Do these people know homosexuality is illegal in the US-funded Palestinian Authority?

(JPost) —  A New York City LGBT Community Center’s decision to host an event of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid last week has drawn sharp criticism.

Prominent US gays and the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Wednesday laced into the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s international director, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was a group of “self-hating gays” who “are working against the interests of their own brothers and sisters and should be shunned by all LGBT NGOs. By accepting them, the New York center is providing a fig leaf for Arab homophobia.”

He continued, “Gay anti-Zionism is an oxymoron in that Israel is the only country in the Middle East and in the Islamic region where sexual diversity can be practiced freely without discrimination. In fact, many Palestinian and other Arab gays have sought refuge in Tel Aviv. Gays certainly had no such rights under South African Apartheid, and to even apply that term to Israel is defamatory and the theft of another people’s narrative.”

In February, the LGBT Center agreed to provide space during “Israeli Apartheid Week” to the anti-Israel group Siege Busters, to raise money for a new flotilla to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

As for the center’s move to host Queers Against Israeli Apartheid last week, Lucas told the Post, “The president of the board of directors for the LGBT Center, Mario Palumbo, and its executive director, Glennda Testone, are staunch anti-Zionists. In fact, they are anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli to the point that they would not meet with representatives from major Jewish organizations (Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) that wanted to explain to them that the word ‘apartheid’ cannot be applicable to the Jewish state.”

It appears that the activists from Siege Busters have switched over to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid so they can argue that their group is involved in LGBT issues.

“If the NYC LGBT Center is to embrace this new ‘policy of moral relativism’ it will need to open its doors immediately to other hate organizations that cleverly append the word ‘queer’ to their names, like ‘Queer Neo Nazis, ‘Queers for al- Qaida,’ ‘Queers for Ahmadinejad,’ ‘Queers for Prop 8,’ or ‘Queers Against Gay Adoption,’ ‘Queers for AIDS,’ Lucas said.

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar: Homosexuals are “a minority of perverts and morally sick.”

Hamas, the militant and political group in the Palestinian Territories have said that they win the Palestinian Authority Parliamentary election, they would ban men and women dancing together and will strip gay men and women of the few rights they have in the territory that they have at present.

Dr Mahmoud Zahar (pictured), the groups leader in Gaza, in an article on an Arabic website condemned the rights that gays have in Israel and made it clear that he thinks that gays are perverts. “Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?” He asked on the Elaph website.

Despite the impression that Dr Zahar made, homosexuality is officially illegal in the Palestinian Authority and can result in long prison sentences or a death sentence if authorised by the President.