Palestinians persecute LGBTQIA+ people while Israel protects them.

Without the right to live in freedom and dignity, all other rights cannot be meaningfully realized. Queer Palestinians live under the same settler-colonial regime of occupation, siege, bombardment, imprisonment, torture, forced displacement, and military assaults as every other Palestinian, while also facing additional challenges associated with sexuality and gender identity. No meaningful rights discussion can begin without dismantling the colonial structure first.

Far from protecting queer Palestinians, Israel has repeatedly weaponized their vulnerability. Israeli intelligence has repeatedly blackmailed LGBTQIA+ Palestinians by threatening to expose their sexual orientation or gender identity in exchange for collaboration. In 2014, veterans of Israeli Intelligence Unit 8200 revealed that the unit used surveillance data, including on sexual orientation, to pressure Palestinians into becoming informants. In the Palestinian context, this practice is known as isqat (extortion). As the Palestinian organization alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity argues, this is not simply an abuse of queer Palestinians but part of a broader colonial system in which surveillance, coercion, and entrapment are routine mechanisms of control.

Colonial violence does not only destroy bodies and land. It also shapes the internal social and psychological conditions of the colonized society. Decades of settler-colonial violence against Palestinian society have fostered defensiveness around identity and tradition. Pinkwashing deepens this dynamic by portraying queerness as foreign, Western, or aligned with the colonizer, isolating queer Palestinians from their own communities and casting them as victims in need of rescue rather than active agents of social transformation and collective liberation.

Palestinian society is not monolithic. Like every society, it includes a range of views and experiences. While certain norms may be repressive, youth-led, feminist, and queer movements are actively working to build a more inclusive society. Organizations such as alQaws and Aswat work to challenge homophobia while also confronting the structures of colonialism and occupation. As alQaws has written, "queer liberation is tied to the liberation of Palestine and all Palestinians." These internal struggles belong to Palestinians themselves and must never be weaponized to justify colonial domination or undermine those fighting for justice on all fronts.

Israel's self-promotion as a haven for LGBTQIA+ rights is part of an explicitly state-funded propaganda campaign known as pinkwashing, backed by hundreds of millions of shekels allocated by the Israeli Foreign Ministry under its "Brand Israel" campaign. It promotes a false narrative of a liberal, civilized Israel versus a backward Palestinian society, to deflect attention from its settler colonialism, while alienating and disempowering Palestinian queer people.

The image of Israel as a haven for LGBTQIA+ people collapses under scrutiny. Same-sex marriage is not legal in Israel, where Orthodox rabbinical authorities control all marriages. Non-binary identities are not legally recognized. Anti-LGBTQIA+ violence has included fatal attacks and stabbings at Pride events, while religious and conservative political parties oppose many LGBTQIA+ rights.

Even if this claim were true, it would not justify military occupation, apartheid, siege, genocide, or the denial of an entire people's right to self-determination. Many societies continue to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ people. None of that grants another state the right to colonize, bomb, or dispossess them.