HIV-Positive Palestinians Struggle to Survive as Israel Blocks Medication

We speak with journalists Steven Thrasher and Afeef Nessouli about their new report for The Intercept, which examines how queer, HIV-positive Palestinians are struggling to survive in Gaza with limited access to medication due to Israel’s siege and ongoing attacks on the territory. The report centers on E.S., a young Palestinian man who is HIV-positive and who has been in “a race against time,” says Nessouli. “The genocide is making it impossible to get medication to people like E.S.,” adds Thrasher.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

“Surviving War and HIV: Queer, HIV-Positive, and Running Out of Medication in Gaza.” That’s the headline of an Intercept piece. We end today’s show with a powerful new report that tells the story of E.S., a 27-year-old who lives with his mother and younger brother in Gaza City and who is HIV-positive. He says he agreed to speak with The Intercept using an assumed name in order to, quote, “avoid community stigma and targeting by the Israeli authorities,” unquote.

We’re joined now by two reporters who wrote the piece. Steven Thrasher is inaugural Daniel H. Renberg chair of social justice, focused on the LGBTQ community, at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He’s author of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. And here in New York, Afeef Nessouli is with us, journalist, host of With Afeef Nessouli. He’s reported from the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2011.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Afeef, let’s begin with you. Tell us this young man’s story in Gaza right now.

AFEEF NESSOULI: So, this young man reached out to me in March and basically had found my reporting online. On Instagram, I had been sort of helping queer people in Palestine, sort of amplifying their voices. He reached out in a DM and said, “Listen, I’ve seen your work. And I’m queer, and I’m Gazan, and I’d really like to talk to you about something and clear my mind.” After a bunch of voice notes back and forth, he kind of revealed that he had contracted HIV about 10 years ago and that he was, essentially, running out of medication because of the genocide. And it was hard for him to sort of ask for help, but it was obvious that he needed help. He was in northern Gaza at the time. I changed his name, obviously, for his protection. And he would tell me things about his cats, his art, his mom, his brother, his belief in God, his queerness and all of these really deep things, but he never really asked for help, until things were getting worse and worse. And he was always sort of one or two months away from medication — he was getting medication from different sources in northern Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Like the group Glia.

AFEEF NESSOULI: Like the group Glia, who was trying to coordinate medication for all sorts of different kinds of people there. But we found out that, you know, depots were being targeted by Israeli airstrikes. There was limited supply. He was getting medication from a doctor’s brother who had taken medication and put it in his house. It was always just sort of a race against time. And over the summer, his brother would, like, brave the streets. I remember in July, his brother sort of braved the streets and went and sort of picked up more medication, but it was still very limited in amount.

And we discussed kind of going further into publishing a story, so we started recording our conversations. In October, his house was targeted. He barely survived. His mother and his brother and him had to — were displaced. It became extremely important to get this story out as soon as possible. Dr. Thrasher reached out to me, sort of almost divinely in alignment. It just felt so right. And he said, “Listen, this story is really important. Let’s listen to some of these tapes that you’ve got.” And we started pitching it out. In the interim, Tarek Loubani of Glia had reached out to me and —

AMY GOODMAN: He’s the Palestinian Canadian physician?

AFEEF NESSOULI: Yes, the Palestinian Canadian physician with Glia, reached out to me to basically say, “Listen, I’ve seen your stuff. I’ve seen this story. I want to help in any way I can.” It was really hard, because there were so many times in which Tarek tried to get medication in, got confiscated at one point. His NGO got banned at one point because of appearing in an article in The New York Times. It was just like bad news after — one thing after the next. But E.S. was simply unwavering in his faith.

AMY GOODMAN: He walks with a walker.

AFEEF NESSOULI: He’s confined to a walker because he also contracted neurosyphilis. He had years on and off of care in Gaza. There was a lot of sort of stigma from his family, a lot of complications sort of with shame. But in the same token, there were a lot of doctors in Gaza who helped him unconditionally, a lot of people who really saved his life. So, in any place, like, there’s homophobia, and there’s also unconditional love.

AMY GOODMAN: What does “Queering the Map” mean?

AFEEF NESSOULI: Queering the Map is a resource that I found early on in the genocide, around October or November, where there are people around the world who upload sort of messages to each other just about where they’re at, where they are in the world and what their experience is. And I, you know, sort of went to Gaza, and I went to the West Bank, and I started uploading messages that I had found. And that actually brought in a lot of queer people that I started speaking to in Gaza. This is not the only person in Gaza that I’m speaking to. There’s trans people in Gaza. There’s people who are gay men, lesbian, obviously. We know that. But it’s very helpful when you have stories to amplify, because then you can really give specificity.

