LGBTQ History in Israel

Israeli LGBTQ history developed through several overlapping tracks rather than a single event or institution. Community organizations created social networks and public campaigns; the Knesset changed criminal and employment law; the military revised service policies; and courts extended particular employment, partnership, adoption, and surrogacy rights.[1][3]

These changes did not produce one comprehensive legal status. Same-sex marriage is not performed in Israel, and many family and partnership rights developed through individual statutes, administrative decisions, and court cases. Legal gains also coexisted with discrimination, hostile school environments, violence, and political debate over how Israel’s LGBTQ record should be interpreted.[5][6]

The movement’s emergence did not hinge on one event equivalent to the Stonewall riots in the United States. Educational and historical accounts instead connect it to changing Israeli social values and politics.[1] Early organizing developed in a public climate shaped by Zionist state-building, security concerns, collective ideals, and strong expectations around family and reproduction. These priorities left limited space for public discussion of individual identity, while Israel’s close-knit society could make coming out particularly difficult.[2]

A criminal provision inherited from the British Mandate prohibited certain sexual acts between men, although it formally addressed acts rather than sexual orientation. It entered Israeli law after independence and was transferred into the Penal Law in 1977 with a maximum sentence of ten years. A proposed repeal failed in 1978 by 28 votes to 18.[7] The attorney general directed police in 1953 not to enforce the law against consensual acts between adults, and the Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that it should not apply to such acts in private. The provision nevertheless remained in force until 1988 and contributed to fear within the LGBTQ community.[3]

Organized community life took shape during the 1970s. The Society for the Protection of Personal Rights, known as the Agudah, was established in 1975. Its early name avoided an explicit reference to homosexuality, and it initially operated primarily as a support and social organization, holding gatherings rather than concentrating on political campaigning.[2][8] Immigrants from the United States and other English-speaking countries played an important role, bringing experience of gay-liberation movements abroad.[1]

Lesbians initially organized largely within the women’s movement and later developed a women’s group within the association. One participant recalled that seven women attended an early national meeting and that the group grew to 130 members within a year. The same account described police surrounding meeting places such as Meir Garden with flashlights and notebooks, chasing people, and sometimes threatening them for information.[9]

In 1974, activists held a masked protest for homosexual rights in Tel Aviv; participants concealed their faces because of fear, and the word “pride” had not yet entered Hebrew usage in this context.[10] In 1979, an international conference of gay Jewish organizations encountered withdrawals by venues and accommodation providers. Participants also held public actions remembered in different ways: the Jewish Virtual Library identifies a protest in what is now Rabin Square as Israel’s first Gay Pride event, while Mako describes a modest procession of several dozen participants around the fountain at Dizengoff Square.[3][10]

On March 22, 1988, the Knesset repealed the Mandate-era prohibition on consensual same-sex relations between adults as part of a broader reform of sexual-offenses legislation.[11] The package also increased the maximum prison sentence for rape to 20 years, prohibited publication of rape victims’ names, and permitted consensual sex between minors whose ages were no more than two years apart.[11] Although no one had been prosecuted under the same-sex provision, its potential ten-year penalty had contributed to fear.[11]

Accounts describe the repeal as a quiet legislative maneuver. The Knesset debate focused on rape legislation and did not name the provision concerning same-sex acts. Sources agree that religious-party members did not participate in the vote but differ over whether those parties knowingly allowed the repeal to pass.[11][7]

Political activism expanded after decriminalization. In 1989, activists established Atzma as the Agudah’s political arm and developed a platform based largely on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its agenda covered employment, education, family law, adoption, and relations with the military and police.[7]

A major employment-equality dispute began in 1989 when El Al flight attendant Jonathan Danilowitz sued after the airline denied his male partner the complimentary ticket available to employees’ opposite-sex spouses. The Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court accepted his claim, the National Labor Court rejected El Al’s appeal in 1992, and the Supreme Court rejected the airline’s petition in 1994.[12] The Supreme Court required equal treatment for the flight-ticket benefit but did not establish a general marriage status for same-sex couples.[5]

