World
Ukrainian ambassador to U.S. highlights support of LGBTQ, intersex rights
Oksana Markarova spoke at servicemembers photo exhibit in D.C.
Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova on Jan. 26 spoke in support of LGBTQ and intersex rights during an event that highlighted her country’s LGBTQ servicemembers.
“(The) LGBTQ+ community is an inseparable community of us, whether it’s here or in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “The faster we can stop any discrimination, the faster we will win, not only in the battlefield in Ukraine, but we also will win globally.”
Markarova spoke during a photo exhibit at Ukraine House that showcased LGBTQ and intersex Ukrainian servicemembers.
QUA ā LGBTQ Ukrainians in America, the Ukrainian Union of the LGBT Military and KyivPride organized the exhibit that features photographs from Alim Yakubov, a Crimean Tartar who moved to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.
KyivPride Executive Director Lenny Emson, QUA – LGBTQ Ukrainians in America President Bogdan Globa and U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam are among those who spoke alongside Markarova.
Viktor Pylipenko, an openly gay Ukrainian servicemember who founded the Ukrainian Union of the LGBT Military, spoke via a video from the frontlines of Russia’s war against his country. A Russian missile attack forced him to end his remarks and seek shelter.
“I want to thank all of them for their service to country,” said Markarova. “It’s unbelievable and (the) ultimate sacrifice to be there in harm’s way.”
Markarova also described Globa as “a leader for all Ukrainians here” and said she is “really thankful for all the activities that we do together, and everything that you do.” Globa later told the Washington Blade that Markarova is the first Ukrainian ambassador to speak at an LGBTQ-specific event in the U.S.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2021 pledged Ukraine would continue to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity after he met with President Joe Biden at the White House.
Russia on Feb. 24, 2022, launched its war against Ukraine.
Zelenskyy last summer said he supports a civil partnership law for same-sex couples.
Ukrainian lawmakers last Dec. 15 unanimously approved a media regulation bill that bans hate speech and incitement based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Zelenskyy less than a week later traveled to D.C.
Zelenskyy, a former actor and comedian, earlier this month made a broad reference to LGBTQ and intersex rights in a virtual Golden Globes appearance.
Markarova praised Emson and Kyiv Pride and other Ukrainian LGBTQ and intersex rights groups that include Gender Z and Insight.
“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova, speaking directly to Emson. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”
“It’s a constant fight,” added Markarova. “It’s a fight that makes us better. It’s a fight that makes us freer, and it’s a fight that ultimately will give us the opportunity to live in the country where everyone again, regardless of their nationality, religion, color of their skin or sexuality, can live where they want to live.”
Markarova also noted Russia “brutally crossed the border and attacked us in 2014 and again attacked us now.” She added her country is “also fighting for something bigger.”
“We are fighting for our right to live how we want to live. We are fighting for our democracy. We’re fighting for the right to choose who we want to choose and whether it has to do with the government or whether it has to do with who we love and how we believe and this is very important,” said Markarova. “This is what differentiates Ukraine from Russia that attacks us; that we are free, we are democratic and we want to live like we want to live. That’s why we will never give up or surrender again.”
TEL AVIV, Israel ā I was sound asleep at 11 p.m. (4 p.m. ET) on Monday when Tzofar, an app that notifies users of incoming rockets, started to go off. The blaring alarm woke me up. It indicated a “red alert” for “incoming (missiles and rocket fire.)”
I sat up in bed, opened the app to see whether I was under “red alert.” I was just south of it, so I did not need to seek refuge in the stairwell, which is the building’s designated safe room. Less than a minute later I heard a series of loud booms that shook the building.
Hezbollah launched five ballistic missiles from Lebanon towards an Israel Defense Forces base north of Tel Aviv. The explosions that I heard were Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepting them.
The whole situation was over in less than two minutes ā it was the third “red alert” for “incoming (missiles and rocket fire)” that I received on my phone on Monday, which was a year since Hamas launched its surprise attack against southern Israel.
