Rome Pride bars Jewish LGBT group for not ‘distancing itself’ from Gaza ‘genocide’

Rome Pride said Monday it had barred Italy’s only Jewish LGBTQ group from operating a float at its annual parade, saying Keshet failed to “distance itself” from what organizers called an “ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Groups that want to be formally recognized in the parade with a float must sign onto Rome Pride’s political platform, which includes a condemnation of the “genocide in Gaza.”

In an apparent attempt to reconcile with the policy, Keshet Italia issued a statement earlier this month that lamented the suffering of Palestinians, while insisting that it did not feel comfortable characterizing Israel’s war as a genocide.

Rome Pride organizers met with representatives from Keshet Italia and Keshet Europe earlier this week and subsequently issued a statement saying that “the conditions” did not exist for the Jewish groups to march with a float in the June 20 parade.

“Pride is an open and ​free demonstration. Anyone who shares the founding values of our movement and our community can join us in the streets. [Decisions about] the floats in the parade, however, are a prerogative — and above all a political responsibility — of the organizers,” the statement read.

The parade’s organizers insisted that they would demand the same condemnation from the organizers of any float — Jewish or otherwise — and said they were “fully capable of distinguishing between the Israeli government and the Jewish community.”

“We do, however, hold Keshet Italia responsible for having failed, and continuing to fail, to distance itself from the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Israel has strenuously objected to allegations of war crimes or genocide in its campaign against the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip, which began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas – the enclave’s de facto government – invaded the Jewish state, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. The fighting mostly ended in October 2025, with a US-brokered hostage-ceasefire deal.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities in all its operations, and stresses that Hamas used Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

But tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed since the war’s outbreak. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry puts the number at over 72,000, but doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The Israeli military believes that Hamas’s overall toll is largely accurate, with IDF officials estimating that two to three civilians were killed for every dead terror operative.

‘Our crime? To be Jewish.’

In a statement condemning Rome Pride’s decision on Monday, Keshet Italia declared: “Rome Pride has shown its true colors. Our crime? To be Jewish.”

The group added this was “just the last step in a hostile path,” charging: “Last year during the parade, we received explicit antisemitic attacks, and Rome Pride chose to remain silent, refusing to condemn them. Today, that silence has become active complicity.”

Earlier this month, Keshet Italia published a long statement on Instagram about its position on several issues related to the Middle East conflict.

“While the conflict in the region is not our area of expertise, we feel close to the suffering of the Palestinian people,” the statement read. “However, we ask people to be careful with the language used to refer to this war.”

“The word ‘genocide’ is not neutral; it evokes a specific historic [occurrence],” it added.

“We are especially concerned with the sentence that we keep on hearing that ‘the Jewish people are carrying out what they were subjected to,’ a sentence that does not just refer to a conflict or a government but ends up connecting what is happening to the whole Jewish people.”

Other Jewish community organizations stood by Keshet, assailing the parade’s decision as discrimination.

“This is a serious decision, introducing an identity-based and discriminatory criterion directed exclusively at Jewish organizations, and reflecting an attempt to impose a single interpretation of the geopolitical context,” said the Jewish community of Rome in a statement.

“It is disturbing to demand that some Italian Jews first dissociate themselves, while symbols and groups representing countries that openly repress the very LGBTQ+ rights the Pride claims to champion are proudly displayed during the march,” it added.

The Union of the Italian Jewish Community panned the “ideological test in order to participate in a space created with the goal of inclusion.”

And the European Jewish Congress said the decision risked making the participation of Jewish ​associations conditional ⁠on accepting specific narratives.

Reuters contributed to this report.