A gay couple was beaten and paraded in public this week because of their sexual orientation.

In a video clip shared by Portharcourt Specials on X, the couple who appeared half naked were being insulted and slapped on the back, with one showing trails of blood on his back. The incident took place in Rumuewhara in Port Harcourt.

Although consensual same-sex sexual relations are criminalized in Nigeria and punishable by death on some states, many Nigerians viewed the attack against the couple as distasteful, arguing rapist or pedophiles don’t face the same treatment.

“This is where you will see Nigerians very active on; on matters that don’t concern them because why is someone’s sexual orientation your problem? We are well deserving of politicians that punish us well,” said Rinu Oduala, a human rights activist.

No Hate Network Nigeria, an LGBTQ rights organization, said the couple’s public victimization was a stark reminder of the rampant homophobia in the country.

“The brutal attack on the gay couple is appalling and unacceptable,” said the organization. “It’s a stark reminder of the rampant homophobia and intolerance in Nigeria.” 

“Such violence is often fueled by discriminatory laws, societal norms, and lack of education, this incident highlights the urgent need for increased advocacy, education, and protection for LGBTQI+ individuals,” added No Hate Network Nigeria.

No Hate Network Nigeria also highlighted the plight of LGBTQ people in the country who are constantly under attack due to current laws and cultural and religious norms.

“The LGBTQI+ community in Nigeria faces extreme risks, including violence, harassment, and persecution, the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2014 exacerbates these challenges, effectively criminalizing LGBTQI+ individuals,” said No Hate Network Nigeria. “Many live in fear, hiding their identities to avoid persecution, the community requires enhanced support, safe spaces, and robust advocacy to ensure their basic human rights.”

For many LGBTQ people in the country, remaining in the closet is the only way they can preserve their life. They often flee Nigeria if they decide to come out.

There is currently no appetite from any lawmakers to amend or repeal parts of Section 21 of the Criminal Code Act (Penal Code) that are used to arrest, charge, and prosecute those who identify as LGBTQ.

In northern states where Sharia law is practiced, one who is found to identify as LGBTQ or is an advocate may face death by stoning.

Although not widely practiced, death by stoning is the preferred punishment in many of the northern states if a Sharia court finds someone guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations. A number of local and international human rights organizations in recent years have condemned this punishment. It is, however, still enforced in some of these states.

No Hate Network Nigeria said amending parts of the Criminal Code Act and repealing the Same Sex (Prohibition) Act might give relief to LGBTQ people in the country.

“Repealing or amending discriminatory laws, like the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, implementing education and awareness campaigns to combat homophobia, establishing safe spaces, and support networks for LGBTQI+ individuals and strengthening law officials’ response to hate crimes as well as holding perpetrators accountable, will aid in averting and combating attacks on LGBTQI+ individuals,” said No Hate Network Nigeria.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Carmel Gat on Oct. 6, 2023, traveled to Be’eri, a kibbutz near the border of Israel and the Gaza Strip where she grew up, to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah with her parents, brothers, and extended family.

Gat and her brother, Alon Gat, planned to go for a run at around 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

“At 6:29, the bombing and the alarms started and the whole family went into the safe room,” her cousin, Shay Dickmann, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “We have this last picture of Carmel with her running clothes on, in which she was later kidnapped, reading a book to Geffen (her young niece.)”

“It is just typically Carmel in this moment of distress when there are rockets around, the rumors start running that there are terrorists inside the kibbutz, she just had the inner power and stability to take care of others and help her niece, her 3 and 1/2 year old niece, try and calm her down,” said Dickmann.

Dickmann said Gat’s mother, Kinneret Gat, left the safe room at about 10:30 a.m. to get some food and water. Her father, Eshel Gat, went to the bathroom.

Dickmann said Kinneret Gat saw Hamas militants from her kitchen window.

“The last thing she managed to do was to warn her husband, Eshel, from the terrorists and shush him with her finger on her lips and she signaled him to go back to the toilet and hide himself,” recalled Dickmann. “She didn’t know at that point she saved his life.” 

Dickmann said the bathroom in which Eshel Gat was hiding was the one room in the house the militants did not search.

“He was safe, but from the window of the toilet he saw his family taken one-by-one by the terrorists,” Dickmann told the Blade.

She said the last time Eshel Gat saw his wife she was bending down in the kitchen, “and she was the first to be taken by the terrorists.”

“They came into the kitchen, and they took her,” she said. “They tied her hands and walked her through her own kibbutz barefoot with a bunch of people from Kibbutz Be’eri.”

The militants then put Carmel Gat in a car with two teenagers who were brother and sister.

“The car was moving, driving through the point where Carmel saw her mother lying down on the sidewalk, her head shot and she realized that she saw her mother dead and this is the last thing that Carmel saw when she was taken hostage into Gaza, her beloved one dead,” said Dickmann.

She said her cousin did not know what happened to the rest of her family: Her father, her two brothers, her sister-in-law, Yarden Roman-Gat, and her niece Geffen. Her younger brother, Or Gat, had already left the kibbutz.

The Blade has previously reported the militants placed Roman-Gat, Alon Gat, and their daughter into a car.

Roman-Gat and Alon Gat jumped out of it with their daughter as it approached Gaza. Roman-Gat handed her daughter to her husband because he was able to run faster.

Alon Gat hid with his daughter for 18 hours before they reached Israel Defense Forces soldiers at Be’eri. He told Gili Roman, his brother-in-law who lives in Tel Aviv and is a member of the Nemos LGBTQ+ Swimming Club, he last saw his wife, Roman’s sister, hiding behind a tree to protect herself from the militants who were shooting at her.

“My brother saw a video on Telegram of Kinneret lying down on the sidewalk with a pool of blood next to her head, said Dickmann, recounting how she and her family learned the militants had murdered Kinneret Gat.

“We started looking for Carmel and for Yarden and for 50 days we didn’t know anything about them,” added Dickmann. “Just imagine we were worried sick and not even knowing if their body might be found here or were they kidnapped alive.”

Hamas on the second day of a week-long ceasefire in November released the two teenagers who had been kidnapped alongside Carmel Gat.

“It was amazing to see how 13 children and women are coming back to us and their families, and they were among them,” said Dickmann. “Unfortunately they discovered that their mother was murdered and at the time they were informed that their father was kidnapped. Today we know that their father was murdered as well. They are orphans.”

