Published: 6 September 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Caught between homophobia and security suspicion, young gay Palestinians are vulnerable to a man who acts as guardian to feed his sexual appetites.
Selim grew up in the West Bank city of Jenin; his life was grim to begin with. Then a fumbling sexual experience with a boy from his class, which developed into a sort of relationship, condemned him to never-ending social alienation and suffering.
Reviled by his parents, he was thrown out of the house, not before he’d become a punching bag for the men in his extended family.
Selim was 14 when he snuck through a checkpoint and fled into Israel for the first time. His first stop was the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, a powerful magnetic field for young men in his situation. Sex for pay was his survival mode.
Twice he tried to return to Jenin to heal the rift with his family. That was a mistake. Because of his various forays into Israel, the security forces in the Palestinian Authority suspected that he had been recruited as a collaborator.
Then one night, Itzik Avneri, the one-time king of the LGBTQ club scene in Tel Aviv, happened upon Selim’s hangout.
Selim constantly fluctuates between describing Avneri as a saviour and depicting him as an exploiter.
He gives young gay Palestinian runaways food and shelter but in return, counsellors say, he turns them into sex slaves.
Murad, another young Arab, says the Palestinian gay men recruited by Avneri give him sex because they have nowhere else to go.
“These young men who enter Israel have lost their family, so they look for someone who will compensate them. Itzik takes advantage of that, to their detriment. He helps them, supports them, brings them money and [gives them] a place to sleep. In return he takes their soul.”
This Israeli Shelters Gay Palestinian Runaways. In Return, 'He Takes Their Soul' (Haaretz)
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Photo: Itzik Avneri (Daniel Tchetc/Haaretz)
