Tel Aviv Pride
| Tel Aviv Pride מצעד הגאווה בתל אביב |
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| Frequency | Annually |
| Location(s) | Tel Aviv |
| Country | Israel |
| Inaugurated | 1979 |
| Participants | More than 200,000 people (2016) |
Tel Aviv Pride (Hebrew: גאווה תל אביבית, Arabic: مثلي الجنس فخر تل أبيب) is an annual, week-long series of events in Tel Aviv that celebrate Israel's LGBT community life, scheduled during the second week of June, as part of the international observance of Gay Pride Month. The most-attended event is Pride Parade which is the largest in Asia.
The first event that many consider to be the first 'Pride' event to take place in Israel was a protest in 1979 at Rabin Square. The event more closely associated with Tel Aviv Pride as it is known today was the Tel Aviv Love Parade in 1997.
The parade assembles and begins at Meir Park, then travels along Bugrashov Street, Ben Yehuda Street and Ben Gurion Boulevard, and culminates in a party in Charles Clore Park on the seafront. The parade is the biggest pride celebration in continental Asia, drawing more than 100,000 people in 2011 alone, approximately 5,000 of them tourists. Tel Aviv was the first location in Israel where "gay" events were organised and also the first city in Israel to host a gay pride parade. There were 200,000 participants reported in 2016, making it one of the largest in the world.
In the early years of the Pride Parade, the majority of participants were politically motivated. Later on, as the Parade grew, people who took part came with the notion that the Parade should focus on LGBT rights, equality and equal representation, and should not be used as a stage for radical politics, which are not accepted by most of the Parade's participants. Gradually, the Parade came to be less political due to the scale and diversity of participation. In recent years, the Parade's reputation for inclusiveness, along with Tel Aviv's world-class status as a gay-friendly destination and a top party city, has attracted more than 100,000 participants, many of them from around the world.
By 2000, the Parade had evolved from being a political demonstration and became more of a social-entertainment event and street celebration.
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Wikipedia