More on Israel and Gay Rights

An instructive piece by Blair Kuntz appeared on Znet. Here's an excerpt:

The Nationality and Entry into Israel law, the same law which denies the rights of Israeli Arab citizens to marry Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, according to Human Rights Watch, has in fact led to a crackdown on gay Palestinians in Israel. Now, no official status is possible, so most gays who do find their way to Israel soon find themselves objects of police protection and are arrested and summarily expelled. Obviously, in contrast to the claims of pro-Israeli defenders, Palestinian gays are no more welcome or protected in Israel than heterosexual Palestinians. Both are seen as demographic threats to the Jewish population, and all of Israel's high-sounding words about protecting gays are revealed as empty rhetoric.

Furthermore, as Israeli defenders decry their Arab neighbors supposed contempt for gays and women, they never acknowledge the role Israel has played in encouraging both Islamic and Christian religious fundamentalists hostile to gay rights. Just as the United States promoted and funded religious fundamentalist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaida, and the Ayotollah Khomeni in Iran while over the years actively helping to overthrow or de-stabilize secular governments in Iran, Iraq, and Egypt, Israel too has played the role of the sorcerer's apprentice in encouraging Islamic fundamentalism, trying to defeat, as former intelligence director for the Defense Intelligence Agency, states, "Arab nationalism using Muslim zealots [26]". As Charles Freeman, a veteran U.S. diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, states: "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet [the Israeli domestic intelligence agency], which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO [27] (Dreyfuss, p. 191]."