Veronica came up in my Facebook feed,a few months back. I've been a fan of hers ever since. So,I'm excited to share this article with you all.
As an Israeli Jew living in Melbourne, Veronica Sherman shares her journey and plans
AMUST: Please tell us a bit about your background?
Veronica: Well, it’s quite an unconventional background. So, yes, Jewish, but Jewish by what it says on my Israeli ID card. We immigrated to Israel as Jews because of ancestry, but the story is a little bit more unique than that.
I was born in Sweden, and my father is Jewish, and he grew up in a Jewish home in New York, with the whole traditional Jewish thing. He left the United States and moved to Sweden where he met my mother. In the early 70s, he and my mother became “born-again” Christian. So by the time I was born in 1974, it was a fundamentalist Christian home.
I was actually raised as an evangelical Christian, but Jewish heritage. So, in 1985, we immigrated to Israel as “returning” Jews, but as evangelical Christians. So it’s a little bit more layered than just the Jewish thing.
For people who believe that being Jewish can only be religion, it blows their brain because they just can’t sort of get their head around how someone can be Christian and Jewish.
But what I then say is I was a double Zionist. Because I was not just an Israeli Zionist, but I was also a Christian Zionist. I had a double whammy of Zionism.
And that completely shaped my life. When we moved to Israel we did the two years of living in an absorption centre where you immerse yourself into the culture, the language and it’s offered for free by the government.
It was very hard learning Hebrew being a Swedish speaker who at that point didn’t speak English as a connecting language. Thankfully, I was given a scholarship after two years to an international Anglican school in Jerusalem.
So, I grew up very much in an international setting surrounded by diplomats, UN and missionary kids and what I called back then Arabs. But of course, I now realise they were Palestinian. Back then, my identity was very much in the very Christian bubble in Jerusalem, not Israeli culture as such.
When I was eighteen, like every other Israeli, I had to do my military service. So, I served for two years in the Israeli Air Force. Once I completed my service I came to Australia aged twenty to study Theology.
A: How did you perceive the story of Israel and its short history?
V: Well, it wasn’t a short history! It was a very long history. For me, the story of Israel went all the way back to the Bible. And that was all about fulfilling prophecy: the greatest story ever told, kind of thing.
So, it’s just so interesting now that I’ve unravelled from all that, how I’ve realised there are so many blurry parts that didn’t quite make sense. So there were definitely inconsistencies. But overall, I believed that Israel was spoken about in the Bible, it was promised to us by God, this was our biblical right to have this land.
And it was Arabs who were opposed to us being there. And why would they not just go to all these Arab countries that are available? Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and so on.
To me (at the time), there was no such thing as Palestinians, there was no such thing as Palestine. Arabs were Arabs, the Palestinian identity was completely invisible to me.
A: When did the unravelling start and why?
V: I’ve spent a lot of time trying to pinpoint the milestones or turning points where it happened and it’s been really hard to. Just the fact that I left Israel and my family to study obviously made it easier for me to, you know, have a bit of distance from it.
But in a way, it also amplified my connection to Israel, like I had this emotional and sentimental connection to it. So, it’s not that. Because people have said to me, “oh, this only happened because you live in Australia.”
There are plenty of people here in Australia, who are very, very Zionist. And there are people living in Israel who are not, so it’s not the location that makes someone a Zionist or Anti-Zionist.
I think a big part of it was my first marriage ending. And everything I knew to be true, all of a sudden, wasn’t. And how I perceived God all of a sudden was challenged, how I perceived myself was challenged, how I perceived where I fit into society, all that sort of got shaken up. So that was, I think, the big knock to start making me look at things differently.
It was basically that something that could be so true, all of a sudden wasn’t. So the fact that I was always going to be married to the same man for my whole life, that was just a truth. And all of a sudden, that was no longer true. Up until then I didn’t believe in divorce and that it could ever happen to me.
My very black and white world became grey. And it was so unsettling.
Also I was thrown into the social justice world. I started spending time with people seeking asylum, Hazara men who had escaped Afghanistan and some women who were mostly from Iran and Iraq.
I started a play group for these women and their children who had recently come out of horrific detention centres. And it was like, it was something in me that just clicked. This is what I’ve been longing for this whole time in the church.
I was always uncomfortable with the church as an institution but I loved the sense of purpose and the sense of meaning and doing good deeds.