The teenagers confirmed that Carmel Gat was alive.

“Carmel was with them since the moment that they were put into the car taking them into Gaza and until the moment they were released and they say she was their guardian angel,” Dickmann told the Blade. “She was just keeping them sane in captivity, supporting them. She was handling a diary, writing down songs and sentences to bring their spirits up and she was practicing yoga with them in captivity.” 

“This was the most amazing thing that we learned, just having that inner power in this situation. We know that they were starved. We know that they experienced violence there, that they were held in an apartment, in a baby’s room, having to lay on the floor, given one pita bread a day they had to share, and being held against their will, far from their families, not knowing if they are alive or not, but she had the powers to give to others and knowing that Carmel is there, being Carmel, choosing to live, it gave so much hope, and to this hope we were holding on, day-by-day, in the hope that the next day she would be on the list of people realized.”

Hamas on Nov. 29, 2023, released Roman-Gat, along with 11 other Israelis and four Thai nationals. She reunited with her family a short-time later at an Israeli hospital.

“On the fourth day Yarden came back,” said Dickmann. “I can’t even describe the feeling.”

Hamas was supposed to release Carmel Gat on the eighth day of the ceasefire, but it only lasted seven days.

“Carmel was supposed to be freed on the eighth (day), and she wasn’t, and she was left behind,” Dickmann said. “For us it was devastating, but we also knew that Carmel is holding on to hope, and we were holding on to her hope and we did it in her way.” 

Carmel Gat’s family every Friday practiced yoga, “inspired by her, and giving power to others.” They invited other hostage families to speak about a loved one who was in Gaza.

“We did it for weeks, week after week, 40 weeks, that we spoke about the hope, that we were holding the hope, that she was surviving there, waiting for this moment, for the deal that will free her,” said Dickmann.

The Israeli government on Sept. 1 announced Hamas had killed Carmel Gat and five other hostages — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Eden Yerushalmi — in a tunnel beneath Rafah, a city in southern Gaza that borders Egypt. The hostages “were shot at close range” by militants on Aug. 29 or Aug. 30 before the IDF could rescue them. 

“Carmel survived for 328 days,” Dickmann told the Blade. “She survived, until the day that she was brutally executed by her captors. She survived everything. She survived the tunnels.” 

Dickmann said she and her family received a video that showed where the militants killed Carmel Gat and the five other hostages.

“The conditions were horrible,” said Dickmann. “They were 20 meters underground, suffocating, moist. It was moldy. They had very little food. The six bodies were found thin and starved.” 

The video also showed bottles filled with urine and blood alongside the tunnels. Dickmann said the bodies also showed signs they had been tied up.

“She survived it all, but she couldn’t survive the bullet in her head, and her life was finished in a tunnel, shot, 328 days from her mother’s same destiny, but Carmel we could save, for 328 days we could save her,” said Dickmann. “We could have made a deal that could have brought her back home alive.”

Dickmann also told the Blade she “could also imagine” her cousin, who was an occupational therapist, helping Goldberg-Polin, who lost part of his arm when militants attacked him after he fled the Nova Music Festival in Re’im, another kibbutz that is near Gaza. She was also “imaging her having conversations” with Lobanov about what to name his second son to whom his wife had given birth while he was in Gaza.

“She believed in the possibility to live here with our neighbors,” said Dickmann, who added her cousin and Kinneret Gat were also studying Arabic. 

“There are so many people still alive there surviving, waiting for us to make the deal that will save them,” she said. “There are so many families who can still get this hug, the hug that I was waiting for and I’ll never get.”

Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis launch rockets, missiles towards Israel on Oct. 7 anniversary

The Blade spoke with Dickmann hours after she and her family attended the Bereaved Families Memorial Ceremony in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park that marked a year since Oct. 7.

Organizers had originally allocated 40,000 free tickets for the event, but only 2,000 family members and reporters attended because the IDF Home Front Command had limited the number of people who could attend large gatherings because of increased threats of rockets and missiles from Hamas and Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based militant group.

A ballistic missile that Houthi rebels in Yemen launched towards Israel prompted sirens to go off in Tel Aviv and surrounding areas, but the country’s air defense system intercepted, less than hour before the event began.

Hezbollah a few hours later launched five ballistic missiles from Lebanon towards an IDF base north of Tel Aviv. The Iron Dome air defense system intercepted them. It also intercepted four of the five rockets that Hamas launched towards Tel Aviv — shrapnel from one of them that struck the ground slightly injured two women.

Or Gat is among those who spoke at the Bereaved Families Memorial Ceremony. 

Many of the hostage families refused to attend a government-organized memorial that Israeli televisions broadcast later on Monday.

Cousin was a ‘person of peace’

Dickmann told the Blade that while she was at the memorial she was “very concentrated on the struggle to bring back the hostages on time, understanding that it’s both critical in the manner that is life or death matter and it is also urgent, understanding that our people are held by their captors who at any time aim a gun at their heads.”

“They must be returned before they’re executed so, I was very concentrated on that,” she said. 

Dickmann also said the memorial — and marking the first anniversary of Oct. 7 — made her “understand there are thousands of families affected by Oct. 7.”

“On this day, so many youngsters were burned alive in their cars trying to run away from the Nova festival,” she said. “In the safe rooms there were so many couples of parents hiding their children in closets and underneath beds and shushing them in order to allow them to survive the attack on their houses and today I just realize there are … so many orphans left and so many stories of people who left everything behind, who left their whole families behind to come and try to save lives on this day of the attack. Some of them managed and rescued my uncle and some of them managed to save lives and lost their own.”

She also noted 101 hostages remain in Gaza.

“This is the most important thing and most urgent thing; to get back all of them to their houses and their families,” said Dickmann. “They deserve to be set free, and this is what I’m fighting for.”

She ended the interview by describing her cousin as a “person of peace.”

“We lost so much, on both sides of the border,” said Dickmann. “I’d really like this war to end; everybody to come back to their homes; the Palestinians to their homes with no one else getting hurt; residents of northern Israel going back to their houses and being safe and secure, residents of the South being able to go back to their houses and most of all the people being held hostage to come back, to safety, to their house, to their families and not ever being having to be worried about whether they will be separated from their parents or children or brothers and lives again.”

