How to Actually Help Syrian Bloggers

A lot of people have expressed their anger/dismay/disappointment over the Amina Arraf hoax. I'll instead focus on the one silver lining. The incident has shown that there's a significant constituency of Americans and Europeans who support freedom of the press - and democracy more generally - in Syria.

Since her faked kidnapping, almost 14,000 people have joined the Free Amina Abdalla Facebook page. Untold others organized and fought for her release in other ways. Even Amina's creator, Tom MacMaster, alleges he had Syria's interests at heart - even if his actions were misguided and reckless. In an interview with The Guardian, he claims he invented Amina to help bring attention to human rights abuses in Syria.

But as a real Syrian LGBT activist, Daniel Nassar explains, "You took away my voice, Mr. MacMaster, and the voices of many people who I know. To bring attention to yourself and blog; you managed to bring the LGBT movement in the Middle East years back. You single-handedly managed to bring unwanted attention from authorities to our cause and you will be responsible for any LGBT activist who might be yet another fallen angel during these critical time."

Why We Believe in Amina Arraf

This past weekend, Syrian regime thugs purportedly kidnapped Amina Arraf who blogs at A Gay Girl in Damascus. I had been reading her blog for a few months and was quite upset at the news. Escaping a close call before, Amina refused to be silenced. And now she was in incredible danger.

Or, as it turns out, the truth may have been the one in danger. Since her alleged disappearance, serious questions have been raised about the blog's veracity. Amina may be a hoax.

I was tweeting about the whole situation when a producer for the BBC World Service's World Have Your Say asked me to come on the show. You can hear what I said here. I speak at 8:50 and at 19:00. My comments focus on why we want to hope for, and believe in, Amina.

I, like so many other of Amina's followers, want to believe in Amina. We hope that such a powerful voice for freedom is real. But in that hope, we also are effectively wishing that Amina is in incredible peril. I have been struggling to decide whether it's better to hope that a profound voice for liberty is in danger of being extinguished or that such a voice never existed at all.

There are many reasons why I might have been fooled by Amina, assuming she is in fact a hoax.My friend The Camel's Nose points to our limited ability to evaluate and process all the sources we encounter from Syria. As such, "our human brains took cognitive shortcuts to triage the fire hose of information coming at us." In addition, I have previously blogged about why social media seem particularly prone to misinformation.

But in this case, I think the problem is primarily neither one of cognition or transmission. Rather, it's one of emotion. We believed Amina's words because we wanted to believe them. We have witnessed such brutality in Syria, such ugliness, that we were bound to latch on to anything that offered beauty and hope. That is exactly what Amina did. We want to believe in Amina because she is something worth believing in.

But now we have reached a time for reckoning. We need to know the truth. Whether Amina is real or not, her story is certainly real. Over 1200 Syrians have died for the cause of freedom. Unknown more have been imprisoned and tortured. Each and every one deserve the attention Amina has garnered.

And that is why it would be so tragic if Amina turns out to be fake. So much time, energy, effort and emotion would have been wasted upon her as others languish and suffer. People outside Syria can only do so much to help, and currently that help is being directed primarily towards Amina.

If she is in fact a work of fiction, the time has come for her creator to fess up. His or her personal discomfort and embarrassment will be far outweighed by the good it will do for every Syrian currently locked in a struggle that is anything but a work of fiction.

But until such confirmation comes or definitive proof is discovered, we must assume Amina is real. As Andy Carvin worries, "this discussion about her identity could distract people from the possibility that should [sic] might be being brutalized in detention, and in dire need of support from friends and strangers alike."

UPDATE: Amina is in fact fake. I'm glad we now know the truth.

Jewish Settlers Save Gay Palestinian

YNet reports on "such a remarkable story [that] could only happen in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." A young gay Palestinian named T, who has been living in Israel with his Israeli partner of ten years, recently returned to the West Bank to visit his ailing father. Because the local Palestinians do not approve of his sexual orientation, T met his father outside of their village for safety. When T tried to return home to Israel, security forces did not allow him to cross the border for purported security reasons.

T was stuck in no-man's land, trapped between overzealous border officials and homophobic neighbors. So he turned to the only other person he knew in the area: an orthodox Jewish settler. Thus, for the past ten days, the gay Palestinian T has found refuge within a Jewish West Bank settlement. A remarkable story indeed.

Writing at the Commentary blog, David Hazony argues this story teaches that "what makes them [Palestinians] different from us [Israelis/Jews] is not merely quaint or alien but reprehensible. That we are in effect extending a hand of tolerance to those who expressly renounce tolerance, and who make little effort to hide their murderous side."

There is no doubt Arab and Muslim homosexuals face tremendous difficulties. Sometimes their existence is denied, as Iranian President Ahmadinejad has ridiculously claimed. More often, they confront religious, social and political persecution. And too often, they face a fate far worse. In Iraq, for example, the marauding Mahdi army has tortured and murdered homosexuals using most gruesome, unspeakable methods.

But Hazony lets Israel somewhat off the hook here. While homosexuals in Israel enjoy far more freedom and acceptance than the Muslim world (and even the U.S.), there are still problems. Take, for instance, the recent shooting at a Tel Aviv gay youth center that left two dead and many more wounded. The incident sparked massive outrage and spurred Israeli politicians of all persuasions to take a firm stand in favor of homosexual rights. Thus, Israel isn't special because its homosexual population does not face persecution, but because there is a societal and political consensus to fight for their equal rights.

Hazony took a wrong turn by viewing the story of T through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and thereby compelling him to try to score political points for Israel. In fact, besides T's inability to re-enter Israel, the story has very little to do with the conflict.

Instead, we should take the story for what it is: an uplifting story of how religious Jewish settlers likely saved the life of a gay Palestinian man because of the common humanity they share. Furthermore, we should draw inspiration to continue fighting for the human rights of all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality and sexual preference, no matter where those rights may be threatened.