Academic Controversy Erupts: Rutgers Professor Redefines Hamas' Treatment Of LGBTQ Palestinians (WATCH)

By Javier Sanchez | Sunday, 07 April 2024 12:00 PM
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Academic Controversy Erupts: Rutgers Professor Redefines Hamas' Treatment Of LGBTQ Palestinians (WATCH)

Maya Mikdashi, an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, recently argued that the depiction of Hamas' mistreatment of LGBTQ Palestinians should be considered as "homophobic violence."

This controversial statement was made during a discussion titled "Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle."

Mikdashi, along with Nadine Naber, a professor at the University of Illinois, challenged the widely held belief that Palestinians and Hamas are oppressive towards their LGBTQ citizens. Mikdashi posited that the mere acknowledgment of Hamas' harsh treatment of LGBTQ individuals is, in itself, a manifestation of prejudice.

Fox News quoted Mikdashi as saying, "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. 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."

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An audience member chimed in, labeling the situation as "violence." Mikdashi concurred, adding, "It’s homophobic. It’s violent." Naber echoed this sentiment, affirming it as "homophobic violence."

Mikdashi further argued that the focus should shift from merely considering pinkwashing to understanding it as a form of homophobia. Naber supported this viewpoint, suggesting that the underlying assumption is based on a "racist assumption" that Arab culture is inherently "hyper-misogynist."

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Naber also accused Israel of sexual assault, attributing it to the nation's "colonialist founding." She stated, "[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."

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