A wilted flower hidden in the shadows of blooms

Lebanese. Food.

Graffiti marking the gay issues in Beirut on the walls of the city.

1. Bareback

2.Fiste Moi

3.Silenced

4. مين شاذ؟ امك شاذة، أنا مثلي   ‘Meen shaaz? Imak shaaz, Ana mithly’**

Mahmoud Shaalan, 16, was born in Miami, Florida in the United States. His entire family is U.S. citizens. Mahmoud wanted to return to his ancestral village of Deir Dibwan, north of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank to go to school. He visited the village when he was 8 years old and fell in love with it. He asked his parents if he could live there. Mahmoud was a straight-A student who was focused on his studies and never got involved in political activities. He planned to go back to the U.S. to study medicine.

On February 26, 2016, Mahmoud was shot multiple times by Israeli forces and killed. His body was riddled with bullets….all in the back. He was shot as he tried to run away from the soldiers. Israel told the world he was shot due to an “alleged” stabbing attempt….like all the rest. Witnesses said that was a LIE. Mahmoud got into a verbal dispute with the soldiers…but never had a knife or did anything wrong. They said that soldiers continued to pump bullets into his body even as he lay on the ground. This was a CHILD. Afterwards, the Israeli soldiers let him lay on the ground and bleed to death and refused to let ambulances take him to the hospital. They stripped his body naked and left him laying on the road for two and a half hours. When the video was demanded of his execution, the IOF said the camera didn’t capture it because it was “not in range.” More lies. Mahmoud was a good boy who was not capable of a violent act. He was buried with both the American and Palestinian flag wrapped around his body.

Today…Israeli authorities have told U.S. officials that they found no criminal wrongdoing by the Israeli soldiers and will not pursue the case further. Human rights activists around the world are outraged and calling for more action. The State Department and the U.S. should launch an independent or joint investigation.

Not a word about this MURDER of a child was reported by U.S. media….even though he was a U.S. citizen. A month after Mahmoud’s death, an American JEW, Taylor Force, 28, was killed by a Palestinian in Israel and it was front page news….widely reported in papers and on TV….with headlines about a Palestinian terrorist. The murder of Taylor was horrific and wrong. The point is….that a Palestinian CHILD…also a U.S. citizen…being murdered should have also been reported in the news. He was an innocent victim who Israel has labeled as a terrorist. They have blamed him for his own murder! And now they have closed the files on it. This is WRONG!

I am a closeted Muslim/ Middle Eastern, gay man from Chicago, USA. I am in my late 20′s and unable to come out due to our homophobic culture. I am a medical student and will be a doctor in a few years. I have been thinking about a marriage of convenience (MOC) with a Muslim lesbian who may be in a similar situation and could mutually benefit from a gay-lesbian marriage of convenience (MOC). I have concluded that this is the only permanent solution to my unique dilemma. 

Is there anyone who may be interested or knows someone else that might be interested in a MOC? If anyone has any feedback, please feel free to message me. I would greatly appreciate it. Anyone interested, please email me directly at [email protected].  Thanks.

VIDEO: Living Under Israel’s Missiles

Four boys of the Bakr family were killed by a missile strike during last year’s incursion. Their surviving family members are still scarred from the attack.

More than anyone, children bear the brunt of regular Israeli military assaults on the Gaza Strip. During the 51-day war in the summer of 2014, 551 children were killed and 3,436 were injured. But these gruesome figures say little about the psychological state of the nearly 800,000 children who have survived the periodic bombing campaigns. After the final cease-fire that ended Israel’s Operation Protective Edge on August 26 of last year, UNICEF estimated that at least 425,000 Palestinian children in the besieged Gaza Strip require “immediate psychosocial and child protection support.”

You know the way you keep telling us that Palestinians celebrate murderers? Well…