Tel Aviv Pride Is as Fierce as Ever
Image by Getty Images
By Lior Zaltzman June 12, 2015
Image by Getty Images
Tel Aviv’s 17th annual Gay Pride Parade took place this Friday. Over 180 thousand participants were expected by the municipality, including around 30,000 tourists who came to participate in the weekend’s Pride events. The temperatures were milder than usual and the city’s streets filled with the nation’s fiercest and proudest, members and allies of the LGBTQ community.
The city’s mayor, Ron Huldai, opened the march, at the center of which is the plight of the transgender community, this year’s event being titled “Tel Aviv Loves All Genders”.
From drag queens, to go-go dancers, to kid friendly events spaces, to young activists, the event had everything. People marched for hours, dancing, chanting singing and blowing bubbles!
The culmination of the day’s event is a show by the unfathomable Conchita Wurst, the Austrian pop singer and drag queen, and the winner of the 2014 Eurovision, in all of her bearded glory.
But the big party is due to take place Saturday, at Bloomfield Stadium, with a gigantic rave headed by Israeli DJ Ofer Nissim. It might just be the biggest LGBTQ party Israel has ever seen, with about 5000 in attendance, dancing and partying on the soccer stadium. It’ll be the most colorful and gayest party that venue has seen, at least since Barbara Streisand’s last performance there!
Here are some choice pictures from the Friday’s events:
Blowing bubbles!
Image by Getty Images
Dressed for battle
Image by Getty Images
Someone’s pulling a Conchita Wurst!
Image by Getty Images
Image by Getty Images
A very different kind of float for one proud mommy!
Image by Getty Images
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