In 1992, the Knesset amended employment law to prohibit discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, with exemptions for some religious organizations.[3] The wider anti-discrimination framework was intended to prevent group-based rejection, in which an individual is excluded because of membership in a social group.[13]

Military policy changed in 1993, when the IDF formally opened service regardless of sexual orientation. Professor Uzi Even’s initiative was followed by a new military code providing for nondiscrimination in recruitment and placement.[14] An INSS analysis concluded that lifting the ban did not undermine military performance, while examining arguments that Israel’s experience might not be directly transferable to the United States.[4] The period from 1988 through the mid-1990s has been described as a “golden age of gay political success,” although accounts also note that the movement did not fully embrace feminism and neglected gay Arabs.[2]

The chronology of Pride in Israel depends partly on what counts as a parade. Sources identify a masked rights protest in 1974, a small procession or protest in 1979, and a 1993 motorcade in which 14 cars drove along Dizengoff Street, raised a Pride flag, and ended at a celebration in Shenkin Garden.[3][10] One educational account calls the 1993 event Israel’s first gay Pride parade, while Mako distinguishes the motorcade and other smaller gatherings from the first “real” or formal Tel Aviv parade in 1998.[1][10]

The 1998 parade became a large public event and an attraction for visitors. Mako links its heightened visibility to Dana International’s Eurovision victory and attention surrounding the Wigstock drag festival. The Agudah organized the annual parade until 2007, when the Tel Aviv–Jaffa Municipality assumed full funding of the events.[10] Tel Aviv Pride subsequently grew substantially: JNS reported a record 250,000 participants at the June 8, 2018 parade, many of them tourists. The theme, “The Community Makes History,” marked 20 years since the city’s first Pride Week, 10 years since the Tel Aviv Gay Center was founded, and 70 years of Israeli independence.[14]

Pride events did not have identical relationships with every host city. A study of Pride in Ashdod describes the allocated parade space as fenced off and disconnected from ordinary urban life, producing a temporary spatial “bubble” with little effect on the surrounding city and its inhabitants.[15]

Jerusalem’s Pride history developed amid more visible opposition and security concerns. Its first Pride and Tolerance parade was held in 2002. World Pride ultimately took place there on November 10, 2006, following postponements associated with regional events. Religious leaders and some secular Israelis objected to the event as provocative, but it proceeded without the violence many had feared.[2] A first-person account of the 2007 parade states that more than 7,000 police and army officers protected marchers and that snipers were stationed on nearby rooftops; no violence occurred.[16]

Jerusalem Pride was attacked in 2015. On July 30, Yishai Shlissel entered the march with a knife and stabbed participants; Shira Banki died from her injuries on August 2.[17] The Anti-Defamation League reported that six people were stabbed, that leaders across Israel’s political spectrum condemned the attack, and that Shlissel had attacked participants at the same event in 2005.[18]

Dana International’s 1998 Eurovision victory brought increased attention to transgender people and LGBTQ issues. Scholarship describes her public image as a glamorous alternative to older abject representations of transsexuality and as challenging both medicalized understandings of trans identity and a strict separation between gender and sexual identity.[19] Another historical account says her victory brought transgender visibility onto the movement’s public agenda after earlier reluctance to include transgender people.[2]

Other cultural milestones widened public visibility. A 1998 attempt by police to close the Wigstock festival at the start of the Sabbath led protesters to block nearby Hayarkon Street. Queer media called the event “the Israeli Stonewall,” although the source treats that comparison as qualified rather than exact.[2] That November, Michal Eden became Israel’s first openly lesbian elected official when she won a seat on the Tel Aviv City Council.[2] Sources disagree over the first openly gay member of the Knesset: the Jewish Virtual Library identifies Uzi Even, while a later note in My Jewish Learning identifies Nitzan Horowitz.[2][3]

Court decisions gradually extended particular rights to same-sex partners without creating a general legal status of marriage. The El Al decision established equal treatment for a specific employment benefit.[5] In 2004, a district court recognized a man’s right to inherit from his deceased male partner of approximately 40 years. The state did not appeal, and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz subsequently announced that the state would recognize reciprocal rights of same-sex couples.[17]

