“They Would Throw You Off a Building”: A Tired, Useless, and Offensive Argument

I have not seen, heard, nor read about a single instance where a member of “Queers for Palestine” has been convinced to support Israel because of this argument. It just doesn't happen.

I hadn’t heard of Emil Wakim until a few days ago, which is a shame, because he’s very handsome. Like many others, I was unaware of the dashing Lebanese-American comedian until his segment on Saturday Night Live's “Weekend Update” this week. In his bit, Wakim said that if Israel stopped bombing Gaza, Palestinians there “would get to gay.” This reflects a belief, more widespread than many realize, that if societies that ruthlessly oppress gay people were simply left free from “Western interference” and its odious manifestations, they would eventually have the opportunity—like others have had—to liberalize naturally and get things right. 

As per usual after even the smallest nod to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, social media users were aflame in fury. One popular pro-Israel account wrote: “Emil Wakim, the latest woke SNL cast member, claims the reason genocidal Radical Islamist terrorists in Gaza kill LGBTQ people is because of Israel. Apparently Jews are now responsible for Sharia Law.” Another said about the bit: “There can be no tolerance for the gross whitewashing of jihadist brutality by American progressives.”  

Naturally, there were also those who came to Wakim’s defense, including Matt Bernstein, an insufferable Jewish content creator who knows as much about Jewish history and culture as did Leon Trotsky. Bernstein wrote to the tune of 400 thousand likes: “Even if every single palestinian (sic) was homophobic… i would still be against bombing and starving them to death. palestine (sic) does not need to be a progressive utopia for genocide to be wrong.”  

It should come as no surprise that I agree with those criticizing Wakim. Homosexuality in the Palestinian territories is nearly universally condemned (95%), and same-sex "activity" is strictly prohibited. There are documented cases of Hamas imprisoning, torturing, and murdering gay men. Hamas coerces those accused of same-sex indecency to betray other community members, forces them into marriages with women, and threatens them with brutal death. Numerous LGBT Palestinians, fearing for their safety, have sought and found refuge in Israel. With this in mind, it’s indeed absurd for young, Western LGBT individuals to wear keffiyehs and mispronounce Arabic words during their anti-Israel tirades. To a casual observer, this behavior seems like cognitive dissonance, self-hatred, or simply laughable ignorance. 

The notion that non-Western, usually Islamic societies are regressive and hateful toward minorities solely due to the aggression of more liberal nations is inaccurate and dehumanizing nonsense. Those who constantly and loudly condemn the devaluation of Arab/Muslim life yet strip the very people they claim to advocate for of their agency are engaging in a form of racism. To suggest that these societies are incapable of making their own choices or enacting laws that protect minorities in their communities is, ironically, the very racism these activists claim to oppose. 

But the obvious absurdity of the anti-Israel activist crowd isn’t the focus of this piece (I’ve written plenty along those lines). Instead, I want to highlight the pro-Israel activists' response to accusations as ridiculous as Wakim's and other critiques from the left. You already know the slogans, as they’ve become so common: “Gays for Gaza? Why don’t you go to Gaza! They’ll throw you off a building!” and “Queers for Palestine? More like Chickens for KFC!”—the latter being a notable quip from Prime Minister Netanyahu during his address to the U.S. Congress this summer, met with thunderous applause. 

This line of attack against Israel’s detractors is useless. Not only is it useless, but it’s also quite problematic and small-minded, and makes our work much more difficult as defenders of the Jewish state. To understand why, it’s important to grasp how an increasing number of young, Western LGBT people perceive the world around them. While this topic deserves far more than a single Substack entry, I'll do my best to summarize. 

In the hyper-left circles I was part of before coming out as a Zionist (no pun intended), being gay was something, but it wasn’t enough. Thanks to the enormous success of our civil rights movement over the past fifty years—granting us everything from marriage rights to parenthood, even rainbow flags above TSA security—being gay no longer fulfills the political drive many young progressives feel to rebel against the system. Gay people are no longer discriminated against in polite society, and so many look to fill that void with activism for others they’ve been told are more oppressed and vulnerable. This is not only encouraged, but as a subsection of Gen Z continues its leftward march, it has become the price of entry into the LGBT community in many spaces. It is now your responsibility to advocate for those deemed to be under the boot of oppression, especially if you are seen as being "at the top of the ladder": not transgender and not a person of color. 