AMY GOODMAN: Has E.S. tried to get out of Gaza?

AFEEF NESSOULI: He really didn’t try for a really long time. He loves Gaza. He loves the beach. He loves his home.

AMY GOODMAN: He actually was a student in high school here in the United States.

AFEEF NESSOULI: Yes, he was. He had gotten a full scholarship, not only to high school, but then, later, for some years in college, before he contracted and decided he couldn’t handle, like, being HIV-positive alone without his family and away from Gaza, so he decided to go back. And I think now he would — I think in the later stages of our conversations, evacuation seemed a lot more compelling to him. But again, he loves Gaza. He doesn’t want to leave, but he has to.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Thrasher, it’s great to have you back on Democracy Now! Professor Thrasher, talk about how HIV spreads more quickly in war zones.

STEVEN THRASHER: Well, HIV has given the world lots of ways to learn about how to be in better relation to our own health and how to navigate with this virus. And something a lot of people don’t know is that prior to HIV, healthcare workers didn’t wear gloves. There are all these universal protocols that we now take for granted. If you’re old enough — I don’t know if you remember this, Amy — I remember my dentist not using gloves as a child. And there all these practices that came up that were developed that not only prevented HIV transmission, by assuming everyone potentially could have HIV, but that had many benefits for all kinds of health matters.

None of those precautions can be followed in Gaza. And it has nothing to do with the professionalism of healthcare workers. They are heroes and angels. A thousand of them have been killed. You know, maybe hundreds are being held in torture camps right now. But when you don’t have clean water, when you don’t have gloves, when you have people with open wounds on bloodsoaked floors, when you have people who not only lack gloves but lack medical training trying to save their neighbors after bombings, when there are so many shrapnel wounds, you cannot contain HIV or hepatitis or any blood-borne illnesses.

And the genocide is making it impossible to get medication to people like E.S., whose story is so touching and beautiful in what he’s gone through to try to get medication. But the occupation itself keeps ideas, medicine, practices from being able to easily come into these places. And so, what we’re seeing in Gaza around HIV speaks to other diseases, as well. But it’s also illustrative of what happens in war zones. In Ukraine and Russia, where there is more empirical data, we can already see that there are heightened levels of HIV and AIDS in both of those countries and in neighboring areas because of so much displacement, because universal protocols are not being used and because public health infrastructures are really breaking down.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Thrasher, we only have two minutes, but can you explain what pinkwashing is and its relevance to what’s happening in Gaza now?

STEVEN THRASHER: Pinkwashing is something that the United States and Israel use to say that we are the only safe countries for LGBTQ people, because we make LGBTQ people safe in our countries. And it erases the queer people who are in places like Palestine. In Israel, they have a — they don’t have same-sex marriage. They have all kinds of homophobia, as well. But certainly, Palestinians are not safe in Israel, because they are not full citizens. And within Palestine, there is an erasing of the queer people who are there. As Afeef was saying, Queering the Map shows that there are queer people there. And as E.S. said, he invoked the phrase “silence equals death.” And we can’t be silent about the queer people who are in Gaza. They need our help. People who are living with HIV need our help.

And even though they do deal with homophobia and things in their society, it’s been very touching to see how many healthcare workers have been trying to help them. The Gaza Ministry of Health is talking to them. It’s like talking to the New York City Department of Health. They are extremely on top of trying to help people with HIV. They proactively went to the people living with HIV throughout Gaza right at the beginning of the genocide and tried to get them three months of medication. And pinkwashing pretends like those people don’t exist, when we need to be in solidarity with them and protect them. And I hope, if anything, from our story, LGBTQ people around the world will see E.S. and see that there are queer people there and will want to help their queer siblings.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, Professor Thrasher, but an update from you on where you stand at Northwestern as a professor at the Medill School of Journalism?

STEVEN THRASHER: I can’t say anything publicly now. I hope I can soon. But I’m very happy with the direction things are going. I hope to be teaching again very soon. And yeah, I hope to have more news for you soon, but I’m feeling good about where things are going. And I really appreciate all the support people watching Democracy Now! and from around the world have shown me during this difficult time.

AMY GOODMAN: Steven Thrasher, I want to thank you for being with us from Chicago, a professor at the Medill School of Journalism, focusing on social justice, at Northwestern University, co-author with Afeef Nessouli of The Intercept piece “Surviving War and HIV: Queer, HIV-Positive, and Running Out of Medication in Gaza.” That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.