Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and Welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. Mama Ganuush is a drag performer based in the Castro. They’re also Palestinian, but they haven’t always felt like that part of their identity has been supported by the larger queer community.
Mama Ganuush: I feel like the conversation is owned by white mainstream gays Ryan Murphy, for instance, and others. People of color like Billy Porter who have signed pro-Israeli support statements. And I was extremely, honestly hurt, appalled, angry, but at the same time extremely disappointed in them.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: These days. They’re working desperately to help their family in Gaza get out, and they’re using their art to speak out and push the larger queer community in San Francisco to stand up for all marginalized people, including Palestinians.
Mama Ganuush: I feel like the Palestinian issue is a queer issue, and because as a queer community, they stand up for marginalized people. We always stand up facing oppression from authoritarian systems.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Today, I talk with KQED audience engagement reporter Nisa Khan about how queer Palestinian artists are using their art to protest Israel’s siege of Gaza.
Nisa Khan: Artists have been doing a lot of demonstrations, a lot of art. I think one of the biggest protests recently was at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Eight artists painted and draped over pro-Palestine messages over their own work. That’s just some of the ways that artists have been kind of trying to get their institutions to make a statement on Palestine.
Nisa Khan: There was recently a petition for queer artist or Palestine petitions, where a bunch of artists, you know, across the country, like 200 plus a lot of like famous drag queens were reciting on to it. And then here in Castro, we had a lot of like, queer and trans activists marching down Castro or like blocking highways on Monday for President’s Day.
Mama Ganuush: I want to introduce another form of Palestinian resistance through art.
Nisa Khan: So Mama Ganuush is an Afghan Palestinian drag artist.
Mama Ganuush: My parents were both displaced from Palestine, so we had to grow up in Egypt as refugees. So I grew up in Cairo. Currently, Palestinian art forms that we preserve our culture, indigenous culture with this embroidery. It’s a deep okay, which is our dance. It’s singing, it’s food and cooking, but also drag.
Nisa Khan: One thing about Mama Ganuush’s drag is that it’s very Palestinian.
Mama Ganuush: Through my drag art, I want to show. What does it mean to to be a queer, drag Palestinian artist? I performed with a Palestinian flag. My drag is inspired by sex workers that I used to interview, and trans folks for Human Rights Watch that has been abused by police brutality in Egypt before becoming a refugee and coming to San Francisco, an asylum.
Nisa Khan: There, like a bearded drag artist. They have these big gowns, pearl jewelry, and then sometimes their performance, they’re lip syncing to to Arabic songs.
Mama Ganuush: And then I was able to perform for the first time on a resistance song for Julia Beatriz. It’s called a hero that call him, which means justice is my weapon and I will resist. It’s a song that was done by Julia Boutrous, who is a Lebanese singer who’s very pro-Palestine for the people of Gaza two years ago when they bombed Gaza. So we’ll see now he won’t go and. And then that moment I realized that I was like, I am a Palestinian drag queen. This is resistance on some.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I imagine, like many folks here in the diaspora, they’re constantly checking in and and worried about what’s happening back home. What do they tell you about what the last few months have been like for them on that end?
Nisa Khan: I think in the past few months they’ve just been like between kind of their very, very like passionate activism. They’re just wracked with terror and panic.
Mama Ganuush: Israel killed members of my family the past six weeks. I literally check on the, Ministry of Health names that they show about that people. And I check for my family’s last names to see if they’re alive or not.
Nisa Khan: Mama Ganuush’s family is from Gaza, and they have extended family currently in Gaza.
Mama Ganuush: I sometimes ask, my partner to check my WhatsApp groups, or ask a friend of mine because I cannot read like I just can’t.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Have artists like Mama Ganuush, Nisa, felt supported by the queer community more broadly in San Francisco over the last few months, would you say?
Nisa Khan: I think at the beginning, I think a lot of people just didn’t think they needed to make a statement. And I think, that was kind of something that a lot of like artists like mom and kind of been have been trying to prompt people on.