“I really hope that soon, as soon as possible, we will be able to reach a deal that will bring everybody home and bring peace upon us and we will be able to live alongside each other in peace,” she added.

TEL AVIV, Israel — I was sound asleep at 11 p.m. (4 p.m. ET) on Monday when Tzofar, an app that notifies users of incoming rockets, started to go off. The blaring alarm woke me up. It indicated a “red alert” for “incoming (missiles and rocket fire.)”

I sat up in bed, opened the app to see whether I was under “red alert.” I was just south of it, so I did not need to seek refuge in the stairwell, which is the building’s designated safe room. Less than a minute later I heard a series of loud booms that shook the building.

Hezbollah launched five ballistic missiles from Lebanon towards an Israel Defense Forces base north of Tel Aviv. The explosions that I heard were Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepting them.

The whole situation was over in less than two minutes — it was the third “red alert” for “incoming (missiles and rocket fire)” that I received on my phone on Monday, which was a year since Hamas launched its surprise attack against southern Israel.

Hamas at around 11 a.m. (4 a.m. ET) launched five rockets that triggered alerts in southern Tel Aviv. Iron Dome intercepted four of them. Shrapnel from the rocket that hit the ground left two women slightly injured. I heard the interceptions in the distance. I walked onto my balcony a couple of minutes later, and saw a man hugging a young woman who was standing on her balcony across the street. She was clearly upset.

I walked to a nearby coffee shop about half an hour later, and ordered an iced coffee. I walked back to my building and started working again. I called my mother a short time later to let her know that everything was fine. I also sent several text messages to my husband and other loved ones and friends that reiterated that point.

The Houthis in Yemen launched a ballistic missile towards Israel shortly after 5:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. ET) that the IDF intercepted. I was in Hostage Square outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art when I heard warning messages on people’s phones. I looked at the Tzofar app, and saw Hostage Square was outside of the “red alert” area. I then logged onto two Israeli media outlets’ — the Times of Israel and Haaretz — websites that I have bookmarked on my phone and read the IDF had intercepted the Houthi missile.

More than a thousand people were gathered in Hostage Square less than 90 minutes later, watching an Oct. 7 memorial concert on a large screen that had been set up. The IDF Home Front Command has limited the number of people who can gather in one place in Tel Aviv because of the continued threats of rocket and missile attacks from Gaza and Lebanon.

This limit is 2,000.

The sounds of war have been a constant backdrop of this trip.

I begin every day with a swim in the Mediterranean Sea at Hilton Beach, which is Tel Aviv’s gay beach. These swims help me stay somewhat sane while I am here in Israel. 

Israeli fighter jets and helicopters with missiles strapped to them regularly fly north along the coast towards Lebanon. Drones can also be heard. This scene plays out against the context of people swimming, kayaking, and paddleboarding in the water, and others walking and jogging on the nearby beach promenade.

The Nova Music Festival site where Hamas militants killed 360 people and took 40 others hostage on Oct. 7 is located outside of Re’im, a kibbutz that is roughly two miles from the Gaza Strip. It is about an hour and 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv.

I visited the site on Oct. 5.

Large IDF Home Front Command banners warn visitors they had 15 seconds to reach makeshift shelters — large concrete barriers placed together — in case of incoming rockets. 

“If you receive an alert, lie on the ground and protect your head with your hands for 10 minutes,” the banner reads.

There were no alerts while I was at Nova. I did, however, hear several Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

I stopped at a roadside restaurant in Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz that is roughly three miles north of the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, after I left Nova. I had a sandwich for lunch and ordered an ice coffee for the drive back to Tel Aviv. I was walking to my car and I heard two distant Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The second one shook the ground beneath my feet.

I was back in Tel Aviv less than an hour later. It was the last day of Rosh Hashanah, and Shabbat. Hilton Beach, where I had taken my morning swim earlier in the day, was packed.

Life, at least for Israelis who live in Tel Aviv, goes on amid the sounds of war.

Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers will be on assignment in Israel through Oct. 14.

HERZLIYA, Israel — Hundreds of people on Tuesday attended a memorial service for a gay Israel Defense Force major who was killed while fighting Hamas militants in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Sagi Golan, 30, was at home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya with his fiancé, Omer Ohana, when the militant group launched its surprise attack against from the Gaza Strip.

Ohana told the Washington Blade during an interview after the memorial service that Golan woke him up at around 6:30 a.m. after rocket sirens began to sound.

“We ran to the shelter in our house,” he said. “After that we just opened the news and the headline was ‘Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.'”

Ohana said people in the Israeli communities around Gaza were “begging for help.” Golan started to pack his IDF uniforms, and Ohana made him coffee.

“10 minutes later we were already at the doorstep kissing goodbye,” Ohana recalled. “That was the last time I saw him.” 

“I told him not to be a hero,” he said. “He gave me a kiss, he told me we’re getting married in a week, don’t be silly.”

Golan deployed to Be’eri, a kibbutz that is near the border between Israel and Gaza.

He sent Ohana a heart emoji message to him via WhatsApp every hour “just to reassure he’s there.” Golan sent his last message to his fiancé and “to anyone” at 12:18 a.m. on Oct. 8, 2023.

Ohana told the Blade the next three days were “unbearable suffering, searching for Sagi under every rock in Israel, at every hospital emergency room, at every ‘hamal’ (IDF war room.)”

“We went everywhere, we did everything we could to find him,” said Ohana.

An IDF officer three days later “knocked on our door” to notify Sagi’s family that he had been killed. The officer did not speak with Ohana because the IDF did not recognize him as Sagi’s partner.

(The couple had planned to marry — virtually — in Utah on Oct. 14. Israel recognizes same-sex marriages that are legally performed abroad. The couple’s marriage celebration was to have taken place on Oct. 20.)

“I asked for something, and they said I had to request his parents,” Ohana told the Times of Israel. “It made me so angry. I was the one who loved him. But I’m not taken into account. And he wasn’t taken into account.”

The Israeli government says Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival near Re’im, a kibbutz that is a few miles southwest of Be’eri. The Israeli government says the militants also kidnapped more than 200 people on Oct. 7.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 41,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7.

The International Criminal Court in May announced it plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders — Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh. 

Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, said the five men have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel. (A suspected Israeli airstrike on July 31 killed Haniyah while he was in the Iranian capital of Tehran to attend Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration.)

Hamas, which the U.S. and Israel have designated a terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for an Oct. 1 attack at a Tel Aviv light rail station that left seven people dead and more than a dozen others injured. A Bedouin man on Sunday killed an Israel Border Police officer and injured 10 others when he attacked a bus station in Beersheva in southern Israel.

Reuters on Friday reported the Lebanese Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes in Beirut and elsewhere in the country over the last two weeks have killed more than 2,000 people. 

Iran on Oct. 1 launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese capital a few days earlier killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group. 

Hamas and Hezbollah on Monday launched fired rockets that triggered sirens in Tel Aviv and surrounding areas. The Houthi rebels in Yemen on Oct. 7 also launched missiles and drones that prompted additional warnings in central Israel. 

Israel’s air defense system intercepted almost all of the rockets. 

This reporter heard two of the interceptions — the first at around 11 a.m. Israel time (4 a.m. ET) and the second at around 11 p.m. Israel time (4 p.m. ET). The second interception shook the building in which this reporter has been staying.

Ohana was building a bench for children in a garden that Golan planted in Bat Yam, a city that is just south of Tel Aviv, when the first sirens went off.

‘If we are equal in death, we should be equal in life too’

Ohana, with the support of the Aguda, the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel, and other Israeli advocacy groups began to lobby the Knesset to amend the country’s Bereaved Families Law to recognize LGBTQ widows and widowers of fallen servicemembers. Lawmakers last November approved the changes.

“Sagi became a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community in Israel,” Ohana told the Blade. “With Sagi as a symbol, we were able to pass the amendment in the Israeli Knesset.” 

“It wasn’t me,” he added. “I couldn’t have done it if Sagi wasn’t becoming a symbol. Having a gay hero in Israel is something new, something new for the community here.”

Aguda Chair Yael Sinai Biblash was among those who attended Golan’s memorial service.

She described the campaign to change the Bereaved Families Law as “a big effort, and a big success.” 

“I hope that people understand that if we are equal in death we should be equal in life too,” said Sinai.

Gay Israeli pop star performs at Golan’s funeral

Golan had written his wedding vows on his phone.

Ohana told the Blade that his fiancé at 11:44 p.m. on Oct. 7 opened the memo on which they were written, and read them. Golan was shot less than 90 minutes later.

“I imagine Sagi having a notification that the event is about to be completed, because it was 10 until midnight for a whole day at the seventh of October, and just having a moment with himself, remembering love, having a good thought right before he died.” he said. “Knowing Sagi thought those happy thoughts just an hour before he died, saving Israeli citizens from this terror attack is filling me with pride in Sagi. That’s why he became a symbol. That’s why he’s a gay symbol.

Ivri Lider, a gay Israeli pop star, was to have performed at the couple’s wedding celebration. He instead performed at Golan’s funeral.

סרן במיל׳ שגיא גולן ז״ל שנפל בעת קרב בקיבוץ בארי נגד מחבלי החמאס, היה מיועד להתחתן עם בן זוגו עומר בעוד שבוע לצלילי השיר ״זכיתי לאהוב״. הערב הזמר עברי לידר הגיע לבצע את השיר בהלוויתו. שגיא ירד ביום שבת, מבלי לחכות לקריאה לקיבוץ בארי כדי להציל חיים ומשפחות נצורות. pic.twitter.com/epOVTVCMnY

— האגודה למען הלהט"ב בישראל | The Aguda (@AgudaIsraelLGBT) October 12, 2023

“[Sagi] was very special,” said Ohana. “He was very special to all of us.”

Exactly one year ago today, I was working at The Wall Street Journal as a Digital Innovation Fellow when news broke one early morning — a terrorist attack had rocked the Nova Music Festival near Re’im, sending the world into a catastrophic and schismatic debate over life, death, war, zionism and settler colonialism.

What many people may not know is that Israel had already made 2023 the deadliest year on record for Palestinians. Before this attack on Oct. 7, Israel had already killed over 200 Palestinians in the West Bank and zionist settlers were responsible for other killings and enforcing violence on civilians in Gaza. 

Before that, the history of settler colonialism and zionist attacks against the Palestinian people goes as far back as 70 years. 

What a lot of people don’t know is that Gaza was already a nation of refugees who were forced to flee oppression and casualties of military rule from the Egyptian army. The Ottoman Empire held rule over Gaza until 1917 and it then passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli rule. What it had become prior to the current genocide and displacement, was a fenced-off enclave that served as the refugee location of over 2 million Palestinians. 

The end of British rule over the area ended in 1948, where conflict and tensions then arose between Arabs and Jews. This conflict escalated and culminated in war between the newly formed State of Israel and the surrounding populations of Palestinians. 

During the 1950s and 60s, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency provided a refugee agency that, to this day, provides services for over 1.6 million registered Palestinian refugees. 

During the Middle East war in 1967, Israel violently captured the Gaza strip. 

In 1987, Hamas – an extremist organization was formed out of the first Palestinian intifada. 

The uprising was due to the continued siege of the area and settler and zionist colonialism which continuously oppressed Palestinians. 

The war then intensified and the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood formed into Hamas. The armed branch dedicated itself toward destroying Israel and re-establishing Islamic rule in what was then, occupied Palestine. 

The conflict and killings continued as Israel continued to enforce its power over Palestinians, who had already fled prosecution and were displaced due to military rule. 

In 1993, The Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and Palestine, creating a moment of peace. The agreement allowed Palestine to have limited control over Gaza and Jericho in the West Bank. 

Israel then accused Palestinians of undertaking the security agreements and Palestinians were angered by Israel’s accusations and continued settler colonialism. 

This led Hamas to carry out bombing to derail the peace agreement because Israel would not allow Palestinians to live freely after nearly 5 decades of conflict and war. 

During this time, many innocent civilians lost their lives, businesses, homes and any form of stability that they once knew. 

A second intifada happened in 2000 and Israel destroyed the Gaza International Airport – the only direct link for Palestinians to the outside world that wasn’t controlled by Israel. 

Israel then cut off the fishing industry and greatly reduced the output of fish, creating another direct human rights violation to innocent Palestinians. 

