Pride Month got off to a chaotic start on Sunday when dozens of anti-Israel protesters affiliated with the Philadelphia chapter of Queers4Palestine clashed with revelers in the City of Brotherly Love, blocking the parade procession through the city’s historic Gayborhood . The surreal scene was a physical embodiment of the absurdity of shoehorning calls for the “liberation” of Palestine, arguably one of the world’s most socially regressive societies, into a pre-packaged social and ecological justice agenda fashionable with leftists in the United States and other first-world countries. The chaos in Philadelphia also hints at turbulence to come as Pride season ramps up here in Canada.
The Philadelphia anti-Israel protesters — some clad in keffiyehs, others in the standard rainbow-patterned accoutrements — hurled “from the sea to the river” and other hackneyed slogans at peeved parade-goers. A burly, bearded Palestinian sympathizer sporting a leather vest and cap appeared to physically restrain two female members of a drumline attempting to push through the logjam. Two protesters, standing at the front of the group, held up a Progress Pride Flag adorned with the words “NO PRIDE IN GENOCIDE” in all-caps, accompanied by two bloody handprints.
One protest leader, a young Black man pairing a black crop top with a keffiyeh obscuring the bottom half of his face, read from a prepared statement decrying the co-optation of Pride by the powers that be: “Pride celebrat.
