The decision by the organisers of Roma Pride to exclude the Jewish LGBTQIA+ association from the event has opened a political, cultural and even anthropological rift that goes far beyond the controversy of the moment.
Because here we are not just discussing Middle Eastern geopolitics, nor simply the Netanyahu government, its responsibilities or the atrocities that the world has been observing for months in Gaza. Something even more delicate is being discussed here: who has the right to call themselves ‘worthy’ of belonging to a community founded on rights, inclusion and freedom.

And that is precisely the most disturbing point.

Understanding the emotional and political reasons that led to that choice is possible. The images coming from Gaza, the appalling number of civilian casualties, the humanitarian devastation, and the increasingly explicit arrogance of a part of the Israeli government have generated outrage all over the world, even among people who for years considered Israel the only democratic garrison in the Middle East.
It is human, logical and even right to distance oneself from the political and military monstrosities of the Netanyahu government. Quite the contrary would be disturbing.

But it is one thing to harshly criticise a government; it is quite another to turn that criticism into a form of identity exclusion.

To exclude a Jewish association from a Pride is to introduce a very dangerous criterion: to establish that someone can be deemed ‘not worthy enough’ to participate in a space of rights on the basis of their perceived cultural, religious or political affiliation.
It is a logic that betrays the very nature of Pride, historically born not as a space of ideological purity, but as a place of liberation, pluralism and self-determination.

And it is even more striking to observe how, in certain circles, this selective moral rigidity serenely coexists with never really hidden sympathies towards regimes or political figures that have infinitely more repressive positions on civil rights. Because if one decides to hand out ethical patents and certificates of unworthiness, then one should be consistent to the end.
Otherwise, the risk is to turn Pride into a political tribunal dominated by a sort of moral megalomania: the idea that certain subjects can arrogate to themselves the monopoly of defining what is right, progressive or worthy of civil citizenship.

And here another huge contradiction emerges, almost removed from the debate.

Personally, I find it increasingly difficult to look at the Israeli flag the way I have looked at it for years. For me – and for many LGBTQIA+ people – that flag has long represented the idea of the only place in the Middle East where I could live my identity freely, love without fear, exist without the fear of persecution.
Israel, with all its contradictions, has been perceived for decades as an island of civil rights in a region often dominated by religious authoritarianism, institutionalised homophobia and repression.

And that is precisely why what is happening today generates an even more painful bewilderment. Because seeing that same flag associated with indiscriminate bombing, destruction, humiliation of civilians, violations of international law and the ferocious rhetoric of extremist ministers produces a moral fracture that is very difficult to recompose.

But there is also the opposite problem, which is too often hypocritically evaded.

I deeply support the right of the Palestinian people to have a state. I believe that opposing the annexation of the West Bank, denouncing settler violence, and opposing the crazy idea that ‘two peoples and two states will never exist’ is not only legally correct, but morally necessary.
Defending the Palestinian population massacred by war is a human duty before being a political one. Just as it would be sacrosanct to help that people rid themselves of the criminal nightmare represented by Hamas, which has also turned Palestinian suffering into an instrument of power and fanaticism.

Yet, despite all possible empathy for the Palestinian cause and people, I cannot bring myself to wave its flag.

Not out of hostility towards a people. Not out of denial of its right to a land, a home, a state. But because a flag does not only represent the pain of a people: it also represents the cultural and social model that that society expresses or tolerates.

And it is here that a truth emerges that many pretend not to see.

Palestine – including the West Bank ruled by the more moderate Palestinian National Authority – does not represent a safe, free or truly emancipated place for an LGBTQIA+ person today. In much of the Palestinian territories, homosexuality continues to be experienced within a deeply repressive culture.
Social discrimination is pervasive, aggression widespread and personal freedom far from guaranteed. For many Palestinian queer people, paradoxically, the only relatively safe place remains Israel.

And so an uncomfortable but inevitable question emerges: how can Pride turn the Palestinian flag into a universal symbol of liberation without questioning what that reality actually represents for LGBTQIA+ people living there?

A just cause does not automatically make everything around it just. And supporting the right of a people to exist does not morally oblige one to turn the national symbols of that people into symbols of one’s political or personal identity.

This is why the choice of Roma Pride risks appearing not only incoherent, but deeply ideological. Because if it is decided that the presence of a Jewish association is incompatible with Pride because of the policies of the Israeli government, then coherence would also require one to question the political and cultural significance of the Palestinian flag within an event that was created to claim LGBTQIA+ rights.

Otherwise, the implicit message becomes dangerous: some nationalisms would be morally unforgivable, others automatically absolved; some oppressions intolerable, others relatable; some victims worthy of universal empathy, others suspect by definition.

But civil rights should never work this way. They should not depend on geopolitics, ideological sympathies or the moral hierarchies of the squares.

A Pride should have the courage to remain what it was born to be: a space of radical freedom, not a place of political excommunication.
Because the moment the LGBTQIA+ community begins to exclude on the basis of perceived identity, it slowly stops being a community of liberation and risks turning into something very different: an ideological arena in which the right to exist depends on the political alignment of the moment.