Three women holding pride flags featuring the Star of David were ejected from the Dyke March in Chicago last weekend. The incident generated national outrage, as well as strained debate among the left. It's a flag that LGBT Jewish Americans have used for decades to express their identity, but when three women unfurled it at Chicago's Dyke March last weekend, it sparked a heated confrontation that led to them being kicked out of the event — and exposed ugly tensions within the left on the national stage.
The controversy that ensued after the June 24 march points to deeper strains and squabbles among a leftist movement attempting to collectively stand up to President Trump, LGBT Jewish Americans told BuzzFeed News.
"What runs through my mind is the tension between politics and identity — and the frustration that I have that the progressive community in the US cannot figure out how to create a united front," professor David Shneer, who teaches history and religious studies at the University of Colorado and co-edited the book Queer Jews, told BuzzFeed News.
The flareup offers a particularly sharp glimpse of the stress on the left between the attempt to create a united front of progressive causes — "intersectional" politics in the current language — and the fact that not all members of each group accept that mandate.
Idit Klein, executive director of the prominent Jewish LGBT group Keshet, said she is no longer "surprised nor particularly upset" when her queer Jewish identity is attacked from those on the right. "But to learn that three Jewish women with Jewish pride flags were asked to leave a Dyke March because their flags were triggering to others made me feel vulnerable as a Jew in a community that I consider my home," she said. "I immediately thought, 'What does this mean for the place of LGBTQ Jews in the broader queer community?'"
Two of the women ejected from the Chicago Dyke March alleged march organizers told them their rainbow flags with blue stars were "triggering" others in attendance at the demonstration, which bills itself as "a grassroots mobilization and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual, and transgender resilience."
"They told me my choices were to roll up my Jewish Pride flag or leave," Ellie Otra, one of the women ejected, wrote in a Facebook post. "The Star of David makes it look too much like the Israeli flag, they said, and it triggers people and makes them feel unsafe. This was their complaint."
Organizers of the Dyke March, which is distinct from Chicago's main LGBT Pride Parade, did not respond to a request for comment. However, in a statement on Tuesday, they maintained the flags were welcome, but that the marchers were asked to leave for "expressing Zionist views that go directly against the march’s anti-racist core values."
The organizers said the marchers were heard replacing the world "Palestine" in the chant, "From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go," with the word "everywhere." After seeing their flags, marchers confronted the women to inquire about their views, the organizers said.
"There was an earnest attempt at engagement with these marchers, and the decision to ask them to leave was not made abruptly nor arbitrarily," organizers said. "Throughout a two-hour conversation, the individuals were told that the march was explicitly anti-Zionist, and that if they were not okay with that, they should leave."
"We welcome and include people of all identities, but not all ideologies," organizers said. "We believe in creating a space free from oppression, and that involves rejecting racist ideologies that support state violence."
Fed Up Fest, a punk music festival organized "by a collective of radical queer and trans activists and musicians," said it supported the Dyke March's decision, but also acknowledged "the violent reality of anti-Semitism that our Jewish queer and trans community members face, and hold space for these struggles, especially in light of our current political climate."
