Organizers of the LGBT Pride parade in Chicago Saturday banned Jewish marchers from participating in the event if they carried Jewish Pride flags (a rainbow flag adorned with the Star of David), The Windy City Times reported.
Collective members of the “Dyke march” asked three individuals carrying the Jewish Pride flags to leave, one of the Jewish pride members said.
“It was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching in the Dyke March with the same flag,” Laurel Grauer, Wider Bridge Midwest manager, told Windy City Times.
Grauer noted that she and her friends were harassed a number of times because of the flags they held.
Dyke March organizer explains the group’s decision to expel Jews from Chicago Pride parade. https://t.co/9mgKhbXNig pic.twitter.com/8XYs109bUP
— John-Paul Pagano (@johnpaulpagano) June 25, 2017
The Windy City Times looked for a response from a Dyke March collective member who claimed the Jewish pride women were asked to leave the parade because their flags “made people feel unsafe,” and the march was “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian.”
Newsweek reported that though Israel supports LGBT rights, LGBT activists often brush off Israel’s good will toward the LGBT community as “pink washing,” instead accusing the Jewish state of attempting to detract from the continuing issues between the Palestinians and Israel.
Grauer was not the only Jewish individual harassed at the LGBT march. Windy Times found an Iranian Jewish woman who said she too was asked to leave the march.
“I was here as a proud Jew in all of my identities,” Shoshany-Anderson stated. “The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional. I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I felt that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”