Rome Pride has announced Jewish LGBTQ+ groups are banned from walking in year’s parade unless they publicly condemn Israel over the war in Gaza.
The organisers announced that Keshet Italia and Keshet Europe would not be allowed to participate in the 20 June march with an official float, saying the groups had failed to “distance themselves” from what Rome Pride described as the “ongoing genocide in Gaza”.
In a public statement, Rome Pride said participation in the parade “presupposes a clear and unequivocal stance condemning the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government”.
The decision sparked immediate backlash from Jewish organisations across Europe, with critics accusing Rome Pride of imposing political conditions on Jewish participants that are not applied to other minority groups.
Shannon Seban, director of European affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, described the move as “a blatant act of antisemitic discrimination”.
“When Pride excludes Jews, it betrays the very principles upon which the movement was built,” Seban said. “No other minority community is routinely asked to publicly denounce its homeland, distance itself from fellow members of its people, or adopt approved political positions simply to participate in civic life. Yet increasingly, Jews are being treated as conditional participants in public spaces.”
Seban added that Jewish LGBTQ people “should never be forced to choose between their sexual identity and their Jewish identity”, warning that parts of Europe were seeing “the normalisation of anti-Jewish exclusion under the banner of a fake and hypocritical social justice”.
“The weaponisation of Pride spaces against Jews is unacceptable,” Seban said. “Antisemitism has no place in the LGBTQ movement.”
Keshet Italia, the only Italian Jewish LGBTQ organisation, also criticised the decision, accusing parade organisers of failing to respond to alleged antisemitic incidents directed at Jewish participants during last year’s event.
The controversy comes amid growing concern about rising antisemitism in Italy and across Europe since the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war. Over the past year, monitoring groups have reported an increase in incidents targeting visibly Jewish individuals, Jewish institutions and pro-Israel organisations in several European countries.
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