As a member of the LGBTQ+ community and advocate for human rights, it is troubling to witness segments of our community aligning themselves with Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. This alliance is both paradoxical and perilous, given these groups’ persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Certain LGBTQ+ groups have expressed solidarity with pro-Palestinian causes, sometimes extending support to organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In recent years, certain LGBTQ+ groups have expressed solidarity with pro-Palestinian causes, sometimes extending support to organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. For example, during various Pride parades in 2024, some groups organized marches for Palestine with slogans such as “No pride in genocide,” “Gays for Gaza,” “Queers for Hamas,” and “We are all Palestinian”—never mind the lack of LGBTQ+ rights in Palestinian territories.
Such expressions of solidarity overlook the realities faced by LGBTQ+ individuals living in regions controlled by these groups. Hamas criminalizes homosexuality in Gaza, for example, and LGBTQ+ individuals face imprisonment, torture, and even death. Many LGBTQ+ Palestinian Gazans, therefore, risk their lives to escape to Israel, where they find legal protection and even social acceptance.
Hamas’s charter states, “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” This ideology leaves little room for the acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights because it is rooted in a strict interpretation of Islamic law, which deems homosexuality a grave sin, often punishable by death.
Extremist groups like Hamas enforce this view through both policy and violence, drawing from Hadiths such as, “Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Lot, execute both participants” (Sunan Abu Dawud 38:4447). In Gaza, governed by Hamas since 2007, LGBTQ+ individuals live in constant fear—subject to imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killings. Reports of public floggings and “honor” crimes reflect the militant enforcement of anti-LGBTQ+ doctrine, leaving no space for queer existence, let alone rights. Similarly, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State, seeks to establish a religiously governed Palestinian state and rejects any peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals in territories governed by Palestinian groups is not hypothetical. In October 2022, 25-year-old Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, a gay Palestinian from Hebron, sought asylum in Israel, in order to live as an openly gay man. He was accepted by Israeli society and was living amidst its vibrant LGBTQ+ community. Subsequently, however, the Palestinian leadership of Hebron tortured and paraded him as an example, and he was later discovered decapitated.
Solidarity with oppressed populations is a cornerstone of our activism but it should not come at the expense of our own community’s safety and rights.
Faced with such repression, scores of LGBTQ+ Palestinians risk their lives annually to escape to Israel. The journey is dangerous because they must evade detection by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority, as well as navigate borders. Often, they rely on Israeli and international LGBTQ+ networks to seek refuge. The contrast between the two regions is stark: In Israel, LGBTQ+ individuals have legal protection, social acceptance, and community support, but these are absent in Gaza and Palestinian territories.
As members of the LGBTQ+ community, we must assess the implications of supporting organizations that persecute individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Solidarity with oppressed populations is a cornerstone of our activism but it should not come at the expense of our own community’s safety and rights. Aligning with groups that espouse ideologies antithetical to LGBTQ+ rights undermines the principles we strive to uphold.
The alliance between segments of the LGBTQ+ community and Islamist terrorist organizations is a dangerous and increasingly lethal contradiction.
