Gay Christian Palestinian: ‘Israel Saved My Life’

Learning that Israel is not the ‘cruel oppressor’, a young Arab man tells how he wouldn’t be alive today, if not for Israel’s “humanity and compassion.”

By Israel Today Staff

 

A young Palestinian man currently seeking asylum in Canada says that after converting to Christianity and coming out as a homosexual, he would never had made it if not for Israeli compassion.

John Calvin

Going today by the name John Calvin, the 24-year-old is the grandson of a top Hamas commander in the so-called “West Bank,” terrorist royalty, if you will.

Suffering regular domestic abuse from a young age, Calvin crossed illegally into Israel-proper a number of times. One of those visits landed him in jail, where he was raped by a Muslim inmate.

Calvin told The Times of Israel that following that horrific experience, he “received assistance from Jewish psychiatrists and from the jail administration, which helped me through the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life. That ended up changing my life entirely. The entire staff tried to help, including the prison warden… They tried to keep it quiet because of the culture in jail and even followed up with me after my release. This was not the image I grew up with about Jewish people.”

Like most young Arabs, Calvin was brought up to believe that Israeli Jews are “monsters whose goal in life is to kill and destroy us in every opportunity they get.”

Instead, he discovered that the Jews of Israel are “normal people who showed humanity and compassion in my time of need.”

The episode convinced Calvin that something in his life was not right, and that realization soon after led him to the New Testament and a newfound faith in Yeshua (Jesus) as his savior.

It was after fleeing to Canada that Calvin eventually informed his family of his homosexual leanings.

Now, he is facing possible deportation, which Calvin said would be “the equivalent of a death sentence. Even if it wasn’t because I’m Christian, it would be because I’m gay.

 

”View original Israel Today publication at: http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/25899/Default.aspx