Israel’s marriage system remained distinct from these case-by-case gains. Marriage is generally administered through recognized religious communities, and Israel does not provide a general civil, nonreligious marriage route. Same-sex couples therefore cannot marry in Israel through a civil ceremony.[5] A 2006 Supreme Court decision required the registration of qualifying foreign marriage certificates in the population register, while the Israeli government’s account expressly distinguished registration from creating a new substantive status of same-sex marriage.[20]

In 2017, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a petition seeking recognition of same-sex marriage and an exemption for Jewish LGBTQ Israelis from relevant provisions of the Rabbinical Court Jurisdiction Law. Justice Elyakim Rubinstein characterized the creation of such a marriage status as a weighty issue with religious implications that required legislative rather than judicial determination.[21]

Adoption policy developed in stages. In 2000, the High Court recognized same-sex couples who had adopted children abroad as adoptive parents in Israel.[17] In 2005, the Supreme Court allowed lesbian partners who lived together and raised children to adopt each other’s children, relying on the children’s interests while emphasizing that the decision did not establish marriage or a general partnership status.[5] A court permitted adoption of children not biologically related to either partner in 2008, and the government announced in 2017 that it no longer opposed same-sex adoption.[3]

In December 2023, the High Court unanimously interpreted the 1981 Adoption Law’s reference to adoption by “a man and his wife together” as capable of including a stable same-sex couple. The Court emphasized the law’s purpose of securing the adopted child’s welfare. Earlier practice had generally provided same-sex couples with fewer opportunities and sometimes required partners to adopt individually.[22]

Immigration rules also changed. In 2014, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that a non-Jewish spouse of a Jewish person in a legal same-sex marriage abroad could immigrate under the Law of Return, even if the spouse was not Jewish.[23] A State Department report also recorded public support from cabinet members, including the prime minister, for extending surrogacy rights to same-sex couples.[24]

Surrogacy became a major legal and political issue. A 2018 amendment expanded eligibility to certain single women but continued to exclude single men and same-sex couples, prompting demonstrations and an Agudah-organized nationwide strike on July 22.[25] In 2020, the High Court found that the exclusion of same-sex couples and single men with a genetic connection to a child disproportionately violated equality and parenthood rights. After no replacement framework was enacted, the Court ruled in July 2021 that the exclusionary provisions would become void after six months. The change took effect in January 2022, allowing same-sex couples and single men to use surrogacy.[26][27]

Transgender history in Israel includes pioneering activism, public visibility, institutional mistreatment, and later legal and military reforms. Gila Goldstein was born in Turin in 1947 and immigrated to Haifa as a child. She began using the name Gila in 1960, became a singer, actress, and transgender-rights activist, and underwent gender-reassignment surgery in Belgium. One account calls her the first Israeli to undergo the surgery, while another describes her as among the first.[28][29]

Goldstein helped found the Agudah in 1975, received the Israeli LGBT community prize in 2003, and died in 2017.[28] Efrat Tilma’s experiences illustrate earlier institutional hostility. JNS reports that police jailed her for dressing as a woman and that the Interior Ministry required humiliating tests when she changed her documents after surgery in Europe. She later became a police volunteer and an intermediary between the police and transgender community; the police eventually issued an official apology and awarded her a special medal.[14]

From 2015, the Health Ministry allowed transgender people to change their legal gender without undergoing sex-reassignment surgery. A 2023 human-rights report described a process involving surgery or approval by a medical committee, noted that no nonbinary, intersex, or gender-nonconforming marker was available, and reported that a seven-year requirement to retain former names on an identity-card addendum could result in involuntary disclosure.[6]

In 2016, transgender IDF officer Ofer Erez helped change military regulations concerning uniforms, dormitories, medical services, and other conditions of transgender service. The regulations stated that gender dysphoria was not grounds for discharge, and JNS described Erez as the IDF’s first openly transgender officer.[14]

Employment protections grew from the 1992 prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation and later judicial interpretations.[3] Israel’s wider anti-discrimination framework addresses rejection based on membership in a social group rather than only individualized employment decisions.[13]

