Gays for Gaza

A person can hold multiple identities simultaneously, without contradiction—even when they intersect in complex or unexpected ways. At my core, I am a family man and a committed Zionist. I am Jewish by heritage, culture, and peoplehood; an atheist who draws meaning from Jewish ethics and history rather than theology, with little interest in theology of any kind and certainly no Muslim identity; and I am openly gay. I have fought for decades to secure gay equal rights and remain fiercely sensitive to homophobia and any assault on the principle of universal equality.

Born in Africa, I am an immigrant and proud American citizen. At 62, I am aging rapidly yet determined to make every year count.

These intersectional identities constantly create intersecting lines of thought, dialogue, and occasional tension between my own experience and the identities of others.

After reports of sexual violence against Israeli hostages in Gaza, some questions strike me… Freed hostages, including two teenage boys forced to perform sexual acts on each other under guard threats and three adult men who witnessed or endured assaults, testified to unmistakable homosexual acts by Hamas captors.

Those same Palestinian captors belong to a movement that executes openly gay Arabs.

Yet the paradise they fight for is an exclusive straight-male harem. All of this is exclusively for heterosexual male believers—there is not one verse, not one hadith, not one classical scholar who ever promised a single male companion for women or gay men. We gay men have been deliberately excluded from the joys of heaven–it is heavenly apartheid decreed! Never mind the exclusion of women (in this case, let women fight for their own sexual gratification!)

For the uninitiated – Houris (ḥūr ʿīn) are custom-created female sex companions—not human women—made solely for believing men in paradise: large lustrous black-and-white eyes, full swelling breasts, transparent pearl-like skin, untouched by man or jinn, restored to virginity after every single act of intercourse (Qur’an 55:56–74, 56:35–37, 78:33).

The Hamas guard who assaulted a male hostage to act on forbidden desires gets zero houris and zero acknowledgment in the next life, while his heterosexual male comrade gets the celestial brothel. This is the future you march for: sexual supremacism for straight men, annihilation for everyone else. Below is a list of sexual entitlements from the primary sources every fighter knows.

• Every martyr is married to seventy-two wide-eyed houris (Sunan al-Tirmidhi 1663 & 2562, graded hasan sahih).
• The believer will have the sexual strength of one hundred men in eating, drinking, desire, and intercourse (Tirmidhi 2459, graded hasan).
• There will be a weekly market in paradise where men walk past beautiful forms of men and women; whichever image they desire, they simply enter it and have sex, no questions asked (Tirmidhi 2550).
• Pearl-like immortal boys circulate with wine goblets, described as “scattered pearls” (Qur’an 52:24, 76:19).
• A houri will gaze at her master and declare: “I am made for you and you alone” (Al-Tabarani).
• A man may marry any woman he desires in paradise—even another man’s earthly wife—proving absolute, eternal male entitlement (Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din, Vol. 4, Book 40, Ch. 7).
• Believers get eternal erections and nonstop desire, orgasm after orgasm, with no fatigue (Abu Umamah in Ibn Majah 4337, graded hasan).
• Morning romps with 100 virgins before breakfast (variant of Ibn Majah 4337 from Abu Hurayrah, graded sahih by al-Albani in As-Silsilah As-Saheehah 367).
• One union with a houri lasts up to 70 years (al-Suyuti in Al-Haba’ik fi Sharh al-Muwatta’, based on hyperbolic narrations).

As a gay man, I feel excluded! Where are my benefits? Am I not equal and worthy? This is unquestionably apartheid. It’s sexual discrimination and exclusion. This is simply bigotry!

Those “Queers for Palestine” crowds should wave their banners higher. The men they champion rape male hostages today and collect their seventy-two eternal virgins tomorrow. March louder, you progressive lesbians and non-binary activists, for a movement whose paradise reserves every pleasure for straight men and leaves you with exactly zero. Keep chanting, straight women in keffiyehs—you are cheering for the same cosmological brothel that erases your own desires.

As an openly gay Jew who spent decades fighting for the right to exist without apology, I watch you spit on everything I bled for. Your signs are not solidarity; they are contempt aimed straight at me and, far worse, at yourselves.

Every chant clears the path for the day Hamas-style rule arrives in your cities. Every flag you wave is a welcome mat for the roof from which the next gay man—maybe you—will be thrown. You are not allies of the oppressed; you are the advance guard of your own annihilation, eagerly oiling the rope that will hang you.

The Israeli boys forced into sexual acts at gunpoint already paid the price for your theater. The gay Arabs executed in Gaza send their regards from the grave you are busy digging alongside them.

Keep marching. Just understand: the harem you’re helping build has no place for any of us.