Ahmed Elbadawy, an Egyptian-French travel blogger who entered Israel and filmed a homophobic video in Tel Aviv in 2022, was deported by Houthi authorities after being accused of “espionage and supporting homosexuality.”
The young blogger, who lives in France and holds dual nationality, told the story of his imprisonment and deportation from Sanaa a couple of weeks ago in a video that received almost two million views in 10 days.
According to his account, he arrived in the south of Yemen and then, following a 20-hour journey featuring roadblocks and safari-like driving in the desert, he finally arrived in Sanaa and was told by authorities to hand over his passport.
Elbadawy said he was among the first hundred foreigners to have visited the area in the past years, and that entry was complicated as he apparently didn’t coordinate with authorities properly, despite the fact that some passport control guards knew him because of his viral videos.
According to Elbadawy, when he came back the next day, he was told his passport couldn’t be found, and people there started acting strangely as if they didn’t know him.
Suddenly he was left with three officers who weren’t as nice to him as those from the day before and who told him he was being taken to an interrogation.
During the interrogation, he was told to show his phone, where officers found footage from his visit to Israel featuring Pride flags. Elbadawy was then told that those who visit Israel can’t enter Yemen and was asked several times if he supports homosexuality.
‘Get our land back and purge it from perversion’
Despite rejecting the claims and stressing that the video in fact supported Palestine and denounced homosexuality, and despite the officers’ who watched it admitting there was a misunderstanding, they sent him away for three days of forced stay until he was finally deported to Jordan.
In his 2022 video, which garnered almost four million views, Elbadawy can be seen walking around Tel Aviv, referring to it as “occupied Jaffa,” explaining that he is there not for normalization but because it is Arab land and they must prepare to take it back.
Filmed several days before Pride Month in June, Elbadawy focused specifically on Pride flags, denouncing Tel Aviv for being the “largest city in the world in promoting rights of sexual perversion,” as well as drugs.
“This is a corrupt society, and it’s in our interest,” Elbadawy said in the video, adding, “Inshallah [God willing], once it’s back in Arabs’ hands, it will be emptied from guys with sexual perversion.”
Expressing dismay at Tel Aviv’s night scene, Elbadawy said Israelis don’t work, as though this kind of leisurely lifestyle can only be possible if they are paid by their countries through foreign governments who send money “to kill Arabs.”
He also named Tel Aviv as the most expensive city in the world, complaining about the priciest shwarma he’d ever had, even in an Arab-owned restaurant, and said happily that some Palestinians steal scooters from the city’s streets and take them to the West Bank.
Luai Ahmed, a Yemeni-born peace activist, leader at Builders of the Middle East, and member of the LGBTQ community himself, commented on the affair.
“This is a well-known blogger that travels around the Middle East, and it was surprising to see that he made it to Tel Aviv as well. I was excited to see that he went to Yemen, but it was no surprise that the Houthis gave him trouble.
“Watching his video in Tel Aviv with his rampant homophobia and antisemitism is very upsetting, and he should have never been let into Israel.
“This blogger is but an example of the institutionalized ignorance and antisemitism that became part and parcel of too many societies in the Middle East, and this problem must be fixed by us.”