying power, being “Queer” is considered a part of Western “Decadence” and Queer Palestinians are doubly oppressed and persecuted. Its a horrible space to be in, but burying your sexuality is secondary to resisting the occupation and forcing its dismantling. Only after that can the campaign for gender and sexual equality be placed on the agenda in a free Palestine.
I read this with interest noting that statement about British mandate and law. The Law in Britain at the time of course was similar, and religion has always been bound up with authority and state. The state uses religion as a secondary arm of enforcement to its will, with the threat of everlasting damnation and punishment. The last statement in the post seems to me to be very similar to the attitudes to slavery and to the female enfrachise. My attitude is that if the powers that control law and societal norms changed tack and change the law, then society changes. When authority condemns certain sections of society to be secretive about its activities then that society becomes vulnerable to both inside and outside influence and enemy actions. Palestinian Authorities need to state publicly that being gay is no shame and to repeal any law that makes gay people and their families vulnerable to a malicious attack while at the same time strengthening laws on physical attacks. Laws and societal shaming against Gay people weaken families and the state by making them vulnerable to any outside malevolance, or spiteful attack.
I’m saddened and surprised to see the word queer being used in this important article and on this site. Older members of JVL are surely aware that this was a term of abuse and remains, for many homosexuals, a profoundly offensive word. I’m not in favour of enforced policing of speech, but I would have thought that JVL members are historically aware enough to want to avoid unnecessary antagonising of our homosexual comrades.
We understand Ruby’s concern but ‘queer’ is a label adopted by many in gay and lesbian communities. It was the term of choice by this author, a choice we had to respect if we were to publicise this important issue.