While an academic work on LGBTQ Palestinians, Sa’ed Atshan’s “Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique,” is also deeply personal account of coming of age between homophobia and Israel’s occupation.

US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, along with several Palestinian human rights groups, jumped to the defense of queer Palestinians in the wake of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ban on an LGBTQ group in the occupied West Bank.