The US embassy in Israel will boycott this year’s Tel Aviv Pride parade and will not host any Pride Month events of its own, marking a stark departure from previous years.
A letter from the embassy informing Israel of the decision cited the “priorities of the Trump administration,” which has embraced conservative values and shifted away from support for progressive causes, the Haaretz daily reported.
The letter, sent by email to the Foreign Ministry in February, referred to the “LGB community,” dropping the TQ+ in line with Washington’s policy against recognizing the trans community.
The policy matches a State Department directive to embassies around the world not to cooperate with pride marches, Haaretz reported.
The Tel Aviv Pride march, the largest such event in the Middle East, is set to take place Friday, drawing thousands to the famously open city.
It will be Tel Aviv’s first Pride parade since before October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel killing some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Instead of a parade, Tel Aviv’s Pride events last year culminated in a toned-down rally that highlighted the plight of the hostages and the wartime contributions of soldiers from the LGBTQ community.
The Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel said it was “disappointed that the team from the US Embassy in Israel will be forced to stand on the side instead of marching with us, as they did, with pride and without fear, for years.”
“What begins with the harassment of trans people quickly spirals to the exclusion of an entire community,” it warned in a post to its Facebook page.
Tel Aviv City Council member Reut Naggar, who jointly holds the municipality’s pride portfolio, told Haaretz that in previous years, the US embassy supported the city’s pride march in various ways.
There were no US embassy representatives at the Jerusalem Pride March last week, Haaretz noted in its report. A number of foreign envoys, including the ambassadors from Germany, France, Ireland, and the European Union, did attend.
New US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a devout Evangelical Christian, is himself an opponent of LGBTQ equality.
In 2015, he said asking Christians to accept same-sex marriage is “like asking someone Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.” He has not since backed down from that position.
Transgender influencer and Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner is to be the guest of honor at the Pride event, which will take place on Friday.
Jenner, who arrived in Israel on Wednesday, told reporters at a press conference that she is doing her part to change people’s perceptions of the Jewish state.
“I was in Israel years ago and I had such a wonderful time and I met the nicest, friendliest people in any country I’ve ever been to in my life,” said Jenner. “And, I thought, some day I’d really like to come back.”
It will be Jenner’s first time as guest of honor at the Tel Aviv Pride Parade, which typically draws tens of thousands of participants from across Israel and abroad.
“I tell people, the second biggest pride event in the world is in Tel Aviv. And every single response is exactly the same,” she said, describing people’s surprise to learn such a fact.
“Israeli people are very open-minded, they’re friendly, they’re great for the LGBT community and nobody knows this,” Jenner said.
“We can change people’s minds, the perception of what Israel is all about. That’s why I’m here to do my little part,” she added.
In January, Israeli LGBTQ organizations criticized Trump after he signed an executive order declaring that the US would now only recognize “man” and “woman” as genders.
Railing against the order, Israeli LGBTQ+ organizations warned that Trump’s move could lead to similar steps against the Israeli transgender community. Even though Israel does not recognize genders other than man or woman, it does allow trans people to change the genders listed in their ID cards after they transition.
The following month, Trump signed an executive order to ban transgender athletes from participating in female-only school sports, and the US military moved to ban transgender people from service unless they obtain a waiver on a case-by-case basis.
Transgender issues have roiled US politics in recent years, as states controlled by Democrats and Republicans have moved in opposite directions on policies ranging from medical treatment to what books on the topic are allowed in public or school libraries.
Agencies contributed to this report.