Schrödinger’s Arab

I never really cared whom I date or sleep with, as long as he’s hot, clean, and hung. Well, so I do care. I will also admit I have a type. Somewhat darker skin, dark hair, big eyes, lush lashes… You get the picture.

So I met a lot of Middle Eastern guys not all of whom are Jewish Israelis. I mean to say, I dated a lot of Arabs, and this is where Jewish rightwingers usually start clamouring that I should be raped and murdered for being the “whore of terrorists” – or assimilating at all. I find this especially ironic coming from Jews, but let’s not. I’m not even Jewish, I just pass as such because I’m a white-passing Israeli. I only pass as white because of my Protestant-but-Atheist German mother. My father, a brown man from two Iraqi parents, only shines through in my sarcasm and penchant for writing. My Mum’s no longer official religion also saw me registered as Christian in Israel, because yeah, they kinda register your religious affiliation on your ID card, or they did, so now they only register it in your file. “Ethiopian” also tends to get registered, while “Russian” or “american” sure doesn’t. But this type of racism is not what I want to talk about right now. Let’s just say, it’s rampant.

Schroedinger’s Arab – be a terrorist, don’t be a terrorist, but please confirm our bias and prove us wrong at the same time.

So I’m basically as Christian as the Arab guy I had an unlucky crush on. I’m as Christian as the other Arab guy this guy unwittingly introduced me to, or at least he implied he was Christian once. Since that Arab guy is also a celebrity, I befriended some fans of his, also Christian Arabs. We ended up going to a festival in Jordan together, thrown and main-gigged by said celebrity, and we all had a good time. Upon re-entry to Israel, however, nerves grew raw. The girls passed through security without a problem, and when I think back, it’s probably because none of them seem “typically Arab”. Y’know, hijab and explosive vest, all that. Pierced, tattooed, dreadlocks, torn jeans, short hair, rockabilly, not how you imagine radicals. But we waited what felt like a half hour for the boys. I say boys, because the oldest was 19, I think. When it dawned on me what was happening, I wanted to go in and exploit my “white Jew” privilege to vouch for them, when they came out, tired and scowling. One said, “I don’t wanna talk about it”, because he was pissed past talking. You could see it took him quite a bit of restraint to not burst into a raging fit. He was a 17-year-old geek whose penchant for violence was limited to the same super hero and anime franchises I liked. But after he had his backpack searched more thoroughly than mine when we met up a year later, I was sure: if this guy was to ever pick up a gun and shoot into a crowd, blame Israel’s anti-Arab mentality according to which he can either be a terrorist or garbage, or both. Not someone to be trusted, not someone to dedicate the front page to were he to join and die in the army. Not someone who has any reason to value us, because we don’t value him. Individually, some of us might, I do, but the white Jewish collective? They’ll leave him for dead. He will always be expected to prove that he’s better than other Arabs, while he will also always be expected to confirm that Arabs are “human animals” as they’re often called. Schroedinger’s Arab – be a terrorist, don’t be a terrorist, but please confirm our bias and prove us wrong at the same time.

Palestinian terrorists follow Hamas because while Israel is robbing them of reasons to live, Hamas, at least, is giving them a reason to die.

Having to work twice as hard to get half as much is what brings me to my ex, who’s Muslim, not that he cares, but “Israel’s dominant demographic” very much does. While he gobbles down pork chops and drives drunk like the raging student and rebellious brother of too many sisters that he is, the army makes damned sure not to encourage him to enlist and abuse the weapon he’s handed. He could, but he absolutely doesn’t have to. Ethical issues of Arabs recruited to shoot Arabs on behalf of Jews aside, (dis)trust is obviously a factor.
And society makes damned sure not to encourage him to take up too much space in general, because no matter what kind of helpful, contributing, life-saving career he envisions, what a loving soul we all know he is, he’ll always be less-than. A few years ago, this racism at least energized him, even if through anger. He said, “The next person who gives me shit for being Arab, I’m gonna punch him.” I wanted to say, “Don’t, because you’ll be trayvoned*,” but didn’t want to make him feel even more hopeless. And as we were talking about an ongoing war between Israel and Gaza, he said something about going there to get himself killed – as food for thought for the fighting parties. Like, right, nobody is going to care. That’s the sad thing. A Jewish guy getting killed in the cross fire, sure, that’ll make headlines and sit Israelis down for a bit, but only to get up and hate Arabs some more, because obviously, Arabs are the only ones to blame for the conflict. If you ask a zionist. But an Arab? Israel is gonna laugh, because that’s one Arab who kindly got himself killed to make room for another Jewish immigrant. I didn’t share that bit of insight with him either, because why rub it in that he’s garbage in the eyes of Israel’s rule-making majority, the rightwing Jews? He nailed it when he said that Palestinian terrorists follow Hamas because while Israel is robbing them of reasons to live, Hamas, at least, is giving them a reason to die. I mean, they got universities in Gaza, but where are you going to take your degree? Nowhere, because you’re not getting out. And then, you get bombed.
And when I recently reminisced out loud about my short time with him, remembering how he complained I was going to die before him, and I replied “Keep talking that way and you’ll die before me”, he soberly answered that life and death have become all the same to him. Because while he still wants to find his raison d’être in charity and philantropy, he, too, feels robbed of reasons to live by this society. All the success and wealth he could achieve, and he would still feel like his life has no point, because we as a nation begrudge him that point.

