Friday, June 14, 2019

With glitz and glamor, Tel Aviv celebrates Mideast’s largest Pride parade

Hundreds of thousands of people were expected to take to Tel Aviv’s streets Friday, as the famously gay-friendly city put on one of the world’s larger Pride parades.
Rainbow flags flooded the streets, and organizers said some 250,000 people were expected to take part in the annual event.
The parade and accompanying festivities kicked off at 10 a.m. and were to continue until 7:30 p.m., with authorities beginning to close off streets in the city center at 8:30 a.m.
By noon tens of thousands were reportedly marching.
The march this year is being held under the slogan “The Fight for Equality,” with activists decrying continuing discrimination by the state.
Ohad Hizki, director of The Aguda – Israel’s LGBT Task Force, said marchers hope “to bring about change in Israeli society and send a message that we need to end discrimination against the gay community and create an equal and tolerant society.
“The march itself is happy…but that is the essence of this fight…we won’t let anyone put the community in the closet.”
Hizki said that this year “over 40 parades and other events are taking place, an unprecedented number. The gay community is an inseparable part of Israeli society and we won’t let it be ignored.”
Gay couples cannot get married in Israel, though the government recognizes unions performed elsewhere. They also do not have the same rights to surrogacy as straight couples. And transgender people continue to report discrimination and have often suffered abuse in public.
Politicians in attendance included Labor’s Shelly Yachimovich, Stav Shaffir and Amir Peretz, Meretz head Tamar Zandberg and Blue and White’s Miki Haimovich, Idan Roll and Eitan Ginzburg. READ MORE