This explains the mainstream adherence to the narrative that the Stonewall riots, which launched the LGBT rights movement in America, were led by “trans women of color” (which they were not). It also accounts for the now-ubiquitous display of the rainbow flag, which was meant originally to represent all those living a non-heteronormative lifestyle, now featuring brown and black stripes, the colors of the transgender flag, and sometimes the intersex circle. The movement has shifted away from being proud of who you are and advocating for acceptance, housing, and healthcare for LGBT people. Instead, it has become a fetishization of marginalization— a fetishization of every group positioned against a vague, omnipotent structure of oppression, usually tethered close to the equally vague superstructure of “white supremacy.”

This is why the young, progressive LGBT community opposes Israel. They are not ignorant of the attitudes toward being gay in Gaza or the West Bank, nor are they unaware of Israel’s more liberal standards regarding gender and sexuality. They are not “self-hating” or “Chickens for KFC.” For them, hating Israel aligns with their identity and values as “queer” individuals, as they seek to fight against the forces that postcolonial and neo-Marxist theories deem intrinsically evil — forces that, tragically, include Jews living and exercising sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. This perspective also explains why the pro-Israel retort of “Hamas would throw you off a building” is ineffective and exacerbates our predicament. 

“Hamas would throw you off a building” does not address any of the monstrous accusations being leveled against Israel. Critics claim that Israel is committing genocide, which it is not. If Hamas surrendered and released the hostages, and if the international community and human rights industrial complex were effective, for once, in enforcing international law, the violence in Gaza would cease. This contradicts the basic definition of genocide, which denotes a calculated campaign to exterminate people because of their immutable characteristics. They also allege that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing, which is not the case. There has not been a mass exodus of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip at the hands of Israel. Furthermore, the accusation of apartheid is unfounded—if Palestinians in the West Bank ceased their racist resistance to coexisting with a Jewish state, most of Israeli society would support a peace deal to cede land and sovereignty to a competent authority while continuing to grant Arabs within Israel civil and political rights. “Hamas would throw you off a building” addresses none of these critical points. 

Instead, “Hamas would throw you off a building” overwhelmingly reflects an inability to address these accusations and the realities on the ground in Israel and Gaza. It is a diversion, a non-sequitur, and an obliviousness to the complicated, pervasive ideology infecting LGBT young people, decades in the making. And yes, it comes across as homophobic. Why? Because it reveals a grievance against LGBT people by feeding into the left’s rules of identity politics. Telling gay people who are dead wrong about Israel that they do not deserve to have an opinion because of their sexuality does not allow them to “see the light,” it causes them to double down, to refortify their beliefs that “Zionists” are not arguing in good faith.  

I have not seen, heard, nor read about a single instance since October 7, 2023 where a member of “Queers for Palestine” has been convinced to support Israel because of the argument that Hamas oppresses gay people. It just doesn’t happen. 

Not only that, but the argument of “Hamas would throw you off a building” usually comes from people who have seldom, if ever, voiced support for LGBT rights elsewhere in the world, including in Israel itself. How many of those who use this argument have genuinely and consistently opposed the proudly homophobic ministers in the Israeli government, who, if they had their way, would have me closeted and potentially unsafe in this country? How many of them have expressed consistent concern about the Haredi community, which forces children into conversion therapy if they are gay and compels them to marry someone they do not love? It just doesn’t happen.

When Emil Wakim said on Saturday Night Live that if only Israel would cease its war against Hamas, the Palestinians “would get to gay,” he displayed an almost comical ignorance of how Muslim and Arab societies operate in the Middle East, denying agency from the people he claims to support. His remarks also reveal how a large and growing number of LGBT individuals understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in relation to their own identities. To counteract these misguided ideas, it is more effective to remove LGBT rights in Palestine from the equation and instead argue for the Jewish people's right to live securely in their ancestral homeland, in a state of their own. It is essential to explain why their actions against Hamas are necessary, justified, and consistent with international law.