Stop using LGBTQ people to justify differentiating between Arab and Ukrainian refugees
Ukraine is under attack and the world is standing in solidarity, from Istanbul to New York.
The United States and much of Europe have made moves to accept refugees running from the Russian-spurred devastation that has destroyed homes and killed loved ones.
My name is Hana Khalyleh, and welcome to this week's This Is America. I’m a digital producer with the Ohio Digital Optimization Team. I’ve seen many stories about the response to Ukraine. I am glad to see the world extend a hand.
But I’m wondering where the government support was when, last Eid al-Fitr, missiles rained down on Palestine. I’m wondering where the open arms were in 2015, when Syrian refugees were met with tear gas and water cannons at the Hungary border. I’m wondering about the hesitance to accept Afghan refugees amid violent Taliban upheaval, and why it doesn’t apply to Ukrainians fleeing turmoil.
Much has been said about the disparity between treatment of Ukrainian and Arab refugees, and about the way news organizations juxtapose them.
CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata said, “this isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan. … This is a relatively civilized, relatively European” place. Al Jazeera English anchor Peter Dobbie said, "These are not obviously refugees looking to get away from areas in the Middle East... (or) North Africa. They look like any European family."
Both examples are cited by The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) in a statement calling for more responsibility, to stop blithely contrasting the lives of Arab people to white people in Ukraine, to stop treating the Middle East like an innately violent region, one where acts of brutality that kill children deserve indifference.
But beyond incorrect arguments that the default state of the Middle East is wartime, and that people who look European deserve more sympathy than someone who looks like me, I’ve seen another argument unfold on social media: that Arab and North African refugees don’t deserve aid and that they are a danger to progressive spaces. And often, the ongoing battle for LGBTQ rights in the region is posed to justify the violence it is met with.
‘Do you know what they do to gay people there?’: A flawed, racist argument
I’ve seen Twitter threads of queer activists and conservative officials alike (many of whom are now rallying for Ukraine) questioning how someone can both stand in solidarity with LGBTQ people and still stand with Palestinian refugees.
Even within the LGBTQ spaces and chat servers I've frequented before (and since) the COVID-19 pandemic began, I can recall an instance when I've brought up the need for solidarity with Palestinian refugees and families in Gaza, and have been met with a fellow community member replying, "Do you know what they do to gay people there?"
But I'm a queer, nonbinary Palestinian-Jordanian. My existence stands strong in the holes of this argument.
Queer Middle Eastern people have always existed, even if we’re not always visible
Let's be clear: gay Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) people exist, and we have a rich queer history in the region, with many fighting for liberation in their own countries.
But this intersection is often invisible. I don’t see myself, or my own fights, reflected in the queer spaces I inhabit. Despite knowing I'm not alone, the invisibility feels lonely.
Even within LGBTQ stories and conversations, white voices are often centered, and discussions about the burdens people face at the intersection of race and queer identity are forgotten.
I can count on one hand the favorable mainstream depictions of MENA characters I’ve seen. I can count on one finger the times they’ve been queer.
My family understands one half of my experience and my partner understands another. But I'm real. People like me are real. We exist outside of hate-fueled exclusionary hypotheticals.
Stop using my identity to abandon refugees of color
Twitter memes of queer MENA people being thrown from buildings by terrorist groups are, depressingly, the most common depiction of my intersectional identity that I see. This is how the world reflects my image back at me: the trauma of bigotry, reduced to a political tool.
As such, queer MENA people are simultaneously ignored in LGBTQ spaces, and politically used to justify the racist dehumanization of people of color. We’re forgotten, and then pointed at only as a reason to abandon our families.
But gay people live in the MENA region, and more are born every day (being “born that way” is a popular theory, but why do so many seem to think that only white parents have gay children?).
We cannot look at refugees from anywhere as a monolith; like any large group, queer variety exists within it. So what of queer refugees? What of LGBTQ people in Yemen, Palestine and Afghanistan, who are supposedly being inevitably killed? What of the people that the tweeters claim to care so strongly about?
Many countries don’t have full protections for queer people
LGBTQ protections aren’t universal. In one country, 375 transgender people were murdered in 2021 alone.
If I told you this country had a crisis and refugees needed to be taken in, would you feel hesitant? What if I told you that country was the U.S.?
That’s the problem with saying "they throw gay people off of buildings." If you judge a nation solely by its heaviest brutalization of vulnerable people, few countries would be seen favorably. But we don’t scrutinize all nations through the lens of their most heinous actions. Only ones we don’t like.
As "Don’t Say Gay" laws and mandates suggesting trans healthcare be treated as child abuse spring up in Florida and Texas, we know state-sanctioned queerphobia is not exclusive to MENA countries. Like much of Europe, Ukraine doesn't have very progressive LGBTQ laws. There’s no recognition of same-sex marriage, and in 2017, Ukraine stood against LGBTQ protections against hate crimes, citing Christian values. Even now, transgender women in Ukraine are unable to leave because their government IDs mark them as male, and many fear anti-gay laws in surrounding European nations.
Why is the battle for queer liberation in Ukraine not mentioned, when this is the “gotcha” presented to supporters of Palestine? Is it simply that Ukrainians "look European?”
I do not bring this up to argue that Ukrainians don’t deserve unconditional support. They do. The world is doing right by letting them in. Rather, I’m assessing the uneven conditions set for different nations.
While I hope these countries expand LGBTQ liberation, now is not the time for that conversation. You cannot legalize queer protections when shrapnel is raining down on you.
‘Why does it feel like such a daunting task to ask others to care?’
My friend Noor, a Lebanese Muslim gay man, said it best: “When people say that they wish to help 'the Ukrainians that are just like them' I feel a pang of pain knowing Palestinians are just like me. People from Yemen are just like me. People in Lebanon are just like me. Why don't we treat people as people, no matter where they’re from? Why does it feel like such a daunting task to ask others to care?"
We shouldn’t be silent if vulnerable people are abandoned.
Stop using people like me to justify cherry-picking which refugees you want to care about.
We should care about them all.
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