The Chicago Dyke March, which in 2017 came under fire for kicking out Jewish marchers, is promoting its upcoming gay parade with a cartoon showing a scantily clad woman burning the Israeli and American flags.
The image posted on the organizer’s Instagram page in a promotional ad showed the cartoon woman waving the burning flags atop a car that is also aflame.
Instagram removed the post for violating its regulation against “hate speech or symbols,” and warned that it would delete the group’s account, the Algemeiner reported.
The group then responded by calling followers to capture a screenshot of the post, “and share to prevent any attempts by Z1ON1ST and Instagram to censor our account.”
The Dyke March posted another post with images of a yellow and orange flames superimposed on the two flags.
According to the report, a third post asked if readers were “tired of social media censorship” and announced that the design “will be printed and wearable on this years (sic) t-shirts.”
A Wider Bridge, a nonprofit connecting American and Israeli LGBT communities, said it was “outraged” by the promotional post.
“While those symbols have seemingly since been removed, the message remains the same unless we hear otherwise: that dykes who wish to attend the Dyke March must choose between their identities,” the group said. “We Refuse to Choose.”
In 2017, the Chicago Dyke March ejected three participants, one of whom was then a regional director for A Wider Bridge, for carrying flags featuring the Star of David over the LGBT rainbow.
“The Dyke March is supposed to be intersectional. I don’t know why my identity is excluded from that. I fell that, as a Jew, I am not welcome here,” Iranian Jew Eleanor Shoshany-Anderson, one of the Chicago marchers was kicked out, said at the time.
The March responded by saying that it “is explicitly not anti-Semitic, we are anti-Zionist. The Chicago Dyke March Collective supports the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed people everywhere.
“From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go!!”
The Algemeiner quoted Arthur Slepian, then-executive director of A Wider Bridge, as saying the response “at least as heinous, or even more heinous, than the original exclusion.”