I realized that I could do all that stuff without the framing of the religious aspect. The money we raised should be going to people not a building. We should be feeding the poor and visiting the people in hospital and all the humanitarian stuff that I was busting to do. All of a sudden, through spending time with people seeking asylum, I could do that.
For the first time in my life I started to look at things like injustice, and power dynamics, and the people on the margins of society. Things I had never questioned before. I had very much seen myself as the underdog, growing up with the victim mentality and that whole narrative.
We didn’t have much money growing up and lived in the poorest area of our Swedish city, and then moved to Israel where I was told that we were the ones in danger.
It wasn’t just those seeking asylum, I also learned about the First Nations’ story and what had happened to the indigenous people here in Australia.
Again, it was the same themes about power dynamics and injustice.
So by the time 2014 happened, and Israel was attacking Gaza once again, and by this stage the internet exists, and there’s a thing called Google.
I must have just had enough people in my life who were making noise about Gaza. I can’t even remember who. But I decided to Google “Gaza images”, which I hadn’t done before.
And I must have opened up an Al Jazeera page (which back then I thought was terrorist propaganda – because that’s what I had been told).
I started to look at images on my screen. There was this classic image that we’re all so familiar with now, which is the rubble, the destroyed apartment block, everything in the image is destroyed. And then, amongst the rubble, there was this torso of a toddler. Just a torso, there’s no head or limbs.
And something in me just instantly got it. It was just this before and after moment for me.
There must have been so much preparation leading up to that moment, with the soil being worked at, and different people had put seeds in over the years. But at that moment, it’s like the penny finally dropped.
And when I looked at that image from Gaza, I just saw a child. I didn’t see an Arab. Or someone from the “opposing side”. It was just a child. And the child was dead because of the country I was a citizen of. We were the oppressors!
I think it was my humanity that had been activated. It was so clear that this wasn’t a “us and them” scenario. This is a human, this is a child, he deserves to live. How can we have failed him?
I’ve been lied to! That was the message that came to me. I’ve been lied to.
It feels like it was the next day that I was out at a rally with a banner. Speaking up for the Palestinians.
So what I like to say is, it’s almost like I’ve had to go through school again. Since that moment in 2014, I’ve done 12 years of “schooling” to unravel from the Zionist brainwashing that I was born into. As well as actively learn about the Palestinian story that I had dismissed as fake.
A: Has it been an ongoing exercise?
V: It’s been a gradual thing to unravel from. For example, I don’t know how many years in, but definitely a few years and I still struggled to say the word Palestine. I felt like it was a bit of a pretend place, you know, like it was like a pretend story. At that point I didn’t know about the Nakba. Once I learned about the Nakba it was much easier to understand the Palestinian identity and story.
Another example is the keffiyeh; at the beginning of the genocide, I remember thinking, “Oh, no, I’m not gonna wear keffiyeh because that’s like appropriation”, like it didn’t feel right to wear, I felt like that was only for Palestinians.
But then I realised that, no, I still have a hang up, there’s some sort of thing about it that makes me uncomfortable. It was actually seeing my son wear it that made me realise that it makes sense to wear a keffiyeh – it’s a sign of solidarity and it signals to people, which side you’re on. It’s such a quick way to bypass all the explanations and all the conversations and just to be like, “here I am, I’m with Palestine”. It’s just such a simple way to send a powerful message.
In fact, people who wear a keffiyeh stand with Palestinians and stand with humanity.
A: Was this unravelling difficult?
V: Along with me unravelling from Zionism, everyday life still happens. I still needed to be a single mum. I was still raising kids. I was still dealing with health and medical stuff. So it wasn’t like I could just focus on my unravelling – I was trying to just get through life.
So it wasn’t all-consuming, but It was very confronting and uncomfortable. Because it’s basically finding out that I’ve been a supremacist my whole life – that’s a really uncomfortable revelation. Shedding an identity and I hadn’t yet landed with a new one – it’s actually very scary to not know where my foot is going to step next when you’re in a river and the water’s just gushing at you.
It wasn’t so much about acceptance from others, because I’ve always been weird, and a misfit – and I had already unravelled from the Christian identity. But that thing of being connected to Israel and that being my home and the one thing I had left of my identity, my centre point. To have that challenged was really hard.