In 2005, Gaza was controlled by Israel and completely fenced off to the outside world. 

In 2006, Hamas gained control of Palestinians by overthrowing the successor of Yasser Arafat, President Mahmoud Abbas. 

This is the point in history where international aid was cut off to the civilians that had already endured the casualties of war because Hamas was deemed as a terrorist organization. Israel then left Palestine virtually in the dark by destroying Gaza’s only electrical power plant, causing blackouts. 

Palestinians were literally left in the dark, cut off from the world and its resources, and civilians struggled to survive. 

In 2014, some of the worst casualties of war took place – thousands of Palestinians were murdered, while Israel only counted 67 dead soldiers and six civilian deaths. 

On Oct. 7 2023, Hamas gunmen launched an attack and killed hundreds, while taking dozens of others as hostages. 

This did not begin a war – it further perpetuated a war that had been on-going for over 70 years. 

The Washington Blade returned to Israel to report on the one year mark of the Hamas attacks and spoke to LGBTQ+ sources who condemned Hamas’ actions that led to the retaliatory attacks from Israel following Oct 7. 

The Blade’s article on the LGBTQ+ Palestinian perspective, has since then been censored and removed by Meta. 

The fear behind many publishing platforms and Western media outlets is that pro-Israeli extremists will attack any conscious efforts to report on all sides of the issue fairly – often referencing anti-semitism and other types of hate associated with Jews. 

During my fellowship at WSJ, I felt that I was at a disadvantaged standpoint in my career because there I was – at one of the most prestigious and long-standing newspapers in the country during my first year in the professional world — but in the lowest position possible and with no real power to enact change or share much of my opinion in a way that had any impact. More than that, I was scared to speak up and now realize that this fear was nothing compared to the fear that the murdered and martyred journalists felt at the time leading up to their deaths, or the fear that journalists like Bisan Owda feel everyday as they continue to report from Gaza. 

Being a fellow at a high-ranking newspaper during this pivotal and chaotic time in recent human history, taught me how to be and how not to be a reporter. I learned to report on facts and the facts are, that this war has been greatly disproportionate in terms of a death toll and amount of casualties resulting in one of the largest and most complex human rights issues in history. 

One thing is for sure – I never want to be the type of journalist who reports on such deep and intricate issues, without the care and empathy to understand all the sides involved and the historical background that gives an issue the context necessary to form an opinion. 

The anti-Palestinian movement quickly gained traction because of Hollywood celebrities who took to social media to share their uninformed views on the issue and spearhead campaigns to fund the settler state of Israel that has been colonizing and murdering Palestinians for over 70 years. 

Palestine has been at the forefront of the news for 365 days because of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas – an extremist group of militants that does not represent the entire Palestinian community.

Blaming the entire population of civilians in Gaza for the monstrous attack on Oct 7, would be like blaming the entire population of the United States for a terrorist attack that an extremist group like The Proud Boys or the KKK spearheaded and using that event to justify an entire genocide of North American people. 

On an academic level, Pro-Palestinian liberation is not about destruction, death or creating more casualties of war – it is about liberating themselves from all of those things. It is about Palestinians finally gaining the same rights to live freely and safely as we do here in the United States. 

The frustrations, emotions and anger that are fueling the hate against Palestinians is deeply misplaced and misdirected. 

From a human rights perspective – the only perspective that should really matter – innocent civilians are being murdered, displaced, starved and disappeared on all sides – which is fundamentally wrong. 

Hamas was formed out of frustration, desperation, hate and anger toward settler colonialism, which has only brought on only more pain and suffering to all involved. 

There is ultimately no excuse to fund war or to continue the genocide of Palestinian adults, children and even animals. 

Looking at the numbers, it is evident that Israel’s retaliation against Palestinians for the actions carried out by Hamas has been greatly disproportionate. The death toll became innumerable for the Gaza Health Ministry only a month into the newest phase of this war against Palestinians and lost count as a result of blackouts, a high death toll and the collapse of the healthcare system in Gaza. 

The Gaza Health Ministry estimates that over 40,000 Palestinians – including children, infants and journalists – have been murdered since last October. 

In comparison, ABC 7 reported that the Israeli death toll is estimated to be around 1,200.

None of it is truly justified and we have to hold ourselves, eachother and corporations that fund genocide, accountable for actions that further incites this phase of the war.

LGBTQ+ people especially, have a responsibility to hold people accountable for carrying out acts of hate and creating or further perpetuating human rights violations. 

Being pro-Palestinian does not mean being pro-Hamas and it does not mean being anti-semitic. It simply means that the movement supports Palestinian peoples’ liberation from war, death and zionism. 

In the words of Marsha P. Johnson, ‘no Pride for some of us, without liberation for all of us.’

Though the movement called ‘Queers for Palestine’ has dealt with a lot of negative backlash, they held a march and rally at Saturday’s Day of Action in Los Angeles. More events and information can be found on their social media channels.

Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers will be on assignment in Israel through Oct. 9. Meta also removed this article from Lavers’s Facebook pages shortly after he published it.

Two LGBTQ Palestinians who spoke with the Washington Blade last week condemned Hamas’s surprise attack against southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They also expressed condemnation of the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli government’s policies towards the Palestinians.

Zaheer Subeaux is a queer Palestinian producer, DJ, emcee, and community organizer who lives in California. He is originally from Deir Dibwan, a small city on the West Bank that is a couple miles east of Ramallah, the Palestinian capital.

“Nothing justifies Oct. 7,” Subeaux told the Blade during a Sept. 30 telephone interview. He added the “international community, I think specifically the United States, has this perception that Oct. 7 is this new thing.”

“There’s a very short-lived memory for the American public, and there’s this concept that Palestinians are just creating more trouble,” said Subeaux.

He told the Blade that Jewish settlers before Oct. 7 shot his nephew “just for being on (their) land.” Subeaux said the situation on the West Bank “have been getting worse and worse and worse, and have continued to get worse and worse and worse up until this point, up until October of last year.”

“For a lot of Palestinians who have family back home, this seemed like a proportionate response to an oppressed people,” he said. “For everyone else who’s not paying attention, who allow their tax dollars to continue fund this genocide, for them it’s like, oh, shocking, oh, wow, right out of the blue, because they’re not paying attention to what’s happening.” 

