As many as 200,000 revellers turned out last Friday for Tel Aviv’s annual gay pride parade, a celebration that, in its massive scale and party atmosphere, will be familiar to many Canadians who welcome the LGBTQ community to their cities each summer.

Tel Aviv’s pride parade is a source of great, well, pride for the majority of Israelis, who see it as an example of Israel’s tolerance and open-mindedness. But the pride parade has also long been a point of contention for elements of the LGBTQ community, who accuse Israel of “pinkwashing” – using the parade as a PR tool to cover up Israel’s misdeeds, real and supposed, when it comes to the Palestinians. A giant, bright-pink banner that hung from a balcony on this year’s parade route denounced Tel Aviv pride as the “pinkwash parade,” and added, in Hebrew, “We want rights, not parties,” and, in Arabic, “There is no pride in occupation.”

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It’s hard to see why some vocal members of the LGBTQ community constantly come down so hard on Israel, why they insist on conflating the Israeli-Palestinian issue with gay rights instead of separating the two (and with nary a mention of the Jewish state’s profound security concerns). Surely this is not a zero-sum game. Still, there is a shred of truth to that pink banner’s Hebrew message – “We want rights, not parties.”

A new survey indicates that 76 per cent of Israelis support same-sex marriage, up from 64 per cent last year. And yet, the government shows little sign of taking action. As well, back in April, local gay activists bemoaned a lack of funding for Israeli LGBTQ groups, while the tourism ministry announced plans to spend 11 million shekels ($3.7 million) to draw visitors to Tel Aviv pride. They threatened to cancel the parade before the government agreed to increase funding for LGBTQ NGOs.

This much, however, is undeniable: Tel Aviv’s pride parade is a unique event in the Middle East, just as Israel is unique in the region in its open attitude toward gays, lesbians and transsexuals. The pride parade should be a celebration of that; it doesn’t have to be a referendum on the larger politics of the Middle East. Sometimes it’s OK to just let loose and party.