It’s not shocking anymore to see a Pride event being attacked. It’s not even shocking to see people within the queer community fail to connect the dots between calling for an intifada and being the victims of a terror attack themselves.
But one thing that did shock me was seeing a video from a vigil in Berlin, where a member of the community took the microphone to say, “the first thing I thought was I hope it’s not a foreigner, I hope it’s a white Christian”. Her first thoughts weren’t with the victims, nor with the city of Berlin, but with the attacker. On who the attacker was and how his background would help or hinder her agenda and exploitation of the situation.
This goes beyond the overused woke-bashing phrase, "suicidal empathy”. To me, this is “homicidal empathy”. It sets clear the agenda of those with the microphones, that above all, support for the ideology is the only priority. That the lives of those in the community are not as important, not even in memory at a vigil.
We saw this with the gay cruise saga. The Atlantis gay cruise ship turned away from Turkey and Egypt. The story shocked the queer media and the passengers on board alike. Gay influencers aboard the ship posted videos in disbelief that Egypt wasn’t letting them in. One influencer, who had been excited about redirecting from Turkey to Egypt, seeing it as an upgrade without a shred of irony, was particularly mindblown. “We’re too gay to come and spend a bunch of money in your country?" he asked, genuinely puzzled, as he found out that the ship was prevented from docking once again.
The cruise ship of Western gays were confronted with the kind of anti-LGBT ideology they'd spent years downplaying and they couldn’t quite comprehend it. Having experienced even a fraction of the reality that comes with supporting two opposing ideologies, I had naively hoped that the stranded gays would start to reshape their points of view and shift gears towards something more rational and less radical.
In the instance of the stranded ship, the obvious solution would have been to dock in Haifa or Ashdod, the only ports in the region where LGBT+ people have legal protections and can live openly. However the reaction to that suggestion was of course horror, accusations of pinkwashing and something I thought couldn’t be possible: the showcasing of even more Western gay privilege.
One type of comment I received multiple times from profiles based in countries across the West was, “I’ll take my chances with the Egyptians over the Israelis” or “Anything is better than Israel”. These comments, whilst intended to virtue signal about Palestine, actually just insult queer people and downplay their suffering in the same way the woman at the vigil did. The queer Egyptians who are routinely imprisoned and tortured by the Egyptian police for being gay fall below their priority for the cause just like the victims in Berlin.
Many of the queer commenters favouring Egypt apparently hadn’t heard of people like Sarah Hegazi who was arrested for waving a pride flag in Cairo and tortured by the Egyptian police, dying by suicide a couple of years later having been vocal about the trauma of her torture.
Living in Western countries comes with the privilege of typing anti-Israel comments on social media and calling for intifada at Queers for Palestine rallies knowing full well that in Israel queer people have rights and are able to live freely and outwardly as gay, bi, lesbian or trans. Whereas in Palestine, Turkey and Egypt that is not the case.
For queer Israelis, this paradox has become all too familiar. By simply existing as a queer Israeli, especially online, you are accused of pinkwashing. Your experiences are denied not only by people who are “anti Israel” but by fellow queer people. The life of a queer Israeli is labelled propaganda from the outset. A gay man forced into conversion therapy would be a cause for outrage, unless he’s Israeli. A trans woman having the courage to come out would be applauded, unless she’s Israeli. A lesbian couple welcoming a baby into their family would be met with celebration, unless they’re Israeli.
Their opposition to Israel has become so all-consuming that a large part of the community is at best willing to ignore the pioneering achievements of LGBT activists in Israel and at worst willing to ignore the devastating consequences of LGBT oppression elsewhere. The gay men who cruised around the Mediterranean preferred to publicly dismiss the horrific experience of queer Egyptians rather than acknowledge a reality that complicates their worldview.
As long as it means they can make some snippy anti-Israel comment they’re more than happy to ignore the suffering of queer people elsewhere. They get to close the Instagram app with a smirk on their face whilst a gay person in Egypt is handcuffed to a chair and electrocuted. That's the same mindset shared by the woman who publicly declared that her first thought was not with the victims of the Berlin attack but with the support of ideology that caused the attack.
The cruise ship continued to sail through the sea, rejected by the realities of ideologies incompatible with civility and the freedoms they take for granted, before finishing in Italy. The passengers on board may have been in a state of shock after their experience but not enough to challenge their warped world view.
The queer community in Berlin, still reeling from the terror attack, have to now understand that being shocked isn’t enough. The people with the microphones are shouting into them, telling them that their lives are worth less than supporting an ideology that fundamentally does not accept their right to exist. The burden of blame doesn’t just lie with the terrorist who committed the attack. It lies with the people on the stages, willing to sacrifice those of us in the crowds, selling our lives out for their virtue-signalling agendas and homicidal empathy.
Josh Rose is a writer from Manchester
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