Gay Pride Is Back in Israel

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, celebration of the homosexual movement has been slightly muted. This year, it is back in full swing.

Jerusalem’s pride march, held on June 4, was more political than in previous years, now that an election is imminent. The traditional route changed to finish with a rally in Sacher Park, near the Knesset.

“It’s always more like a protest than anything else. This year, especially.”
—Hadas Bloedmendal, chair of the march’s organizer, Jerusalem Open House

Israel will hold elections by October 27, and homosexual issues are becoming part of the campaign.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest rival, Naftali Bennett, is a religious Zionist but has compromised with the “lgbt movement,” saying that if he is elected, he will move Israel closer to legalizing homosexual “marriage.”

Over 2,000 police guarded the 10,000 marchers. Some who came to counterprotest reported that they were treated as criminals, despite breaking no law.

Tel Aviv’s much larger pride parade is scheduled for June 12. It will be the first full-sized parade since Oct. 7, 2023.

• The 2024 parade was a shrunken “Pride and Hope Rally.” 2025’s event was cancelled due to Iranian bombs.

“Pride Land” celebrations at the site of Sodom and Gomorrah near the Dead Sea appear to have been postponed. Originally scheduled for June 1–4, it appears they have been pushed back to July 1–4.

• The Mideast’s largest “pride event” will, according to Israel’s Walla, “transform the Dead Sea region into a full-fledged gay city.” It will include 15 hotels, a central performance area and festivals for families.

Israel is still reeling from the October 7 attack. Missiles rain down from Hezbollah into Northern Israel daily. Iran launched missiles just this weekend.

One member of the Knesset said the nation’s homosexual movement is “the most dangerous thing for the State of Israel, more than Islamic State, more than Hezbollah, more than Hamas.”

• That statement was read out and loudly booed at the Jerusalem event, but it is spot on.
• Herbert W. Armstrong warned that the “downward plunge” in morals was “rapidly becoming a greater threat to humanity than the hydrogen bomb!”

Whether or not people want to believe it, it is this “downward plunge” that reveals why God did not protect Israel from Hamas on October 7. Trumpet executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote in “What Is Israel’s Sin?”:

Isaiah 59:2 says that when we harbor sin in our life, God hides Himself from us. He will not hear our prayers, and we lose His protection. That sin separates us from God and joins us together with the chief terrorist, our adversary, the devil.

That is why Satan’s primary objective is to get us to coexist with evil—even if just a little bit. Because he knows it will grow.

Many of Hamas’s victims on October 7 were attending an all-night rave, full of illegal drugs, on the Sabbath. That attack was a warning. Israel is depriving itself of God’s protection.