Drag performer speaks to anti-Israel Yale hunger strikers — without condemning homophobic Hamas

A drag performer spoke to anti-Israel hunger strikers at Yale University about higher education being a “capitalist necropolitical machine” — but failed to mention that Hamas is anti-LGBTQIA+ rights.

“No matter how many equity seminars you hold, how many DEI committees you form, how many land acknowledgments you produce …we know that educational institutions are crafted as corporate legacies of entrapment, confinement and ideological regulation,” drag performer Tifa Wine told the hunger strikers Friday clad in a , according to a video from independent reporter Stu .

The performer — wearing a red cape and jumpsuit with a keffiyeh scarf — went on to lament the “genocides and dispossessions” that “made Yale University … possible as a capitalist necropolitical machine” as she addressed the crowd at the New Haven campus’ Beinecke Plaza.

When not performing in drag, Tifa Wine — also known as Ryan Persadie — is a visiting instructor of gender, sexuality and intersectionality studies at Connecticut College, according to his online profile .

On Friday, the Yale hunger strikers were on their sixth day of forgoing food as part of their demonstration to push the university to divest from weapons manufacturers affiliated with Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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The movement has grown into a solidarity encampment styled after a similar protest at Columbia University in New York City .

Wine’s failure to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel in her remarks drew some criticism online, including a scathing reply on X from science writer Amy Alkon .

“There’s one place in the Middle East where gays and lesbians and trans people can live peacefully…Yes, Israel,” Alkon claimed.

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In the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack and Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, some Israel supporters have pointed to the country’s relatively liberal line of gay and trans issues in contrast to the terror group.

Although Israel does not perform same-sex marriages, it does recognize same-sex unions performed outside the country.

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was also outlawed there in 1992, and a landmark 2008 decision allowed same-sex couples to adopt children.

Tel Aviv — which has an annual Pride parade and a gay beach — was nicknamed the “gay capital of the Middle East” by Out magazine in 2007.

The Israeli government has also come under fire, however, for supposedly “pinkwashing,” or elevating claims about the country’s friendliness to LGBTQIA+ people and causes, to mask more conservative elements of the culture.

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In a 2009 paper, CUNY professor and writer Sarah Schulman suggested that the emphasis on LGBTQIA+ issues was a part of a concerted push to market Israel as an ideal democracy.

Three years earlier, a Jerusalem Post report revealed that the Israeli Foreign Ministry was consciously promoting “Gay Israel” to drum up support from liberal Americans and Europeans.

But while Israel has a score of 64/100 on the LGBTQ+ Equality Index , the Palestinian territories have a score of 6/100.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has a documented history of violence toward LGBTQIA+ individuals, including the 2016 murder of one of its own military commanders who was accused of having sex with a man, the New York Times reported .

There are also reports of incidents of anti-gay violence in the West Bank, which is governed by the Palestinian National Authority, CBS said .

“I welcome the LGBTQ community to go to Gaza…They’re going to get lynched and murdered,” Israeli clumnist Hillel Fuld told the outlet in response to groups that typically support LGBTQIA+ rights speaking out against the ongoing war.

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