Mama Ganuush: Is a lot of strong gay voices in the community that every pro-Israel that has been unfortunately, the sentiment across Scott Wiener, I cross Rafael Mendelson, my my district representative, who are both of them are gay.
Nisa Khan: They say often, like, I feel like I’ve been let down by my representatives in California. And they say, like, I feel guilty because I voted for Biden and I voted for an administration does not like, you know, supporting a, war on my extended family members and the place I’m from.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What about other queer Palestinian artists? Is that something that you’ve heard from them as well, that they they don’t quite feel that support from the queer community here in the Bay?
Nisa Khan: So, yeah, I spoke to Palestinian DJ Zaheer Suboh.
Zaheer Suboh: I am a queer Palestinian, DJ in the San Francisco Bay area. I lived in Falasteen from 1999 till about 2008, so about ten years from the ages of 6 to 16.
Nisa Khan: One thing that I suppose says is that often, like, people are like, oh, why would you, support Palestine? These Hamas agents would want to kill you. So while you’re fighting, right, they’re Palestinians. This is being said to him. And he’s just like, But I’m also Palestinian. Like, these are not identities I can split.
Zaheer Suboh: And that’s really upsetting because they don’t really consider that queer Palestinians actually exist. They’re not really taking into consideration that we are fighting a battle on both fronts.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: For queer Palestinians, the response to Israel’s war has brought up another big issue. Pink washing. According to,Sa’ed Atshan, an associate professor of peace and conflict studies at Swarthmore College, it’s when supporters of the right wing Israeli state draw attention to Israel’s purportedly advanced record on LGBTQ rights as a way of detracting from and justifying Israel’s assault on Palestinian people.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: One big example of pink washing that got a lot of attention happened last November, after an Israeli soldier posted a photo of himself standing over the rubble in Gaza while holding a pride flag. The soldier told the New York Post that he had intended to protest Hamas’s treatment of LGBT people.
Nisa Khan: One thing pink washing does is ignores the very specific struggles of queer Palestinians. One thing that, I suppose says is that often, like, people are like, oh, why would you, support Palestine? These Hamas agents would want to kill you. So while you’re fighting, right. For Palestinians, this is being said to him. And he’s just like, But I’m also Palestinian. Like, these are not identities I can split.
Zaheer Suboh: It’s essentially legitimizing the apartheid mission of Israel by saying that Israel is the only safe place for gay people in the Middle East, which is not true, because it’s not a safe place for gay people. It’s not a safe place for gay Palestinians.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, given all that, Nisa, how do artists like Mama Gunuush, Zaheer Suboh talk about why their Palestinian identity is so important to their queer activism specifically?
Nisa Khan: You can’t separate one from the other. Right. And I think also, it’s very tied to people’s families and their family history. And like mama said this, in our interviews, it’s like I am carrying my family’s trauma in, like, in my body. And I really do think that this moment will bring greater awareness to queer activism in the Swan region, which is, south West Asia, in North Africa. It’s considered the decolonized version of Middle East.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What are Mama Gunuush’s hopes with their art and activism?
Nisa Khan: I think really the practical one is that people are just looking for a cease fire. Mama Ganesh, for example, is trying to help their family get relocated to America, their cousin’s wife. But one thing that, like they said it again and again, if there was a cease fire, they wouldn’t have to leave. If people don’t want to leave their homes.
Mama Ganuush: I really wish one day in my lifetime that I’m able to go to Palestine when this Israeli apartheid state is resolved and Palestinians are free.
Nisa Khan: I think one thing my immigration also talk to me is that their future hopes for their drug is being able to perform one day in class.
Mama Ganuush: Even if I’m 90 years old, I really wish I would love to do that in Palestine, but I wish one day I could actually enter Palestine because I’m not allowed to enter. I also wish to be in Palestine to visit my grandparents house and Yaffa.
Nisa Khan: Yeah, I think those are just some of those kind of future hopes. But I think right now they’re really just hoping for like the immediate violence and stuff.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, Nisa, thank you so much.
Nisa Khan: Thank you so much for having me.