Hamas at around 11 a.m. (4 a.m. ET) launched five rockets that triggered alerts in southern Tel Aviv. Iron Dome intercepted four of them. Shrapnel from the rocket that hit the ground left two women slightly injured. I heard the interceptions in the distance. I walked onto my balcony a couple of minutes later, and saw a man hugging a young woman who was standing on her balcony across the street. She was clearly upset.
I walked to a nearby coffee shop about half an hour later, and ordered an iced coffee. I walked back to my building and started working again. I called my mother a short time later to let her know that everything was fine. I also sent several text messages to my husband and other loved ones and friends that reiterated that point.
The Houthis in Yemen launched a ballistic missile towards Israel shortly after 5:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. ET) that the IDF intercepted. I was in Hostage Square outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art when I heard warning messages on people’s phones. I looked at the Tzofar app, and saw Hostage Square was outside of the “red alert” area. I then logged onto two Israeli media outlets’ ā the Times of Israel and Haaretz ā websites that I have bookmarked on my phone and read the IDF had intercepted the Houthi missile.
More than a thousand people were gathered in Hostage Square less than 90 minutes later, watching an Oct. 7 memorial concert on a large screen that had been set up. The IDF Home Front Command has limited the number of people who can gather in one place in Tel Aviv because of the continued threats of rocket and missile attacks from Gaza and Lebanon.
This limit is 2,000.
The sounds of war have been a constant backdrop of this trip.
I begin every day with a swim in the Mediterranean Sea at Hilton Beach, which is Tel Aviv’s gay beach. These swims help me stay somewhat sane while I am here in Israel.
Israeli fighter jets and helicopters with missiles strapped to them regularly fly north along the coast towards Lebanon. Drones can also be heard. This scene plays out against the context of people swimming, kayaking, and paddleboarding in the water, and others walking and jogging on the nearby beach promenade.
The Nova Music Festival site where Hamas militants killed 360 people and took 40 others hostage on Oct. 7 is located outside of Re’im, a kibbutz that is roughly two miles from the Gaza Strip. It is about an hour and 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv.
I visited the site on Oct. 5.
Large IDF Home Front Command banners warn visitors they had 15 seconds to reach makeshift shelters ā large concrete barriers placed together ā in case of incoming rockets.
“If you receive an alert, lie on the ground and protect your head with your hands for 10 minutes,” the banner reads.
There were no alerts while I was at Nova. I did, however, hear several Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
I stopped at a roadside restaurant in Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz that is roughly three miles north of the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, after I left Nova. I had a sandwich for lunch and ordered an ice coffee for the drive back to Tel Aviv. I was walking to my car and I heard two distant Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The second one shook the ground beneath my feet.
I was back in Tel Aviv less than an hour later. It was the last day of Rosh Hashanah, and Shabbat. Hilton Beach, where I had taken my morning swim earlier in the day, was packed.
Life, at least for Israelis who live in Tel Aviv, goes on amid the sounds of war.
Israel
Hundreds attend gay IDF soldier’s memorial service
Survivor benefits law changed after Sagi Golan’s death on Oct. 7
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers will be on assignment in Israel through Oct. 14.
HERZLIYA, Israel ā Hundreds of people on Tuesday attended a memorial service for a gay Israel Defense Force major who was killed while fighting Hamas militants in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Sagi Golan, 30, was at home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya with his fiancƩ, Omer Ohana, when the militant group launched its surprise attack against from the Gaza Strip.
Ohana told the Washington Blade during an interview after the memorial service that Golan woke him up at around 6:30 a.m. after rocket sirens began to sound.
“We ran to the shelter in our house,” he said. “After that we just opened the news and the headline was ‘Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.'”
Ohana said people in the Israeli communities around Gaza were “begging for help.” Golan started to pack his IDF uniforms, and Ohana made him coffee.
“10 minutes later we were already at the doorstep kissing goodbye,” Ohana recalled. “That was the last time I saw him.”
“I told him not to be a hero,” he said. “He gave me a kiss, he told me we’re getting married in a week, don’t be silly.”
Golan deployed to Be’eri, a kibbutz that is near the border between Israel and Gaza.
