Meet the group of Jews in Toronto who refuse to "walk with Israel"

Several orders of magnitude smaller, yet admirable for its humble nature.

On June 7^th, 2026 in Toronto’s High Park, as counterprogramming to the Zionist Walk With Israel held further north in the city, roughly fifty Jews and their guests attend the first annual Jewish Diaspora Fest, which can be best described as a Bundist reading group. | Copyright © Jake Landau, all rights reserved.

This is not a piece about the Walk With Israel. Enough words have been written about the Toronto affiliate of the Jewish Federations of North America and their annual street march and fundraiser in support of the State of Israel. With a bigger turnout each year than Israel Day on Fifth in New York City, it is the largest annual Zionist demonstration outside of Israel itself.

In the 2026 iteration held yesterday, Toronto Police estimate that roughly 60,000 Jews and allies marched down Bathurst Street in support of Zionism and the State of Israel. They started their march from Temple Sinai on Wilson Avenue, the synagogue I grew up attending, where I had my own Bar Mitzvah. They set out from this holy space, personally escorted by the Toronto Chief of Police Myron Demkiw and joined by Liberal and Conservative MPs, so that they could all publicly profess their enthusiastic support for a genocidal regime which has transitioned from apartheid to a full-blown extermination campaign against Palestinians, a second Nakba to eclipse the first.

To say I don’t know what to feel about this would be a lie; I know exactly what I feel. I feel shame and disgust toward my own people. I feel alienated from my Jewish identity, as I see it twisted by Zionism into an instrument of genocidal terror. And I have written very explicitly about what I described as, in my own words, “mathematical proof that our views are largely terrible.” But while such anti-Zionist views may be a minority among Canadian Jews, my perspective is apparently not a solitary one.

This year, for the first time, various Jewish groups in Toronto held the Jewish Diaspora Fest, a small, humble gathering of neo-Bundists seeking counterprogramming to the massive Zionist gathering that is the Walk With Israel. Obviously, many pro-Palestinian activists, including many Canadian Jews, chose to simply attend counterprotests of the Walk With Israel directly on Bathurst, and make their displeasure with Zionism explicit to the marchers. In the case of the roughly fifty or so Jews and allies that attended the Jewish Diaspora Fest, however, there was instead a desire to create space for Jews alienated from our mainstream organizations to sort out our feelings.

Personally, I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, Palestinians are rightly tired of Jewish “allies” navel-gazing more than we actually take direct action to support them. But on the other hand, the discussions had at the Jewish Diaspora Fest, facilitated by various speakers in a teach-in format, were explicitly conscious of this kind of failure, and focused to a large degree on how Jews can be better allies to Palestinians in their struggle for freedom. One speaker from Toronto Jewish Families spoke very explicitly about how their primary job right now is supporting Toronto Palestinian Families, as they seek to make the TDSB a safe place for Palestinian-Canadian children to attend school.

And Sarena Sairan, Executive Director of the United Jewish People’s Order, a socialist Canadian Jewish group celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year, spoke very frankly to me about her distaste for the large portion of our community that participated in the Walk With Israel. Both of us acknowledged that the massive disparity in size between the tens of thousands of Jews who marched for Israel and the handful who attended the Jewish Diaspora Fest is a disheartening reality for pro-Palestinian Jews. Yet Ms. Sairan, and many of the Jews who joined her yesterday, clearly care more about being on the right side of history than the popular side, and they refuse to be demoralized.

In terms of programming itself, while the Jewish Diaspora Fest certainly didn’t have the sort of bombastic trappings that the Walk With Israel has with their corporate-sponsored carnival rides, the low-key atmosphere had its own kind of quaint charm, with folk music and hand-printed zines conjuring images of anti-war hippies in the 1960s. Pro-Palestinian Jewish parents were clearly delighted to have a space to bring their kids; these children, not grasping the racist and obscene politics behind the Walk With Israel, could easily feel left out when they hear about other Jewish kids going there and doing all this “fun” stuff.

And while this first Jewish Diaspora Fest may be a modest beginning—indeed, Zionists have mocked the smaller size compared to the Walk With Israel—all the organizers behind this event, and the people who attended, were excited to think about what the second iteration will look like next year. They have a long-term vision to build up anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish cultural institutions, and they are eager to get to work on making that vision a reality for the alienated Jews seeking an ideological home.

Overall, though, I hope these efforts by allied Canadian Jews actually manifest into something concrete for Palestinians, whether they’re living under occupation in Palestine or here in Canada. For as much as I do care about my community…right now I care about Palestinians more.