An Interview with Rauda Morcos on Palestinian Gay Women

Out of the Closet in Palestine
Susanna Mendoza, Alternative Information Center (AIC): Thursday, 9 August 2007
The Alternative Information Center (AIC) spoke with Rauda Morcos about the situation for Palestinian gay women in Palestine/Israel. Rauda, a Palestinian from Nazareth is a poet, peace activist, feminist, and cofounder and coordinator of ASWAT: Palestinian Gay Women.

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Rauda Morcos in Belgium and Netherlands
Photo Report Tour by Lieve Snellings: November, 2006

Queering Palestinian Solidarity Activism
Yoshie Furuhashi : Sunday, June 06, 2004
However well-intentioned white male queer activists may be, their actions would be effective only when they prove themselves as reliable allies of GLBT Palestinians, rather than ineptly trying to zap a multiracial interfaith demonstration for free Palestine. OutRage! might begin by listening to Rauda Morcos, the coordinator of ASWAT [Voice], which is a Palestinian lesbian group endeavoring to develop a lesbian-feminist perspective within Arab society and to formulate its own criticism of the politics of the Israeli occupation, autonomously of Israeli lesbian and gay projects.

Making Zionism Gay or Queering Israel into Post-Zionism?
Yoshie Furuhashi : Monday, June 07, 2004

June 8th, 2006
Apropos of forming queer communities, there was one question asked by a middle-aged white lesbian (my assumption, yes) that was particularly ridiculous but got such a well-put answer that I feel like I need to write it out here: “Let’s say I was a lesbian and lived in the West Bank and didn’t have a computer to access your listserv, and I wanted to find other lesbians. Is there a bar or neighborhood where I might go?”

And Morcos answered the woman, looking at her straight in the face and not skipping a beat, “If you lived in the West Bank, you would never ask that question. Because we are under occupation, it’s a war zone! We don’t go to bars very often.” The woman said, “Well, where do *you* meet lesbians?” Morcos answered, “I met most of my friends at demonstrations, through my activism, or my writing group. There was one bar in Ramallah that LGBT people used to go to but it was bombed by the Israeli army. I don’t go to bars very often.”