Foreign Minister Yair Lapid instructed his ministry to raise an LGBT pride flag outside its Jerusalem headquarters in honor of Pride Month for the first time on Monday.
“The Foreign Ministry and its workers are leading a message of tolerance, brotherhood and freedom,” he tweeted.
לראשונה אי פעם הוריתי הבוקר להניף במשרד החוץ את דגל הגאווה לרגל אירועי חודש הגאווה. משרד החוץ ועובדיו מובילים מסר של סובלנות, אחווה וחופש. pic.twitter.com/XU1tsx3ESD
— יאיר לפיד - Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) June 21, 2021
Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll (Yesh Atid), who is gay, said raising the rainbow flag was “important news domestically and abroad.”
“I remember myself as a 16-year-old boy with worries about the future, and I hope that this moment reassures young men and women throughout Israel and the world and sends a message of tolerance and acceptance to all of Israeli society,” he said.
In response, the far-right Religious Zionist MK Itamar Ben-Gvir said the flag was a “cheap provocation” that “insults religious sensitivities.”
“I don’t have a problem with LGBT people; we are all brothers,” he said. “But at the same time, waving the flag doesn’t serve them. Rather, it hurts them and turns them into pawns in Lapid’s hands. The central problem is the extroversion and provocation to which Israeli children are exposed.”Religious Zionist MK Avi Maoz, the head and sole Knesset representative of the far-right anti-LGBTQ Noam party, appealed on Monday to Culture Minister Chili Trooper, who serves as the chairman of the Committee on Symbolic Affairs, demanding that an investigation be opened into the matter of hanging the "controversial" flag.