Head of Knesset gay caucus accuses Rome Pride organizers of antisemitism after ban on Jewish group

MK Yorai Lahav-Hertzanu, head of the Knesset’s informal LGBTQ caucus, accuses organizers of the Rome Pride Parade of antisemitism, after they barred the Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet Italia over its failure to denounce Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

“My grandmother was forced to flee Italy in the 1930s because there were people who thought Jews are a problem,” Lahav-Hertzanu says at the start of a caucus meeting to mark the Knesset’s annual LGBTQ Community Day.

“I’m Jewish, Israeli and gay… Israel is the only place in the Middle East where I can exist,” says the lawmaker, a member of the opposition Yesh Atid party that is now a faction in right-wing former premier Naftali Bennett’s Together slate.

“You can criticize the Israeli government — my colleagues and I do, day in, day out,” he says.

But, he adds, turning criticism of the Jewish state, and no other country, into “a precondition for participation” in Pride, is “a double standard — and a double standard aimed at Jews is antisemitism.”

“Nobody should have to pick between their Jewish identity and their LGBTQ identity,” he says. “You’re not protecting Pride — you’re defiling it.”