He sent Ohana a heart emoji message to him via WhatsApp every hour “just to reassure he’s there.” Golan sent his last message to his fiancĆ© and “to anyone” at 12:18 a.m. on Oct. 8, 2023.
Ohana told the Blade the next three days were “unbearable suffering, searching for Sagi under every rock in Israel, at every hospital emergency room, at every ‘hamal’ (IDF war room.)”
“We went everywhere, we did everything we could to find him,” said Ohana.
An IDF officer three days later “knocked on our door” to notify Sagi’s family that he had been killed. The officer did not speak with Ohana because the IDF did not recognize him as Sagi’s partner.
(The couple had planned to marry ā virtually ā in Utah on Oct. 14. Israel recognizes same-sex marriages that are legally performed abroad. The couple’s marriage celebration was to have taken place on Oct. 20.)
āI asked for something, and they said I had to request his parents,ā Ohana told the Times of Israel. “It made me so angry. I was the one who loved him. But Iām not taken into account. And he wasnāt taken into account.ā
The Israeli government says Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival near Reāim, a kibbutz that is a few miles southwest of Be’eri. The Israeli government says the militants also kidnapped more than 200 people on Oct. 7.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 41,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7.
The International Criminal Court in May announced it plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders ā Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh.Ā
Karim Khan, the ICCās chief prosecutor, said the five men have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel. (A suspected Israeli airstrike on July 31 killed Haniyah while he was in the Iranian capital of Tehran to attend Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkianās inauguration.)
Hamas, which the U.S. and Israel have designated a terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for an Oct. 1 attack at a Tel Aviv light rail station that left seven people dead and more than a dozen others injured. A Bedouin man on Sunday killed an Israel Border Police officer and injured 10 others when he attacked a bus station in Beersheva in southern Israel.
Reuters on Friday reported the Lebanese Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes in Beirut and elsewhere in the country over the last two weeks have killed more than 2,000 people.
Iran on Oct. 1 launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese capital a few days earlier killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group.
Hamas and Hezbollah on Monday launched fired rockets that triggered sirens in Tel Aviv and surrounding areas. The Houthi rebels in Yemen on Oct. 7 also launched missiles and drones that prompted additional warnings in central Israel.
Israel’s air defense system intercepted almost all of the rockets.
This reporter heard two of the interceptions ā the first at around 11 a.m. Israel time (4 a.m. ET) and the second at around 11 p.m. Israel time (4 p.m. ET). The second interception shook the building in which this reporter has been staying.
Ohana was building a bench for children in a garden that Golan planted in Bat Yam, a city that is just south of Tel Aviv, when the first sirens went off.
‘If we are equal in death, we should be equal in life too’
Ohana, with the support of the Aguda, the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel, and other Israeli advocacy groups began to lobby the Knesset to amend the country’s Bereaved Families Law to recognize LGBTQ widows and widowers of fallen servicemembers. Lawmakers last November approved the changes.
“Sagi became a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community in Israel,” Ohana told the Blade. “With Sagi as a symbol, we were able to pass the amendment in the Israeli Knesset.”
“It wasn’t me,” he added. “I couldn’t have done it if Sagi wasn’t becoming a symbol. Having a gay hero in Israel is something new, something new for the community here.”
Aguda Chair Yael Sinai Biblash was among those who attended Golan’s memorial service.
She described the campaign to change the Bereaved Families Law as “a big effort, and a big success.”
“I hope that people understand that if we are equal in death we should be equal in life too,” said Sinai.
Gay Israeli pop star performs at Golan’s funeral
Golan had written his wedding vows on his phone.
Ohana told the Blade that his fiancƩ at 11:44 p.m. on Oct. 7 opened the memo on which they were written, and read them. Golan was shot less than 90 minutes later.
“I imagine Sagi having a notification that the event is about to be completed, because it was 10 until midnight for a whole day at the seventh of October, and just having a moment with himself, remembering love, having a good thought right before he died.” he said. “Knowing Sagi thought those happy thoughts just an hour before he died, saving Israeli citizens from this terror attack is filling me with pride in Sagi. That’s why he became a symbol. That’s why he’s a gay symbol.
