A gay Palestinian was kidnapped and beheaded this week and his body paraded through a Palestinian neighborhood in a sickening video that underscores the danger LGBTQ people face at the hands of Islamic extremists.
Gruesome footage of Ahmad Hacham Hamdi Abu Marakhia’s body being carried through the West Bank city of Hebron and then left dismembered on a roadside went viral on social media after his death Wednesday. Palestinian Authority police have opened an investigation, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“We are shocked,” Rita Petrenko, CEO of The Different House, which provides a haven near Tel Aviv for LGBTQ Muslims and Arabs who face persecution from Palestinian extremists, told the news site N12. “He was part of an LGBT pride group we started in the South. Many people knew of him.”
Stories that will be dramatically undercovered by the international media because they cut against the narrative that Israel is the problem https://t.co/ESMwj953Kz
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 7, 2022
The international press has been slow to pick up the story, and the wider one of the persecution LGBTQ people face in Palestinian areas as well as Iraq, where gays have been thrown from buildings, and Iran, where they are hanged from cranes.
“[Such stories are] dramatically undercovered by the international media because they cut against the narrative that Israel is the problem,” The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro observed in a tweet of the Jerusalem Post story.
Marakhia had fled the West Bank two years ago after being outed as gay, according to friends. He had to get a permit from the Israeli Civil Administration in order to leave the Palestinian area. But even in Israel, LGBTQ Palestinians are not safe from Islamic extremists, and they often seek asylum in other countries.
“Israel is not a safe place for them, even without taking socio-economic factors into account. Sadly, the relocation process is now longer than it used to be,” Petrenko said.
N12 reported that Marakhia was last seen leaving the home in Tel Aviv for work before he turned up dead in the video in Hebron, 40 miles south.
Marakhia’s family believes another family in Hebron, a hotbed of Palestinian terror activity, is responsible for the murder, the outlet reported.
Labor Member of Knesset Ibtisam Mara’ana, who has supported shelters for Arab and Muslim LGBTQ youth, tweeted about the killing.
“Ahmad, who stayed in an Israeli shelter due to his sexuality, was murdered by a vicious and twisted killer,” she wrote.