“For the rest of us who actually are, this seemed like a completely reasonable thing for a people to feel during a time like this,” added Subeaux. “I don’t think a lot of people have the context for that.”

Hannah Moushabeck is a queer, second-generation Palestinian American who lives in Massachusetts.

Her family is from West Jerusalem. Moushabeck has relatives in Ramallah and in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and has friends in Gaza with whom she has “been in daily communication.”

“My immediate reactions on Oct. 7 were obviously horror and fear of what’s to come and the violence that happened that day,” she told the Blade on Sept. 30 during a telephone interview.

Moushabeck said it is “not unusual for Palestinians in the diaspora to experience some of this violence happening in our homeland.”

“This is honestly something that’s been going on since well before I was born,” she said. “So, growing up, whenever my parents seemed upset or, Palestinians were being shown in the news, I knew it was likely because they were being killed or involved with some kind of intense violence.” 

Moushabeck said “a lot of Palestinians kind of had an instinct to go through the motions when Oct. 7 happened.”

“We also recognized that it was really unprecedented, and that the reaction and the revenge that the Israeli government took out on Palestinians would be like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” she added. 

Monday marks a year since Oct. 7.

The Israeli government says militants on that day killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival near Re’im, a kibbutz that is a couple miles from the Gaza border. The Israeli government says the militants also kidnapped more than 200 people on Oct. 7.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 41,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7.

Hamas, which the U.S. and Israel have designated a terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for an Oct. 1 attack at a Tel Aviv light rail station that left seven people dead and more than a dozen others injured. A Bedouin man on Sunday killed an Israel Border Police officer and injured 10 others when he attacked a bus station in Beersheva in southern Israel on Sunday.

Reuters on Friday reported the Lebanese Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes in Beirut and elsewhere in the country over the last two weeks have killed more than 2,000 people. Iran last Tuesday launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese capital on Sept. 27 that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group. 

An Israeli airstrike in the West Bank city of Tulkarem on Oct. 3 killed 18 people in a Palestinian refugee camp. 

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, the country’s security agency, said the airstrike killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, a senior Hamas commander, and 11 other Hamas operatives. The Associated Press reported the airstrike also killed a family of four, including two young children.

The AP cites Palestinian officials who say an Israeli airstrike on a mosque in Deir al-Balah, a town in central Gaza, killed at least 19 people.

The International Criminal Court in May announced it plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders — Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh. 

Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, said the five men have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel. (A suspected Israeli airstrike on July 31 killed Haniyah while he was in the Iranian capital of Tehran to attend Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration.)

The Montreal-based Queering the Map — a “community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space” — is an “interface to collaboratively record the cartography of queer life.” Several people who have used Queering the Map are from Gaza.

A person who placed their post near Netzarim Junction in central Gaza notes it was the place where they fell in love with someone in 2021, “the last major Israeli bombardment on Gaza.” The person notes their beloved is a student who has left the enclave.

“Israeli occupation bombs may take everyone and everything you ever loved away: Your mom, your home, your memories,” they wrote in on Queering the Map. “I am so sorry the world failed you, that your mom, sister, best friends, everything is lost in this genocide.”

Another person who used Queering the Map posted their message near Beit Hanoun, a city in the northeast corner of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli city of Sderot less than four miles away.

“IDK how long I will live so I just want this to be my memory here before I die,” reads the post. “I am not going to leave my home, come what may.” 

“My biggest regret is not kissing this one guy. He died two days back. We had told (sic) how much we like each other, and I was too shy to kiss last time. He died in the bombing. I think a big part of me died too. And soon I will be dead. To Younus, I will kiss you in heaven.”

The posts do not indicate when their authors wrote them. The Blade on Saturday heard Israeli airstrikes in Gaza while at the Nova Music Festival memorial and in Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz that is roughly three miles north of the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Moushabeck told the Blade she helped raise funds that allowed her friend, his wife, and two children to leave Gaza and relocate to Cairo. Moushabeck also said she receives photos from other friends who remain inside the enclave.

“Seeing things happen in the news, and then getting personal video, not a video, but a personal video from my friend who’s watching the same things unfold; that was really horrifying,” she said. 

“I’m safe, and I have a lot of privileges living in the diaspora, and so I felt it was my responsibility to bear witness to these,” added Moushabeck.

Tarek Zeidan, the former executive director of Helem, a Lebanese LGBTQ rights group, has launched a fundraiser for a group of transgender women who Israeli airstrikes have made homeless. The campaign has raised more than $19,000.

“While it is contradictory to be focusing on any specific community, vulnerable or otherwise, at a time when entire populations in Lebanon and Gaza are being indiscriminately eliminated, the bitter reality is that humanitarian aid and services will not be available to the majority of queer people in need, especially trans* and non-conforming members of our community,” wrote Zeidan in his appeal. 

“Many humanitarian organizations are not capable or even willing to help, and are now even less likely to given that it is a crisis response,” he added. “We learned this hard lesson during the pandemic and in the aftermath of the 2020 Beirut port explosion and since then little has changed.”

Outright International, National LGBTQ Task Force have called for Gaza ceasefire

Outright International and the National LGBTQ Task Force are two of the many LGBTQ organizations in the U.S. and around the world that have called for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Upwards of 200 people in February marched from Dupont Circle to the Human Rights Campaign and called upon it and other LGBTQ rights groups to “demand an end to the genocide and occupation of Palestine.” No Pride in Genocide, which describes itself as a “coalition of queer and trans Palestinians, Arab, and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) people, Jews, and allies,” organized the event.

“As a queer Palestinian, my identity has sort of been weaponized against us for what is ostensibly a propaganda campaign by the State of Israel,” Moushabeck told the Blade. “We refer to it as ‘pinkwashing.’ They have pumped millions of dollars into what they call Brand Israel in order to project this idea of a queer utopia, queer haven, which, you know, a lot of Israelis say is not accurate.” 

“Certainly, Palestinians are not being asked their sexuality is before their homes are bombed or their families are killed,” she added.

Moushabeck also criticized HRC.

“We have organizational leaders like the Human Rights Campaign who are taking money from war profiteers like weapons manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, giving social capital to those profiting off of this violence,” she said.

Subeaux echoed Moushabeck.

