If you lack the resources to instill morally confused messages in your children, Valley Families for Palestine can help you. The Connecticut River Valley grassroots organization offers lots of family-fun activities like “Queer Storytime for Palestine,” “Coloring Action Pages,” and a 5 K “family-friendly walk or run” for UNRWA. 

The storytime was deemed to be a raging success. 

“We came together today in joy and solidarity and learned some important lessons about being ourselves, using our voices to speak out against injustice, and being fabulous while we do it,” the group’s Instagram stated. 

The Stop Anti-Semitism Movement posted a video of the event to Twitter, noting, “The harsh reality? Members of the LGBTQ+ community are often murdered in Gaza and other Palestinian areas such as Ramallah.”

The storytime event had children dress in Palestinian attire and wave the Palestinian flag and the transgender flag. Lil Miss Hot Mess, a drag queen (a man dressed in woman’s attire), led the event. He read from his book, “ The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish,” after which he led the children in the chant, “If you’re a drag queen and you know it, shout, ‘Free Palestine.’”

His stage name reflects his personal life. Born Jewish and named Harris Kornstein, Hot Mess is a university professor with a PhD in media studies from NYU. He has published in academic journals on subjects like “drag pedagogy” and digital drag performance.

But on one thing, Lil Miss Hot Mess is unequivocal: his support for President Joe Biden, though his support for the Democratic administration is more than a bit mercenary.  Last year, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) gave a $60,000 grant to Kornstien for a project titled “Enchanting Technology: Obfuscation, Play, and Other Queer Strategies for Countering Surveillance Capitalism”. The project explores “digital enchantment,” which the author describes as “a framework that explores how diverse queer and trans users subvert and expand traditional approaches of privacy by creatively exploiting the features of mainstream technologies and creating their own platforms.”

Sarah Prager, one of the organizers, seems equally confused. In a recent article in Prism Reports, she quoted transgender Palestinian poet and activist Yaffa as saying that “Israeli genocide on Gaza has killed every LGBTQIA+ person they knew in Gaza before Oct. 7 and every LGBTQIA+ person in they connected with after Oct. 7.”

Implicit in this statement is the bizarre claim that the IDF is targeting homosexuals in Gaza.  Prager notes the obvious contradiction: that homosexuality is accepted in Israel. But this, she claims, is a “propaganda tool” used by Israel referred to as “pinkwashing.” 

An article in the New Yorker described a storytime in 2016 at which Hot Mess called for the children in the audience to chant, “When I grow up, I want to be a drag queen.” The audience did not respond. 

While most people would see a clear conflict between values that espouse homosexuality and transvestism, the “Queers for Palestine” movement remains strong. In fact, articles 258 and 263 of the draft penal code, in 2003, for Palestine, contained “provisions that criminalize adult consensual same-sex conduct” which includes punishment of up to five years in prison for a male who “commits the act of sodomy with another male”. 

In contrast, homosexuality is accepted in Israel. As a result, in June 2022, Israel began issuing work permits for gay Palestinian refugees who had been granted asylum and those “fleeing domestic violence.” The Israeli LGBT organization The Aguda stated in 2013 that around 2,000 Palestinian homosexuals live in Tel Aviv “at any one time.”

Prominent ex-Muslim author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in a recent exclusive interview with UnHerd, a website for which she is a columnist, slammed the pro-Palestinian sub-movement “Queers for Palestine.”

“It would be funny, you know? It’s just material for comedy if it wasn’t so [stupid],” Ali said. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is in place, Hamas was actually governing Gaza, and what were they doing to homosexuals?” she asked.

”They throw them from tall buildings,” she said. “Families, if you’re a Muslim family and within your family, there’s someone who’s suspected of being gay, it’s the obligation of the family to commit honor killing. So it doesn’t even go as far as the government and tribunals and trials. But when that happens, it’s done quite publicly, and it’s done in the most gruesome fashion,” Ali said.

“So ‘queers for Palestine,’ I think, is another manifestation of how our society is really becoming stupid.”

If the movement appeals to you, be forewarned: an event held last month by Valley Families for Palestine cautioned that masking is mandatory.