Illustrative: Jews of Pride members are seen marching in the Pride parade 2025, part of LGBTQ+ community’s Midsumma Festival. Photo: Alexander Bogatyrev / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

Organizers of the upcoming Rome Pride Parade announced on Monday that two Jewish LGBTQ groups will not be allowed to join the parade with a float because they did not “distance themselves” from what event organizers described as the “ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Keshet Italia and Keshet Europe are banned from the parade, which is set to take place on June 20 in Rome. Organizers of the parade said in a Facebook post that for groups to participate in the event with a float, they need to make “a clear and unequivocal position of condemnation of the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government.”

“We clearly distinguish between the Israeli government and the Jewish community — which includes LGBTQIA+ individuals — and we could never hold the latter responsible for criminal acts of war perpetrated by a genocidal government,” organizers stated. “We attribute to Keshet Italia, however, the responsibility for having failed — and for having no intention — to distance themselves from the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

“Anyone who shares the founding values of our movement and our community can join us in the square. Floats in the Parade are, however, a prerogative but, above all, a political responsibility of the organization,” they added. “The history of our Republic is a history of Resistance. The history of our movement is also a history of Resistance. Roma Pride, therefore, supports the right of the Palestinian people — oppressed by the criminal and genocidal conduct of the Israeli government — to exist and to resist.”

Organizers of the parade said they made the decision after meeting with representatives from Keshet Italia and Keshet Europe. The decision also came after Keshet Italia published on May 12 a lengthy statement on Instagram explaining its position on how the word “genocide” should be used in relation to the war in the Middle East.

“While the conflict in the region is not our area of expertise, we feel close to the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Keshet Italia wrote in the Instagram post. “However, we ask people to be careful with the language used to refer to this war.”

“The word ‘genocide’ is not neutral; it evokes a specific historic [occurrence],” said the Jewish group. “We are especially concerned with the sentence that we keep on hearing that ‘the Jewish people are carrying out what they were subjected to,’ a sentence that does not just refer to a conflict or a government but ends up connecting what is happening to the whole Jewish people.”

On Monday, Keshet Italia, which is the only Italian Jewish LGBTQIA+ association, called on the mayor of Rome and members of the city’s municipality not to attend the Rome Pride Parade following their exclusion from the event.

“There is no Pride if minorities are excluded. Rome — a city symbolic of the Resistance and of memory — cannot associate its name with an event that excludes queer Jewish citizens. One cannot be complicit in discrimination and march alongside those who seek to drive out a minority,” Keshet Italia stated. They also accused Rome Pride organizers of a “double standard.”

“[It] remains able to distinguish ‘clearly the difference between the government and the Jewish community made up of LGBTQIA+ people,’ but it asks Italian Jewish people to distance themselves from a foreign government for which we are not responsible … No other association is subjected to a constant identity and political examination to prove they deserve to be there. This treatment is reserved for us only,” said Keshet Italia.

“Pride becomes an ideological court that hunts minorities and has lost its soul. Pride was born as a revolt of all oppressed subjectities, not as a space that decides who is worthy of being there,” they added. “We don’t accept rights lessons from those who apply dynamics of identity exclusion. Antisemitism disguised as political positioning remains ANTISEMITISM.”

In their statement, Keshet Italia also claimed they faced “clear antisemitic attacks” at last year’s Rome Pride Parade and organizers “chose silence” by refusing to condemn the attacks.

Last year, a report by the nonprofit A Wider Bridge found that anti-Israel activists in the LGBTQ+ community subject Zionist Jews to extreme levels of discrimination, including expulsions from major progressive groups and even physical assault.