Ivri Lider, a gay Israeli pop star, was to have performed at the couple’s wedding celebration. He instead performed at Golan’s funeral.
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— ×××××× ×××¢× ××××"× ××ש×Ø×× | The Aguda (@AgudaIsraelLGBT) October 12, 2023
“[Sagi] was very special,” said Ohana. “He was very special to all of us.”
Middle East
‘I don’t want a genocide to be done on queer people’s behalf’
LGBTQ Palestinians speak about Oct. 7, war in Gaza
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers will be on assignment in Israel through Oct. 9. Meta also removed this article from Lavers’s Facebook pages shortly after he published it.
Two LGBTQ Palestinians who spoke with the Washington Blade last week condemned Hamas’s surprise attack against southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They also expressed condemnation of the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli government’s policies towards the Palestinians.
Zaheer Subeaux is a queer Palestinian producer, DJ, emcee, and community organizer who lives in California. He is originally from Deir Dibwan, a small city on the West Bank that is a couple miles east of Ramallah, the Palestinian capital.
“For a lot of Palestinians who have family back home, this seemed like a proportionate response to an oppressed people,” he said. “For everyone else who’s not paying attention, who allow their tax dollars to continue fund this genocide, for them it’s like, oh, shocking, oh, wow, right out of the blue, because they’re not paying attention to what’s happening.”
“For the rest of us who actually are, this seemed like a completely reasonable thing for a people to feel during a time like this,” added Subeaux. “I don’t think a lot of people have the context for that.”
Hannah Moushabeck is a queer, second-generation Palestinian American who lives in Massachusetts.
Her family is from West Jerusalem. Moushabeck has relatives in Ramallah and in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and has friends in Gaza with whom she has “been in daily communication.”
“My immediate reactions on Oct. 7 were obviously horror and fear of what’s to come and the violence that happened that day,” she told the Blade on Sept. 30 during a telephone interview.
Moushabeck said it is “not unusual for Palestinians in the diaspora to experience some of this violence happening in our homeland.”
“This is honestly something that’s been going on since well before I was born,” she said. “So, growing up, whenever my parents seemed upset or, Palestinians were being shown in the news, I knew it was likely because they were being killed or involved with some kind of intense violence.”
Moushabeck said “a lot of Palestinians kind of had an instinct to go through the motions when Oct. 7 happened.”
“We also recognized that it was really unprecedented, and that the reaction and the revenge that the Israeli government took out on Palestinians would be like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” she added.
Monday marks a year since Oct. 7.
The Israeli government says militants on that day killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival near Re’im, a kibbutz that is a couple miles from the Gaza border. The Israeli government says the militants also kidnapped more than 200 people on Oct. 7.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 41,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7.
Hamas, which the U.S. and Israel have designated a terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for an Oct. 1 attack at a Tel Aviv light rail station that left seven people dead and more than a dozen others injured. A Bedouin man on Sunday killed an Israel Border Police officer and injured 10 others when he attacked a bus station in Beersheva in southern Israel on Sunday.
Reuters on Friday reported the Lebanese Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes in Beirut and elsewhere in the country over the last two weeks have killed more than 2,000 people. Iran last Tuesday launched upwards of 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese capital on Sept. 27 that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time leader of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group.
An Israeli airstrike in the West Bank city of Tulkarem on Oct. 3 killed 18 people in a Palestinian refugee camp.
The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, the countryās security agency, said the airstrike killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, a senior Hamas commander, and 11 other Hamas operatives. The Associated Press reported the airstrike also killed a family of four, including two young children.
The AP cites Palestinian officials who say an Israeli airstrike on a mosque in Deir al-Balah, a town in central Gaza, killed at least 19 people.
The International Criminal Court in May announced it plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders ā Yehya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh.
Karim Khan, the ICCās chief prosecutor, said the five men have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel. (A suspected Israeli airstrike on July 31 killed Haniyah while he was in the Iranian capital of Tehran to attend Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkianās inauguration.)
