In LA, pro-Israel groups hold inaugural Pride conference to counter ‘Queers for Palestine’

Some 120 pro-Israel LGBTQ community members gathered in Los Angeles last week for the inaugural Pride for Israel conference, organized by international Zionist advocacy organization StandWithUs and other Israeli and Jewish groups.

Speakers at the November 9 conference, including former hostage Emily Damari, who was released from Hamas captivity in January as part of a January 2025 Gaza ceasefire, celebrated the gathering and expressed frustration with the worldwide LGBTQ community’s pro-Palestinian leanings.

In a joint statement, organizers — StandWithUs, US pro-Israel LGBTQ group A Wider Bridge, the American Jewish Committee of Los Angeles and the Israeli-American Council — said Israel has “long stood out as a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people in the Middle East,” and accused the broader LGBTQ community of having, since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, sided with “‘Queers for Palestine,’ a cause rooted in ideologies that criminalize, oppress and routinely murder LGBTQ+ people.”

Damari, who has spoken widely about hiding her lesbian identity from her Hamas captors out of fear they would kill her, put it more succinctly at the conference, according to queer Scottish Jewish music journalist Eve Barlow in her “Blacklisted” Substack.

“You guys may be for Palestine. But I can tell you, Palestine is not for you,” said Damari. Barlow reported that Damari saw Queers for Palestine activists on Al Jazeera while she was in Gaza.

The sold-out conference was attended by people from around the world, and did not receive funding from the Israeli government, StandWithUs co-founder and CEO Roz Rothstein told The Times of Israel in an email. Due to concerns about anti-Israel protests, the conference location, a West Angeles hotel, was not publicly disclosed, Rothstein said. There were no such protests, she added.

Some conference attendees described feeling a need to hide their identity amid the war in Gaza. One unnamed Jewish gay man quoted by Barlow said, “I took a long time to come out of the gay closet, but after October 7, I had to go back into a Jewish closet.”

Speaking alongside Barlow in a panel titled “When Inclusion Excludes,” Tanya Tsikanovsky, the daughter of Soviet Jewish emigres to the US who describes herself on LinkedIn as “a proud Jew, unapologetic Zionist, and outspoken Republican,” recounted being told by a pair of women at a Dyke Day lesbian pride event to leave because she “wore a shirt that said Israel on it.”

Tsikanovsky, sporting a buzzcut and dark blue two-piece suit, said in footage she posted to Instagram that the “two feminine-presenting women tell me, by the look of my shirt, that I’m not welcome. They look at me like, why are you here. You don’t belong here.”

Calling attention to her own appearance, Tsikanovsky added, to applause: “I look at them, like, listen, lady, if anyone belongs here… I’m the one that belongs here.”

There’s strength and resilience and then there’s @emilydamari. Her eloquence in how she talks about her experience as a hostage survivor is so moving because she is just so honest. She doesn’t try to be anything other than who she is; it’s beautiful and empowering pic.twitter.com/xX7RRGDGZ1

— Tanya Tsikanovsky (@highlyjewish) November 10, 2025

Speaking alongside Tsikanovsky, non-binary pro-Israel activist Matthew Nouriel described “starting out my social media presence as an Iranian Jewish drag queen, being celebrated for it, and then demonized when I chose to speak out against the antisemitism we witnessed in May of 2021 following the Sheikh Jarrah incident,” when fighting was sparked in Gaza and mixed Arab-Jewish cities in Israel following the eviction of Palestinian families from the East Jerusalem neighborhood, Nouriel said in an email to The Times of Israel.

Nouriel, who directs the Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa organization, also noted “the exclusion felt from within the Jewish LGBT community at times when I refused to ‘pick a side’ between left and right.”

Not all rosy

Despite the celebration of Israel, some conference attendees, including representatives of Israel’s Aguda LGBTQ umbrella organization, noted that the country was not always supportive of its LGBTQ community.

Sitting alongside Aguda CEO Yael Sinai Biblash, Nouriel called attention to the Israeli government’s steep cut in budgets for the Aguda, whose programs include health services and shelters for at-risk Israeli and Palestinian LGBTQ youth.

Biblash and her deputy, Imry Zaguri, spoke with A Wider Bridge’s Rabbi Denise Eger about the challenges and budget cuts faced by the LGBTQ community in Israel. A Wider Bridge was founded in 2010 to strengthen ties between North American Jewish communities and Israel.

Under Minister May Golan, the Social Equality Ministry cut the budget of its Department for the Advancement of the LGBT Community by about 40%, and effectively gutted a flagship program to appoint LGBTQ community coordinators in localities nationwide, Israeli LGBTQ groups and opposition lawmakers have charged. An Aguda spokesperson alleged to The Times of Israel in September that the government’s budget cuts reflected a strategy of “marking the community as a hater of Israel.”

Golan, who is under investigation for corruption and misuse of public funds, has denied slashing the LGBTQ budget, and accused community organizations of harassing her and turning away right-wing Israelis under the guise of tolerance.

In a May speech at the Knesset, Golan singled out the Aguda for particular criticism over a 2022 cooperation with Atid Kachol Lavan (Blue and White Future), an Israeli protest group that advocates, among other things, for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“What rights are there in the State of Palestine… for the LGBTQ community? Getting tossed off roofs? Getting hanged?” said Golan.

At the LA conference, Nouriel emphasized that Aguda advocates and works for “at-risk youth, Palestinian asylum seekers, healthcare and so much more.”

“It’s so important to strengthen voices in Israel that protect our community, especially now when the Aguda is facing major budget cuts,” said Nouriel.

Asked if the conference brought to bear the nuances of Israel’s image as a safe haven for LGBTQ, Nouriel said, “There was a diverse representation of thought across all the programming, which did include lots of nuance.”

“With that said, it’s important to note that politics was not the focus, whether Israeli or American,” said Nouriel, who uses they/them pronouns. “The focus of this conference was to bring LGBT Jews and our allies together to foster empowerment and community, and to strategize on how to combat anti-Zionism within LGBT spaces.”

In that spirit, Nouriel moderated a panel with pro-Israel trans activists Brianna Wu and Bellamy Bellucci titled “Excluded from the Spaces We Helped Build.” The panel was held for two reasons, according to Nouriel: “Firstly, to ensure trans representation, and secondly, because the conference was about bringing LGBT voices from across political spectrums together over our common love for Israel (Bellamy leans right and Brianna leans left).”

Palestinian and other LGBTQ groups have over the past two decades accused Israel of touting its LGBTQ tolerance as a means of “pink-washing” its actions in Gaza and the West Bank, including the reported blackmailing of gay Palestinians into collaboration with Israeli security forces. The accusation has become especially widespread amid the war in Gaza.

Rothstein, the StandWithUs CEO, called the pink-washing allegations “manipulative.”

“They leave out Hamas’s genocidal intentions and its oppressive rule in Gaza, distorting facts and placing all blame on Israel alone,” she said.