In June 2015, the National Labor Court confirmed that the Equal Employment Opportunities Law should prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. A State Department report nevertheless described continuing workplace discrimination and cited a task-force study reporting discrimination in hiring or termination among approximately 80 percent of transgender respondents, 50 percent of lesbians, and 20 percent of gay men.[30]

Education law also changed. A 2014 amendment to the Student Rights Law made discrimination against students on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity unlawful. A 2021 survey cited by IMPACT-se found that more than one-third of LGBT students had heard homophobic remarks from teachers and that one in ten reported physical assault because of sexual orientation.[31]

A human-rights report covering 2023 stated that Israeli law prohibited employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and discrimination in goods and services based on sexual orientation. It said the government generally enforced these protections but that discrimination persisted. The report also stated that conversion therapy was not prohibited by statute, although a Ministry of Health directive barred health professionals from providing it; the directive did not cover religious officials or uncertified individuals.[6]

Violence and harassment accompanied legal advances and increased visibility. On August 1, 2009, a masked gunman attacked the offices of GLBT Israel in Tel Aviv, killing Nir Katz, 26, and Liz Trobishi, 16, and wounding 15 others. Senior Israeli politicians, including the president and prime minister, condemned the attack. In 2010, the Tel Aviv municipality introduced a school program addressing LGBT issues and discrimination in commemoration of the victims.[32]

Jerusalem Pride was attacked in both 2005 and 2015. The Anti-Defamation League identified Yishai Shlissel as the suspect in the 2015 stabbing and reported that he had attacked participants at the same parade ten years earlier.[18] Shira Banki died from injuries sustained in the 2015 attack.[17]

Community organizations documented other incidents. A violence-prevention center and hotline reported 250 cases of violence and discrimination between August 2013 and August 2014.[24] A 2023 report stated that the Agudah recorded four times as many anti-LGBTQI+ incidents from January through March as during the same period in 2022, with physical violence involved in 20 percent of incidents. LGBTQI+ organizations attributed part of the increase to statements by public figures and government efforts toward judicial overhaul; that causal explanation was their assessment rather than an independently established finding.[6]

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that Jerusalem’s municipality had discriminated against an LGBT community center by withholding funding comparable to that provided to similar centers. That year, an estimated 2,000 people attended Jerusalem’s Pride rally alongside anti-gay demonstrations.[33]

Activism also developed within religious communities. Research on religious LGBTQ Israelis describes organizations beginning to come together in the mid-2000s and expanding markedly by the mid-2010s, with increased visibility, stronger networks, and more rabbis engaging with the issue. It describes a shift from anonymous communication toward public sharing of personal and collective accounts, while noting that backlash and homophobia remained part of this history.[34]

A continuing political debate concerns the term “pinkwashing,” used by critics to allege that Israel promotes its LGBTQ-rights record to deflect attention from its policies toward Palestinians. Related positions appeared within LGBTQ activism, including the 2001 “Gays in Black” contingent and Kvisa Sh’hora, which linked sexual-minority oppression to what its members regarded as Israeli oppression of Palestinians.[2][16] The term is a contested characterization rather than a neutral description of the history.

Advocacy sources take differing positions. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies recounts and rejects the accusation, while the Anti-Defamation League argues that recognition of Israeli LGBTQ protections can coexist with criticism of Israeli policy.[16][35] These are advocacy interpretations of a political dispute, not independent resolution of it.

Other disagreements concern chronology and legal terminology. Sources variously identify the 1974 protest, the 1979 demonstration or procession, the 1993 motorcade, or the 1998 formal parade as the beginning of Pride in Israel.[3][10] They also disagree over whether Uzi Even or Nitzan Horowitz should be identified as the first openly gay member of the Knesset.[2][3] Accounts of foreign same-sex marriages likewise use “recognition” differently; the legal sources support distinguishing population-registry registration from the creation of a substantive status of same-sex marriage.[5][20]

The trajectory of rights was therefore uneven. Decriminalization, employment protections, military service, partner benefits, adoption, and surrogacy changed through different combinations of activism, legislation, administrative policy, and court decisions. These gains did not erase discrimination, hostile school environments, violence, or unresolved questions involving marriage and gender recognition.[31][6]