ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tel Aviv - 22 July 2018

1. Various of protesters waving flags and holding signs

2. Various of protesters waving glow sticks

3. Man with a child on his shoulders, waving a rainbow flag

4. SOUNDBITE (English) Nitzan Horowitz, Former Israeli Lawmaker:

"We are here, thousands and thousands of members of the gay community in Israel, to protest inequality in Israeli law regarding LGBT people. No marriage, no parenthood, no surrogacy, anything, so although Israel has a very liberal image concerning gays it's not the case when you look at the Israeli law. So we are here to call on the government to change the law because we are equal citizens, it's very simple."

5. Protesters waving flags and holding signs

6. SOUNDBITE (English) Yoav Levi, Protester from Tel Aviv:

"We came here to say to Benjamin Netanyahu, the (Israeli) Prime Minister, that enough is enough. You cannot show to the world that Tel Aviv is plural(istic), to present us as a plural country, while what you're doing here is making rules with the government which is discriminating against and putting us gay men aside, and Arab people aside, and there is no democracy as he wishes to be appeared outside."

7. Yoav Levi waving signs standing with his partner waving a rainbow flag

8. SOUNDBITE (English) Yoav Levi, Protester from Tel Aviv:

"I have a kid of my own, 7 months old, which I did with mutual parenthood but a lot of my friends are choosing surrogacy and they have to travel to the other side of the world and spend one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred thousand shekels in order just to have a child, which is a basic right that every person should have."

9. Various of protesters waving flags and holding signs

10. SOUNDBITE (English) Aron Cohen, Protester from Tel Aviv:

"We got married abroad in New York, two years ago, that was really our only option, there is no civil marriage in Israel, there's no same sex marriage and there's no civil marriage in Israel. So you have to get abroad to get married. And in the same way with surrogacy, surrogacy has been available here for 20 plus years only for straight couples. And same thing if we want to have a family we have to go abroad to do that."

11. Various of protesters waving flags and holding signs

Tens of thousands of Israeli LGBT advocates and their supporters went on strike across the country on Sunday, protesting the exclusion of gay men from a recently passed surrogacy law.

The community was outraged that although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pledged to pass legislation supporting surrogacy for gay fathers, he voted against it, apparently under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox Jewish coalition partners.

Protesters marched in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, waving rainbow flags and briefly blocking a major highway.

Tel Aviv's central Rabin Square was packed with tens of thousands of people for the main demonstration, while hundreds protested near Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem.

The protest grew into a general call for equality, following other recent controversial legislation that appeared to target Israeli liberalism.

Israel emerged as one of the world's most gay-friendly travel destinations in recent years, in sharp contrast to the rest of the Middle East where gays are persecuted and even killed.

In Israel, homosexuals serve openly in Israel's military and parliament, and many popular artists and entertainers are homosexual.

However, leaders of the gay community say Israel still has far to go in promoting equality.