“Our narrative of survival in the United States and in the West for queer rights is being co-opted to fear monger,” said Subeaux. “I don’t want that to be done on my behalf. I don’t want a genocide to be done on my behalf. I don’t want a genocide to be done on queer people’s behalf.”

CAMBODIA

Cambodia’s first ever LGBTQ community space, Cocoon, opened in the capital of Phnom Penh last month, with an event featuring art, dance, and drag performances.

Cocoon aspires to be a safe queer space for everyone and has planned a series of events including community brunches, movie nights, speed dating, and an introduction to queer ballroom culture. The space will also host a queer artist residency program beginning next year.

“To queer Phnom Penh people who do not have a safe space, this is your Cocoon,” says Cocoon founder Ian Goh. “To queer people visiting Phnom Penh, you now have a place to love and be loved unconditionally.”

While the general human rights situation in Cambodia has faced steady criticism from international observers, there has been progress in recent years on encouraging acceptance of the country’s LGBTQ community. The government has promoted LGBTQ-inclusive schools since 2017, and the nation’s monarch has publicly supported same-sex marriage, although it remains illegal in the southeast Asian nation.

EUROPEAN UNION

The European Court of Justice delivered a pair of rulings important for LGBTQ people this week, requiring all European Union member states to recognize legal gender changes carried out in other member states, and ordering Facebook’s parent company Meta to restrict how it collects data about users’ sexual orientations.

ECJ rulings are binding on all 27 EU member states.

The gender change ruling stemmed from a case where a Romanian transgender man, Arian Mirzarafie-Ahi, obtained a legal gender change after moving to the UK, and wanted his legal gender and name recognized when he later returned to Romania in 2021. 

Romania does not have a clear or simple process for its citizens to change their legal gender and refused to recognize Mirzarafie-Ahi’s UK gender change. Mirzarafie-Ahi filed a claim in Romanian court to have his gender and name change registered, and the national courts referred the matter to the ECJ.

In a preliminary ruling issued on Oct 4, the ECJ found that Romania’s refusal to recognize Mirzarafie-Ahi’s legal gender change was a violation of his mobility rights under the EU treaty.

The court found that EU states must recognize legal gender and name changes that have occurred in another EU member state, and they must issue updated identity documents without requiring any additional legal or medical process. The court found that the fact that the UK is no longer a member of the EU is irrelevant in this case, as Mirzarafie-Ahi had begun her gender change process while the UK was still a member.

The ruling stems from the fundamental right of all EU citizens to reside in any EU member state. The court found that refusing to recognize the legal gender and name of an EU citizen imperils that right, because it could prevent a trans person from residing in a country that does not recognize their identity.

“Today’s verdict has shown us that trans people are equal citizens of the European Union. When you have rebuilt a life in another part of the European Union because you are not welcome in your own country, it is normal to ask to be treated with dignity when interacting with the authorities in your home country,” says Mirzarafe-Ahi’s legal counsel Iustina Ionescu.  

In a similar ruling six years ago, the ECJ ruled that EU members must grant residency rights to the same-sex partners of EU citizens in another case that came out of Romania. However, Romania has yet to implement the ruling and continues to refuse to issue residency permits to same-sex spouses, including to the original complainant.

The ECJ also issued another ruling on Oct 4 restricting the way Facebook’s parent company collects data on users’ sexual orientation.

Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems filed a complaint after he received personalized ads on Facebook directed at gay men. Although Schrems had commented on his sexuality publicly, he objected to Facebook using his information for targeted ads.

The court found that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation prohibits social media organizations from collection of personal data, including about a person’s sexual orientation, from outside their platforms for use in targeted ads.

GEORGIA

The government’s sweeping anti-LGBTQ bill was signed into law this week by the speaker of parliament, after the president refused to give it her signature.

The draconian law, which has drawn criticism from the opposition and Western allies, imposes some of the strictest restrictions on LGBTQ people in Europe. The law bans recognition of any same-sex relationship, bans LGBTQ people from adopting, bans trans people from marriage, bans all legal or medical gender change, forbids public gatherings and demonstrations for LGBTQ rights, bans positive portrayals of LGBTQ people in schools and the media, and rebrands the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia on May 17 as a holiday for the sanctity of the family.

The law mimics “LGBT propaganda” laws passed in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Hungary, and Bulgaria, and which have been taken up by far-right parties with close ties to Russia across Europe.

It’s the latest anti-democratic and anti-human rights legislation passed by the ruling Georgian Dream Party, which has strained relations with Georgia’s Western allies. Earlier this year, the EU froze accession talks with Georgia after it passed a law curbing opposition activities.

Georgia heads to the polls on Oct. 26.

HONG KONG

Hong Kong’s top court heard the government’s final appeal of a lower court ruling ordering the city to give same-sex couples equal access to public housing last week.

In Hong Kong, families and married couples are given priority access to social housing, and current policy does not recognize same-sex couples, who are barred from living together in the subsidized apartments.

The Court of Final Appeal’s judges did not seem sympathetic to the government’s arguments on Friday, according to the South China Morning Post. After the hearing, the court reserved judgment.

The CFA ruled last year that Hong Kong must provide a legal framework for recognizing same sex couples and gave the city two years to implement it. So far, the city government has not yet proposed a way to implement the ruling.

Hong Kong is formally part of China, but governs itself semi-autonomously, with a separate court and legal system inherited from the British colonial administration that ended in 1997.

CANADA

A provincial government minister facing reelection in New Brunswick is facing calls to resign after she used the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to compare trans-inclusive education policies to the genocide of Canada’s Indigenous People.

September 30 was established as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation by the Canadian government in 2021. The focus of the day has largely been on the abuse First Nations children suffered in the residential school system, a nationwide network of schools, often run by churches, where First Nations children who had been taken from their families were forcibly assimilated into European Canadian culture. 

Many children suffered loss of culture and language, physical beatings, sexual abuse, starvation, denial of medical care, and thousands of children died in the care of schools, with many being buried in unmarked graves.

Conservative politicians across Canada, who have taken a sharp anti-trans turn over the past few years, used the opportunity to compare trans-inclusionary policies in education to the genocide of First Nations.