But it’s interesting, the most confronting aspect was me realising that in the story of David and Goliath, Israel is the Goliath! That was so shocking and the rudest awakening. And that aha moment could only happen once I understood the story of the Nakba.
Realising that I was not “David” meant that my identity cornerstone got removed. And everything I had built on that, tumbled. And I was like, who even am I?
A: What made you become active for Palestinians?
I think I’m wired for activism. I do think it’s in my nature. (I’m a campaigner Myers-Briggs personality type).
Even the type of Christianity I was part of, was very much about being outspoken and the small business I have, I was already being very outspoken about the women in Cambodia and supporting marginalized women, so I was already in that space.
I’m very aware of my privilege and that I have very much benefited from Zionism. My family was subsidised by immigrating to Israel, and I was at the top of the of apartheid pyramid by being a European Jew.
And of course I served in the Air Force and even though I wasn’t a combat soldier (as a woman back in the nineties, that wasn’t an option) I participated in the war machine.
Something I’ve only recently started talking about, is the fact that when I was being interviewed leading up to my Army service, I was very quickly put on a different pathway because of my different citizenships and the different languages I speak.
The Mossad had identified me as being a potential recruit and they were asking things of me, which they were not asking girls who were joining the regular army.
They were asking things like, would you be willing to kill for your country? Back then women did not do combat. And I thought, yes, I would. Because to me, God and Israel were the same, and I would kill for God. The man interviewing me looked surprised when I said yes – I could see that he was a bit taken back
Then he asked, would you be willing to be killed for Israel, for your country? And again, I thought about it, and I thought about God, would I be willing to be killed for God?
And I said yes. The man interviewing me was genuinely surprised. This was not a normal request that was expected of female soldiers at all.
I often say to people, when we think about radicalised young people, or extremists, we have a visual in our head of maybe someone with a keffiyeh wrapped around their head and, and the suicide bomber.
However, at 17, I was willing to not just kill for my country, but to be killed for my country. How was I any different from a suicide bomber? How was I any different, knowing what I was willing to do for Israel and God?
I want to put that level of commitment, but in a non-violent way, towards the Palestinian cause. It’s the least I can do.
A: What’s your experience on social media?
V: Initially my social media was used for my small business supporting marginalised women in Cambodia, but it was never fully about my business. I was always using my platforms too like a quilt, that I was leaving to my future potential grandchildren, so they could get to know me.
Since 2014, I’ve been using Instagram and Facebook for Palestine as well, but then of course, October 7th happened and everything just amplified.
So, more and more I was posting about Gaza and I lost a lot of followers. And people were messaging me, what are you doing? You can’t be posting this stuff, just keep it separate or start another account. You can’t mix the genocide with your business.
I chose not to listen to them. I needed to stay true to myself. I will keep sharing what’s on my heart. So I would do posts both about my small business but also about the genocide.
But then in March 2025 the starvation in Gaza really intensified. .
I mean, they were hungry from the beginning, but in March last year, I think it was, when we really started getting those graphic photos of starving children.
I grew up in the eighties – the kind of the images we used to see from Ethiopia, we were now seeing from Gaza. I no longer felt comfortable using my social media to share about my business and attempting to sell handicrafts, when I was also sharing these harrowing stories.
So it just evolved into a hundred percent sharing about Gaza and the genocide. And being Israeli, I can get away with posting stuff that most people are afraid of saying.
And yes, I get accused of being anti-Semitic and a self hating Jew or Kapo and all this kind of stuff. But I couldn’t care less, it’s just water off a duck’s back. Which enrages the Zionists, because I’m saying things that other people aren’t saying.
And even within the anti-Zionist Jewish community in Australia, people are still quite careful, allies are still kind of tiptoeing not wanting to offend. And I kind of went, okay, well, I, as an Israeli, especially someone who served in the IDF, I can get away with saying more.
My lived experience gives me a bit of street cred.
And speaking of street cred, I’m now often recognised as the woman who burned her Israeli passport in Canberra.
I don’t do anything that puts anyone in danger. I’m very careful how I do my activism. Safety is always at the forefront of my mind. Burning my Israeli passport was a safe and symbolic way to express that I am opposed to the country that I’m a citizen of.
