O-blog-dee-o-blog-da

By Melanie Nathan, Nov 11, 2025.

I sat only feet away from Emily Damari as she spoke, her voice steady, her truth unflinching. I watched her courage, so raw, it pierced. And in that moment, I felt something shift inside me. I realized that for all my years of advocacy, all the times I’ve raised my voice for refugees, for the LGBTQI+ community, for justice, for Jews, for Israel, I have not been courageous enough.

Not courageous enough to call out my own community – the LGBT world I have lived and breathed in, fought for, and built with. Not loud enough to confront the “As-a-Jew” crowd – the JVPs, the Bernies, the Patinkins, the Hannah Einbinders,  who wear their Jewishness as a moral shield to condemn Israel’s existence, and to condemn those of us who refuse to apologize for our PRIDE in our Zionism.

And yet, I have always been loud. My Jewish identity has always stood front and center, woven into every cause, every march, every fight for equality. I never hid it. I never compartmentalized it. I carried it with pride, even when it confused people who could not reconcile a lesbian Zionist human-rights activist. Still, since October 7th, a hesitancy crept in – a subtle instinct to temper my words, to defend, to explain. I caught myself trying to make Zionism understood, as if the right to Jewish self-determination required anyone’s permission.

Even with my reputation as an outspoken advocate, I’ve squirmed each time I post about Israel, Zionism, or anything unapologetically Jewish. Even tempering on safe-pages and in our Jewish safe group, for fear of misinterpretations.  I feel it in my gut – that pause before pressing “post,” the reflex to soften or edit or brace for what will come. Because in today’s progressive spaces, to be an open Zionist is to risk being treated like a leper – shunned by people who once embraced you, regarded as morally contagious. They’ve inverted history itself, calling Jews colonizers when we were the colonized; oppressors when we were oppressed; invaders when all we did was come home.

I have thousands of followers across my social media pages. People who came to me through my human-rights work, my years of fighting for LGBTQ equality, my advocacy for displaced queer Africans. Many of those followers cheered when I won awards, when I marched, when I raised funds for food and shelter for refugees. But since October 7th, it changed.

I stayed on my paths – humanitarian work, advocacy, truth-telling; but a part of me became muted. Muted by the silent judgment of friends who no longer comment, muted by the discomfort of allies who quietly unfollowed, muted by the strange loneliness that comes when your community fractures over your right to exist as both queer and Zionist.

There are a few – very few – from the non-Jewish LGBT world who still reach out with love. I can count you on one hand. You see me and still tell me you love me. Some try to remind me that your friendship can transcend what you call ideology, but what I call my essence. And most of you are gone. Or you hover quietly, just visible enough to wish happy birthday, to comment on my mother’s yahrzeit, to share in a moment of joy or loss, or to applaud when I write about refugees through African Human Rights Coalition. Some remain close enough to show you care, but far enough to avoid the fire, while others have vanished, forever lost in what now feels like an overnight substitution of love for hate.

But I am not here to beg for friendship, for approval, or for solidarity. I am not here to be a token or a moral barometer.

I am here to say I realize Emily’s courage, toil, and life – demands that mine is as full and as unconditional as hers.

I am here to say that I will no longer hold back, not for comfort, not for belonging, not for your peace of mind. I am here to be louder – more of that fighter who once screamed “We are lesbian, … We are Gay ….. “on a stage to 40,000 queers commanding Pride. More of that Zionist who can still raise funds for pro-Muslim LGBT projects because justice isn’t a zero-sum game.

More of who I am — despite you.

If Emily could speak of truth, in rooms that tremble with its weight – maybe, what courage really means: refusing to be silent – so that erasure and denial never win. So must I go beyond – so as to never hesitate again, and maybe real courage demands an absolute.

I hope Emily inspires you too. Even while we face danger.

As an aside amidst this – I issue a challenge to the holier than thou ‘anti-Zionist friends’ – to give thought to the notion that justice grows when justice is shared.