The Montreal-based Queering the Map ā a “community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space” ā is an “interface to collaboratively record the cartography of queer life.” Several people who have used Queering the Map are from Gaza.
A person who placed their post near Netzarim Junction in central Gaza notes it was the place where they fell in love with someone in 2021, “the last major Israeli bombardment on Gaza.” The person notes their beloved is a student who has left the enclave.
“Israeli occupation bombs may take everyone and everything you ever loved away: Your mom, your home, your memories,” they wrote in on Queering the Map. “I am so sorry the world failed you, that your mom, sister, best friends, everything is lost in this genocide.”
Another person who used Queering the Map posted their message near Beit Hanoun, a city in the northeast corner of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli city of Sderot less than four miles away.
“IDK how long I will live so I just want this to be my memory here before I die,” reads the post. “I am not going to leave my home, come what may.”
“My biggest regret is not kissing this one guy. He died two days back. We had told (sic) how much we like each other, and I was too shy to kiss last time. He died in the bombing. I think a big part of me died too. And soon I will be dead. To Younus, I will kiss you in heaven.”
The posts do not indicate when their authors wrote them. The Blade on Saturday heard Israeli airstrikes in Gaza while at the Nova Music Festival memorial and in Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz that is roughly three miles north of the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza.
Moushabeck told the Blade she helped raise funds that allowed her friend, his wife, and two children to leave Gaza and relocate to Cairo. Moushabeck also said she receives photos from other friends who remain inside the enclave.
“Seeing things happen in the news, and then getting personal video, not a video, but a personal video from my friend who’s watching the same things unfold; that was really horrifying,” she said.
“I’m safe, and I have a lot of privileges living in the diaspora, and so I felt it was my responsibility to bear witness to these,” added Moushabeck.
Tarek Zeidan, the former executive director of Helem, a Lebanese LGBTQ rights group, has launched a fundraiser for a group of transgender women who Israeli airstrikes have made homeless. The campaign has raised more than $19,000.
“While it is contradictory to be focusing on any specific community, vulnerable or otherwise, at a time when entire populations in Lebanon and Gaza are being indiscriminately eliminated, the bitter reality is that humanitarian aid and services will not be available to the majority of queer people in need, especially trans* and non-conforming members of our community,” wrote Zeidan in his appeal.
“Many humanitarian organizations are not capable or even willing to help, and are now even less likely to given that it is a crisis response,” he added. “We learned this hard lesson during the pandemic and in the aftermath of the 2020 Beirut port explosion and since then little has changed.”
Outright International, National LGBTQ Task Force have called for Gaza ceasefire
Outright International and the National LGBTQ Task Force are two of the many LGBTQ organizations in the U.S. and around the world that have called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Upwards of 200 people in February marched from Dupont Circle to the Human Rights Campaign and called upon it and other LGBTQ rights groups to “demand an end to the genocide and occupation of Palestine.” No Pride in Genocide, which describes itself as a “coalition of queer and trans Palestinians, Arab, and SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) people, Jews, and allies,ā organized the event.
“As a queer Palestinian, my identity has sort of been weaponized against us for what is ostensibly a propaganda campaign by the State of Israel,” Moushabeck told the Blade. “We refer to it as ‘pinkwashing.’ They have pumped millions of dollars into what they call Brand Israel in order to project this idea of a queer utopia, queer haven, which, you know, a lot of Israelis say is not accurate.”
“Certainly, Palestinians are not being asked their sexuality is before their homes are bombed or their families are killed,” she added.
Moushabeck also criticized HRC.
“We have organizational leaders like the Human Rights Campaign who are taking money from war profiteers like weapons manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, giving social capital to those profiting off of this violence,” she said.
Subeaux echoed Moushabeck.
“Our narrative of survival in the United States and in the West for queer rights is being co-opted to fear monger,” said Subeaux. “I don’t want that to be done on my behalf. I don’t want a genocide to be done on my behalf. I don’t want a genocide to be done on queer people’s behalf.”
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