Rutgers Professor Claims it is ‘Homophobic’ to Point Out How Hamas Brutalizes LGBTQ People

Naber argues that it is racist to believe that Arab culture is hyper misogynistic or values honor. She states that Israel uses rape to prevent Hamas militants from attacking.

The Rutgers recording of this event stops here. No one says anything. No one does anything. Mikdashi… pic.twitter.com/tSmbT2Veed

— Stu (@thestustustudio) March 30, 2024

Maya Mikdashi, an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and a lecturer in the Program for Middle East Studies at Rutgers University, participated in a recent discussion where she claims accurately describing Hamas’ brutalization of LGBTQ Palestinians should be labeled “homophobic violence.”

Mikdashi participated in a discussion titled “Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle,” where she pushed back on the complaint that Palestinians and Hamas mistreat LGBTQ citizens.

She was joined by University of Illinois professor Nadine Naber.

Mikdashi’s claim? The mere assertion of Hamas’ brutality against LGBTQ people is itself a form of bigotry.

“So I’ve been at protests where I’m then told, ‘Don’t you know what Hamas would do to you, if you were in Palestine.’ And we have to start naming this, actually, as homophobic,” Mikdashi said, as Naber vocally agreed. “You cannot rehearse violence to queer people and be like, ‘don’t you know … A, B, you would be…’ in really excruciating detail. I think we have to actually shift it.”

“It’s violence,” an audience member said.

“Homophobic violence,” Naber affirmed.

“And we have to move it from thinking only in terms of pinkwashing to actually understanding pinkwashing as a form of homophobia,” Mikdashi said

Naber further suggested that the concept was based on a “racist assumption” that Arab culture is “hyper-misogynist.”

Naber further suggested that the concept was based on a “racist assumption” that Arab culture is “hyper-misogynist.”

She insisted that Israel is guilty of sexual assault based on its “colonialist founding,” saying, “[I]ndeed the practices of rape and sexual assault that have been well-documented during the founding of Israel and continued today are not an exception or a secondary impact of colonial violence but are part of the settler colonial White supremacist logics and practices of Israel that conflate colonized women with the land and nature and assume that therefore to dominate the land necessitates dominating Palestinian women’s bodies and their reproductive capacities from 1948 until today.”