Sherry Wilson, New Brunswick’s minister for women’s equality, wrote in a lengthy, since-deleted post on Facebook that her province’s previous policies that allowed trans children to use different names or pronouns at school without parental notification or consent were comparable to the residential schools. Earlier this year, New Brunswick put in place a policy requiring parental notification and consent if a student wants to use a different name or gender.

“The government of the day actually tried to make the case that parents were harmful to their children, and that government schools needed to change their culture and lifestyle,” Wilson’s post read. “The horrible tragedy is a stain on Canadian history, but it was only allowed to happen because children enrolled in school were isolated from their parents’ oversight, input and influence … This must never be allowed to happen again in Canada! We must never put our teachers in a position where they have to hide important parts of a child’s development from their own parents!”

New Brunswick goes to the polls on Oct 21, and the incumbent Progressive Conservatives are in a tight race. Wilson has faced calls to drop out of her reelection bid, but she has remained in the race.

“That she would try to draw this dog-whistle comparison on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation should make every New Brunswicker ashamed that she was recently a minister for this province,” the six chiefs of the Wolastoqey Nation also said in a statement.

Using residential schools as a talking point against trans-inclusive school policies and sex education generally has become a recurring talking point for Canada’s conservatives. 

Another New Brunswick PC candidate, Faytene Grasseschi, made similar statements to CBC last year.

British Columbia Conservative Party leader John Rustad compared residential schools to the province’s LGBTQ-inclusive sex ed curriculum last year. His party is running neck-and-neck with the incumbent New Democrats in BC’s provincial election on Oct 19.

Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers will be on assignment in Israel through Oct. 9.

TEL AVIV, Israel — It has been quiet in Israel’s largest city since I arrived on Friday afternoon.

An Israeli airstrike in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Sept. 27 killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group. Iran on Oct. 1 launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.

Rosh Hashanah ended on Friday. 

Monday will mark a year since Hamas launched its surprise attack against southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. The group, which the U.S. and Israel have designated a terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for an Oct. 1 attack at a Tel Aviv light rail station that left seven people dead and more than a dozen others injured.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 41,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7. Reuters on Friday reported the Lebanese Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes in Beirut and elsewhere in the country over the last two weeks have killed more than 2,000 people.

An Israeli airstrike in the West Bank city of Tulkarem on Thursday killed 18 people in a Palestinian refugee camp. 

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, the country’s security agency, said the airstrike killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, a senior Hamas commander, and 11 other Hamas operatives. The Associated Press reported the airstrike also killed a family of four, including two young children.

The International Criminal Court in May announced it plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders — Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh.

Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, said the five men have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel. (A suspected Israeli airstrike on July 31 killed Haniyah while he was in the Iranian capital of Tehran to attend Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration.)

Here are some things I have seen since I arrived in Tel Aviv.

• Banners that read “Bring Them Home Now!” in reference to the hostages who remain in Gaza are on overpasses and buildings throughout the city. Several people who were jogging along Tel Aviv’s seafront promenade on Saturday morning were wearing “Bring Them Home Now!” t-shirts.

• “FCK HMS” stickers are on streetlights across Tel Aviv.

• I could not access Al Jazeera’s website on Saturday. (The Israeli government in May banned the Qatar-based network from working in the country, and shut down its bureaus in East Jerusalem and Nazareth, a predominantly Arab city in northern Israel. A judge in June extended the ban for 45 days. Israeli soldiers on Sept. 22 raided Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah, the Palestinian capital, and ordered its closure for 45 days.)

• Two men and a woman who were wearing nightclub wrist bands were sitting on beach chairs at Hilton Beach at around 8 a.m. on Saturday and talking about traveling to the Philippines and Thailand. A helicopter with what appeared to be two missiles attached to it flew south along the city’s seafront while swimmers, kayakers, and paddleboarders were in the water.

• A middle-aged man who was wearing an IDF uniform had a machine gun strapped across his body while he had dinner with his family at a restaurant on Friday night.

The situation in Gaza, in northern Israel, in Lebanon, and on the West Bank is obviously very different than in Tel Aviv.

The events of the last year have been horrific for LGBTQ communities in Israel, in Palestine, and throughout the region. The Los Angeles Blade remains committed to documenting this impact while on the ground in Israel.

International News Editor Michael K. Lavers will be on assignment in Israel through Oct. 9.

Lavers will be in the country on Oct. 7, a year after Hamas launched its surprise attack against Israel, and will cover how the country’s LGBTQ community has coped with that horrible day and its ongoing aftermath. Lavers will also cover how the war in the Gaza Strip has impacted LGBTQ Palestinians — in both Gaza and the West Bank and among the Palestinian diaspora in the U.S.

Lavers arrived in Israel three days after Iran launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at the country.

An Israeli airstrike in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Sept. 27 killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group.

Hezbollah since last October has launched rockets into northern Israel. The Israeli military earlier this week began a ground incursion into southern Lebanon. 

“The horrific events of Oct. 7 and their aftermath have impacted LGBTQ people in Israel, in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East and around the world,” said Lavers. “It is critically important for the Washington Blade to document the situation on the ground, and to show how the horrific events of the last year have impacted LGBTQ communities throughout the region.”

“We are committed to objective coverage of the situation in the Middle East and to highlighting the plight of LGBTQ Palestinians and Israelis caught up in the war,” said Blade editor Kevin Naff. “The generous support of our readers enables this coverage so please consider making a donation at bladefoundation.org to ensure the Blade’s 55-year record of award-winning journalism continues.”

The LGBTQ+ Victory Institute will honor Peruvian Congresswoman Susel Paredes at its annual International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference that will take place in D.C. in December.

Paredes, a long-time activist who in 2021 became the first lesbian woman elected to the South American country’s Congress, will receive the 2024 LGBTQ+ Victory Institute Global Trailblazer Award.

Paredes and her wife, Gracia Aljovín, married in Miami in 2016. The two women sued the Peruvian government after the country’s Constitutional Court denied their request to register their marriage. 

“It is a true honor and a recognition that I deeply value,” said Paredes in a post to her X account after she learned the Victory Institute will honor her in D.C.

Victory Institute Executive Director Elliot Imse described Paredes as “a true champion through her activism and political engagement for decades.”

“Her historic election to the Congress of Peru is just one of many testaments to her status as a true trailblazer who is exceptionally deserving of this honor,” added Imse.