World
Tel Aviv holds first Pride parade since Oct. 7; cops impede some anti-government marchers
Tel Aviv on Friday hosted its first Pride parade in two years, with the municipality reporting over 100,000 people in attendance after urging marchers to “vote with your feet” for more rights.
The seaside parade followed a procession of eight floats sponsored by leading corporations and staffed, respectively, by the city’s LGBTQ community center, the Tel Aviv University students’ union and six leading lines of Pride parties.
With thumping music in the background, participants danced, cooled themselves with rainbow-pattern fans, and watched as performers — most of them scantily clad, muscular men — partied on the floats.
The seventh float, organized by the PAG TLV line, featured among its dancers trans model Uri Hashin, who had on Thursday led a 250-strong anti-bullying march down Tel Aviv’s Rothschild boulevard, where a gang of boys pelted her with stones last month.
Friday’s parade was secured by some 1,000 law enforcement officers, police said.
As the parade was getting started, police announced the arrest of a 37-year-old Haifa resident”amid concern of intent to harm participants of Pride Month events across the country,” after the unnamed man alluded in a social media post about needing to “annihilate” the “sick people.” Police said they would ask the Haifa Magistrate’s Court to extend the man’s detention.
People dance on a truck that leads the first Tel Aviv Pride parade in two years pic.twitter.com/DJLrLn0gpP
— Noam Lehmann (@noamlehmann) June 12, 2026
The figure of 100,000 participants cited by the Tel Aviv municipality marked a drop from past parades, with an estimated 250,000 attending in 2019 and 150,000 turning out at the last march in June 2023, months before the Hamas-led invasion of Israel and subsequent wars.
This year’s parade went ahead despite a roughly 12-hour exchange of fire between Israel and Iran starting Sunday night. The violence, renewed after a two-month truce in the latest Iran war, caused some events in Israel to be canceled, but Friday’s parade went ahead.
Last year’s Pride event, which was scheduled for June 13, was canceled just hours in advance after Israel launched a surprise bombing campaign against Iran, triggering a 12-day war. The central Pride event in 2024 was scaled down as a sign of mourning following the October 7, 2023, atrocities eight months before.
Some marchers denied entry over anti-government material
Officers in Tel Aviv on Friday sealed off some 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) of coastal boardwalk from Gordon Beach, where the parade kicked off at 1 p.m., southward to the Charles Clore park, where the march ended with a large party.
Among the pop stars who performed there was 2018 Eurovision winner Neta Barzilai. On Friday, she and Nibar Znati debuted Tel Aviv’s official 2026 Pride song, “Barbura” (female swan), which recounts an ugly duckling-like story with lyrics that include “Thank you for what I am.”
People entering the boardwalk for Friday’s parade had to pass through police barricades and have their personal belongings inspected. Some people were cited in Hebrew media saying officers denied them entry for carrying anti-government paraphernalia, including protest signs and masks of government supporters known for hostility to LGBTQ people.
Footage showed officers stopping a woman because she was wearing a shirt emblazoned with an insult against National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees police.
גברת מקפלן עם חולצה פאק Fuck בן גביר – לא הורשתה להכנס למצעד הגאווה בת”א. צפו לסוף המפתיע.???????? pic.twitter.com/LV7F6m0Col
— מה חדש. What’s new❓ (@Gloz111) June 12, 2026
Opposition lawmakers and LGBTQ groups slammed the officers’ conduct, noting the High Court of Justice ruled last year against a police directive barring political slogans at the Haifa Pride parade.
Police acknowledged an “isolated event” of people being inappropriately denied entry to the parade, saying they were ultimately let on to the boardwalk.
Political messaging was also visible at the boardwalk itself. A reporter for The Times of Israel saw marchers hoist masks like those that were said to be banned, as well as derogatory signs with pictures of conservative religious politicians MK Simcha Rothman and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Another rainbow-themed sign read: “All orientations are equal, except the orientation toward fascism.”
Officers did confiscate a sign that had made its way onto the boardwalk and suggested gays could be “saved” by Jesus. An officer escorted the man holding the sign away from the boardwalk.
As the parade began, dozens of members of the Israeli Gay Youth group, as well as activists from the Pink Front protest group and the Hoshen anti-homophobia group, beat drums and chanted “democracy.”
The youth group members occasionally crouched, counted down from 10 and then jumped, chanting their slogan: “We’re here and everywhere.”
The left-leaning Democrats party also sent a contingent of activists and politicians, including MK Gilad Kariv, who thanked police for their service but warned them not to force lawmakers to make sure officers behaved appropriately.
Activists for The Democrats handed out fliers that stated, “in a Jewish democratic state everyone is equal” and said the party would ban so-called “conversion therapy,” legalize civil marriage and ensure LGBTQ families equal rights to traditional ones.
No other party appeared to have shown up in an organized manner.
Charlie Summers contributed to this report.