I’ve done a lot of creative actions to catch people’s attention and to make them stop and think, because I know for most Australians, they can very easily just go, “oh, it’s too hard, too complicated, and too far away”.
So I have to do things creatively to get people’s attention. For example, I had a friend make an ICC judge outfit when the Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Australia. I held an arrow that said: HAGUE THIS WAY
And at the convergence in Canberra, I made a banner stating: “Australian Jews say sanction Israel” and on the back it said “Anti-Zionism is a mitzvah”. The word mitzvah is at the heart of being Jewish. It means a good deed. So, being an Anti-Zionist is a good deed. That really upset the Zionists because I was using their own language to hit them where it hurts.
A: You like creating a scene?
V: I like to make people stop and think. And just repeating the phrase FREE PALESTINE won’t do that. One example is when I hired a trailer and wrapped a tarp around it, which was a perfect Zioni
st blue. And then with white letters, I wrote, “THERE’S A HOLOCAUST IN GAZA”. On the other side of the trailer I wrote: “NEVER AGAIN IS FOR EVERYONE”. I then below that, I also wrote the prayer that we say at Yom Kippur, which is asking for atonement.
I wrote that in Hebrew, to really hit hard. Then I made a playlist with the Israeli national anthem and the theme song from Schindler’s List. And I had those two songs on repeat playing from my little stereo at the back of the ute.
I then just drove around to all the Zionist hotspots in Melbourne, slowly. The police had so many people calling them and the cops stopped me twice. The funny thing is of course that I wasn’t doing anything illegal, so there was nothing they could do to stop me. I wasn’t breaking any law.
They then tried to kind of make it about some safety issue. But there was no safety issue. I think they were just trying to intimidate me.
But then, of course, there’s this CSG security (Jewish Community Security Group), that started chasing us. They were completely unsafe and nearly hit a man with their SUV while trying to block the ute. This is why it’s so wild that these guys might be armed if Jillian Segal has her way.
Another example of what I’ve done is when I went along to a council conference about tackling antisemitism here in Melbourne. There were about 120 people sitting around 12 round tables. Funnily enough I was seated next to two cops.
Before they realised I was an anti-Zionist, they assumed I was there as a regular garden-variety Jew, they started to explain how they’re very proud that every new recruit for the police visit with the local rabbis, they also go to the Holocaust Museum, and they meet with the Jewish community.
The cops are telling me all this as if to score brownie points. I just nod and nod and they go into great detail, and after they finish I ask: “oh, do the new recruits also go to the local mosque, and do they meet with imams, and do they talk to the Muslim leaders in the community?”
They were very surprised by my questions and quickly attempted to sound as inclusive as they could while also saying that there aren’t many Muslims in the community. I basically used the exact phrasing they had used about how it’s so good to know the Jewish story, and to understand the Jewish perspective, and how it gives the new recruits so much more insight.
The cops had to acknowledge that none of this happens with the Muslim community and that yes, it would be helpful. I share this because I think it’s a perfect example of the Jewish supremacy in Australian society. Our story is amplified while the Palestinian story and the Muslim community is silenced.
It’s not anti-Semitic to highlight that there is much more money going into funding Jewish programs, that’s just being truthful. The numbers speak for themselves.
A: What are your plans?
V: I’m writing a book about the past three years of genocide from my perspective. I want to try to include as much as I possibly can about what I have learned since unravelling from being a Zionist.
Many people are terrified to engage with the genocide because they don’t want to be seen as antisemitic. So, when it comes from someone who’s from Israel, and who is Jewish by background, It gives them permission to engage with it because “if an Israeli can write it”, they can read it. So again it’s using my privilege.
But my other intention is that it could be used in schools, as a reading option for students.
I’m starting the book from when seventeen year old me is preparing to go into the IDF as context, and then I transition the story to the genocide.
A: What was your reaction to October 7
My first reaction was “Oh my gosh, how is Israel going to retaliate?”
That was my reflex. It showed me that I have unravelled. I’m an anti-Zionist. I have shifted. My sense of who I am and my identity is no longer aligned with Israel.
I’m aligned with humanitarians. I’m aligned with Palestine.
Ed: Veronica is building up a prolific online presence to tell her story. Follow her on:
Substack: https://substack.com/@veronicasherman
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VeronicaShermanMedia
Instagram: happily__made and Veronica Sherman Media
Facebook: Happily Made Village
