Shma Yisrael.

Hear me Israel.

For it is with a broken heart that I come to talk to you now.

I have always felt pride in my people, was encouraged from the youngest of ages to proclaim my heritage unabashed. I am a Jew.

I stand up and speak the words to whoever wants to know.

I am Jewish.

I claim a history of Talmud, of debate, of asking questions, of hearing difficult answers and raising even more difficult questions to hear yet further difficult answers, a history of Eastern European shtetl hamishness, the ability to make something delicious from potatoes and a few onions, a connection to Jewish activism, civil rights, civil libertarians, Jews fighting for the rights of the many against the power of the few, I claim the story of David and Goliath.

But hear me Israel, who is Goliath now?

For it is with a heavy heart that I listen to the talk now. The apartheid state of Israel, and while I may have at another time dismissed that talk as opportunistic anti-Semitism, called it a veiled anti-Jewish sentiment cloaked in lefty self-righteousness, I can’t call it that. I can’t call it anti-Semitism, because it is not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. It is not anti-Semitic to love and fight for Palestinian people, in fact it is Semitic loving. It is not anti-Semitic to be opposed to an army of Goliaths building walls, stealing water, starving children. In fact, in my simplistic view, it is a proud Jewish act to say that it is wrong. In fact, if we want less anti-Semitism and more Jewish support, then more of us have to find the courage to speak out daily against this Goliath who will always be known as us.

In some ways, the hardest thing to do is to break ranks with our own people. In my family, I am an out proud dyke. I dance with my girlfriend at my cousins’ weddings; I refuse to wear dresses. But I don’t talk about Israel.

I was recently in a workshop with a group of nine women, two others of whom were Jewish. It had been so long since I felt connected to the larger Jewish community and it was so nice to just sit with them, sharing the common knowledge that we were Jews. We even joked a couple of times that the Jews had found a way to sit together, when we noticed that it was the three of us sitting side by side in the lunch room. Part of the workshop was an exercise of naming some of our accomplishments. It’s a hard task at the best of times because nobody wants to seem boastful. But the hardest part for me was being faced with a lose/lose proposition: either I would state that I was a founding member of the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and risk the alienation of my newfound Jewish sisters, or I would leave that out of my list of accomplishments and be invisible in what I believed.

In the end, I chose to come out, as it were. And in the end, it didn’t make any difference. In fact, to my delight, my politics were more shared than opposed. But it was the fear that stayed with me. I cried bitter tears that night for the shame that something so simple and clear as the belief in all peoples’ human rights had to be so hard to stand up and proclaim. I cried for the pain in my heart, familiar in its repetition, from being spat on figuratively and literally by my own people for not agreeing that Israel is that tiny little vulnerable country, the only democracy surrounded by terrorist enemies. I was remembering being one of six women holding up a sign calling for an end to the Occupation on Yom Haatzma’ut in Downsview a few years ago, feeling more afraid for my safety in front of all those Jewish people than I ever had in my life.

But every so often, in the midst of people yelling at us, before our banner was attacked and we had to flee, there were one or two people who caught my eye, who might have whispered thank you for being here. We were only six women, but we were not alone.

Please hear me, Shma Yisrael.

I come to you now with my brothers and sisters and I plead with you—if  you truly want to bear the star of David, then you must first bury Goliath.