Sarina Wiesel / Jerusalem Post
Jerusalem Pride is for those of us who believe in the dignity of every human being, regardless of who they love, how they pray, or where they come from.
Jerusalem does not do things quietly. It carries the weight of millennia, of faith, of conflict, of longing, in every stone.
So when thousands of people poured into the streets on June 4 for the 24th annual Jerusalem “March for Pride and Tolerance,” rainbow flags rippling against that ancient skyline, I felt something I wasn’t fully prepared for: pure, uncomplicated joy.
This year marks a decade since I made Jerusalem my home. Ten years in this city have given me a front-row seat to its contradictions and its miracles, and June 4 felt like both at once.
The crowd was unlike anything I could have scripted. Families with strollers painted in rainbow colors. Elderly couples walking hand in hand. Soldiers in uniform. Secular Israelis and religious ones. Diplomats. Teenagers. A grandmother holding a sign that simply read “love.”
The parade drew people from every corner of Israeli society, and watching them march together, past the Supreme Court, toward the Knesset, through a city holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, felt like Jerusalem, against all odds, making sense.
What struck me most was how family-friendly the march was. This wasn’t a fringe event or a provocation. It was a community celebration, with performers, speakers, and kids on their parents’ shoulders waving little flags.
President Isaac Herzog was there, becoming the first sitting Israeli head of state to attend Jerusalem Pride, a moment that carries weight not just symbolically but historically. Opposition Leader Yair Lapid addressed the crowd. The message from Israel’s leadership was unambiguous: “You belong here.”
What moved me most was the texture of the unity. I stood next to a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man who had come, he told me, simply to watch, curious. Near the Knesset stretch of the route, a group of young Arab-Israeli women marched with a hand-painted sign in Arabic and Hebrew.
Volunteers handed out water to strangers without asking who they were or where they came from. A man in a kippah cheered from the sideline, phone raised, filming. These were not staged moments. They were the ordinary overflow of a city deciding, together, that there is room enough for everyone.
We are living through a global moment of rising hatred: antisemitism, homophobia, racism, and the cynical weaponization of one group’s fear against another. It is easy to feel despair, which is why what happened in Jerusalem on June 4 felt like an answer.
Jerusalem Pride Chooses love over fear
Not a naive one. Not a simple one. But a real one: thousands of people, different in almost every way, choosing to walk the same road together. Choosing visibility over silence, and choosing love over fear.
I AM an ally. I work in digital media for StandWithUs, an international education organization that supports Israel and combats antisemitism.
We recognized that the Jewish and LGBTQ+ communities are often vilified or erased within and from outside their own LGBTQ communities. Pro-Israel supporters are marginalized – not just by ideological opponents, but by the broader LGBTQ+ community itself that identifies with the “Queers for Palestine” ideology.
So we created a new division, “Pride for Israel.” It works specifically to connect LGBTQ+ communities and allies who support Israel and to push back against attempts to weaponize LGBTQ+ identity against the Jewish state.
We held our first conference in Los Angeles to reclaim unity and love for Israel, and the division is growing quickly, issuing statements about the blatant antisemitism involved in excluding Jews from Rome’s Pride parade and from a spa event in Barcelona for wearing a Star of David. Pride for Israel will be planning a second conference soon.
Israel is often flattened into a talking point. Its complexity – democratic, diverse, struggling, striving – gets lost in the noise.
But on June 4, I saw the Israel I believe in and the Jerusalem I have called home for 10 years: a city that is simultaneously the holiest place on earth and a place where a gay teenager can march safely down the street, where an Arab-Israeli and an ultra-Orthodox bystander and a tourist from the United States can stand in the same square and witness something remarkable together.
That is not a contradiction. That is the point.
For those who reduce Israel to a single narrative, the Jerusalem Pride march is inconvenient. But for those of us who believe in the dignity of every human being, regardless of who they love, how they pray, or where they come from, it is exactly the kind of evidence we need to share loudly and proudly.
Jerusalem does not belong to any one people. Its holiness, paradoxically, demands that it hold everyone. On June 4, for a few beautiful hours, it did.
The writer is the Digital PR and Media Writer for StandWithUs, an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and combats antisemitism.
