The city of Philadelphia kicked off ‘Pride Month’ over the weekend with the Philadelphia Pride March and Festival. The March started near Washington Square Park in Center City and ended in Philly’s Midtown Village neighborhood. While the annual parade began similarly to previous years, it quickly dissolved into chaos when a pro-Palestinian group confronted the head of the parade and blocked the participants from marching.
Before the parade could reach the end of the route, it was blocked at the intersection of 11th and Locust Street by a group of anti-Israeli activists. Videos posted to X showed protestors holding banners opposing the march and Israel’s actions in Gaza, and chanting ‘No Pride in Genocide.’
One video showed the protestors even likening the parade goers and Israelis to white supremacists, chanting “PPP, KKK, IOF, they’re all the same.” According to an analysis from the National Review, this slogan was intended to tie the Philly Pride Parade to the Ku Klux Klan and the “Israel Occupation Forces.”
The protest was led by a group calling itself Queer4Palestine, which according to its Instagram feed, is a Philadelphia-based “radical queer BIPOC collective.” Their social media feeds contain anti-America, anti-capitalist, anti-Israeli, and anti-Jewish posts. On the day of the pride parade, the group posted a statement on Instagram taking credit for the protest and explaining why it was their target.
“We will not quietly stand by while attempts are made to violently rainbow-wash “israeli’ (sic) or “american” (sic) occupation & crimes against humanity. We will not allow Philly Pride to divert attention away from the need to mobilize against genocide, occupation, and displacement.
They continued their statements on Instagram comparing Israel’s war on Hamas to genocides carried out in the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, writing, “we reject all celebrations of pride if they are not grounded in the struggle to end genocide.”
Notably, the content on their feed does not denounce the genocidal terrorist group Hamas or call for the return of American and Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
