Some 200,000 people attended Friday's
annual Tel Aviv LGBT Pride parade.
According to the Jerusalem
Post, the march, which stepped off from Tel Aviv's Gan Meir
park at noon, is the largest such parade in the Middle East.
Ron Huldai, mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo
municipality, praised this week's LGBT events.
“The Pride Parade has turned into one
of the symbols of the City of Tel Aviv with hundreds of thousands of
participants and tourists from all over the country and world,” he
is quoted as saying.
“I believe that Tel Aviv-Yafo, a city
of tolerance, is a beacon to other cities [on] this issue,” Huldai
added.
A poll conducted ahead of Friday's Tel
Aviv LGBT Pride parade found support for marriage equality in Israel
at an all-time high. Seventy-six percent of the Jewish Israeli
public supports recognizing gay and lesbian couples with some form of
marriage, a 12 percent increase since September.
(Related: Lea
DeLaria, Alan Cumming attend Pride events in Israel.)