A Jew murders his girlfriend, nobody bats an eye. An Arab guy dances during Memorial Day’s siren? “Fire him, kill him, rape his mother, bomb all those fucking terrorists!”

As a person who passes for both white and Jewish, I only know part of his struggle. I know the hate, discrimination, and dismissal I feel for being a fat female. However, while fatphobia is cruel and has a strong impact on its victims, fat people are not cooped up in shitholes that get bombed, bulldozed, or have their water cut off on a regular basis. My Arab friends may not live in the territories, but their people do. And all Arabs are the same to those oppressing these Palestinians, anyway. An Israeli Arab peds surgeon’s welcome in this country is as fickle as that of a Ramallah stabber. If said stabber snaps and stabs, the surgeon won’t be safe from the hatred and incitement that ensues. Guilt by association. A Jew murders his girlfriend, nobody bats an eye. An Arab guy dances during Memorial Day’s siren? “Fire him, kill him, rape his mother, bomb all those fucking terrorists!”

This isn’t about me. But it is. I’m part of Israel’s society, and I’m with the lucky part. The only problem I share with Arabs, is being cussed out for dating them. Since “dating” usually means “casual sex behind closed doors with no public hand-holding”, I can easily stay safe by not talking about it. But I have friends who live here knowing they are fair game. No, you can’t walk up and shoot Arabs as you please, but wait a second, yeah, you kinda can. I am afraid that these Arab people, especially young men, are Israel’s Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Hell, american cops don’t even have the homes of their black victims’ families bulldozed. On paper, Arabs have all the same rights as Jews. In practice, the collective bias wants to dismiss a victimized Arab’s complaint, and lock up any Arab upon accusation, no trial, no investigation. Schroedinger’s Arab – victim or perp, and somehow, both at the same time: they will call you a terrorist while burning you alive – you’re in a dark little box and nobody cares that you’re asphixiating in there while expected to do the expected and yet defy it.

And I’m not saying Arabs can’t make a nice life for themselves. But that doesn’t mitigate the fact that they live in a society that sneers at them and only expects the worst from, and wishes the worst upon them. How do you raise a happy, peaceful child in such miasma? How is this helping peace? How is it not obvious that most Arab violence against Israeli Jews can be traced back to said Arabs being treated like vermin? Is it reasonable to expect people to respond with acquiescence and submission when they get bulldozed, bombed, and kept from thriving? Walled in, starved, cut off from water, power, and economy? I will never defend acts of terror, but I am smart enough to see what prompts them, and it’s us. Hamas’ rhetoric of hate wouldn’t work if they didn’t have us proving them right over and over and over.

“All Arab Areas Access Citizenship” is a myth.

And to make this about me, because I like making things about me: I don’t know how to help. I have friends hurt to a point of numbness by this racism, and I can’t do much to help. We barely ever even meet. I want to tell them to leave the country for better places, but that’s easy for me to say – I have dual citizenship and am indeed leaving Israel, in part because I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. Arabs? Told by nutwing zionists to “go back to Jordan”, except, “All Arab Areas Access Citizenship” is a myth. So I’ll be leaving soon, a country that was never out to hurt me, leaving my friends behind to get angrier – or number – with every bulldozing and every bombing and every Palestinian kid with scissors getting shot dead because a trained soldier with an M16 “feared for his life”.

See, this is how you radicalize people. Nobody wants to be hated for no reason, so if all attempts at being accepted, fail… you give those haters a reason.

*killed with no repercussions for the killer, because his ethnicity makes it easy for the law to assume he asked for it

Not that again

In response to this lady’s typical one-sided tirade about only Muslims being horrible for following a questionable leader…

She’s raised a Muslim in the Middle East? She says so, but I see she didn’t keep an accent. And even if she is, she’s one person with a clearly very one-sided view. Being of a culture doesn’t mean you have an objective view on it. If a Christian girl tries to convince you that all Christians are horrible because she had a mother like Carrie’s and went to virginity balls and had creepy pictures taken with her dad, will you declare her a credible source on Christianity? One needs to look at a culture from a point of view much broader than one individual’s questionable testimony. Her profile also smacks of radicalism, though not Islamic. “It’s them or us” is the most paranoid, violence-excusing phrase one could think of. She’s the pot calling the kettle black. Everything Mohammed did wrong, people of all creeds do wrong to this day except slavery because that’s mostly dealt with.

She’ll paint all Muslims with the same broad brush because of their prophet, while the absolute and undeniable reality is that people of all religions believe and practice to different degrees and only few do to an extreme that could be cause for concern. That is why it’s called extremism.

We could apply the same arguments – “your prophet was a jerk” – to other religions. I mean, a father who’s willing to stab his son because his God says so? Jesus letting himself be tortured to death instead of saving himself and his followers from persecution by lying? Or celebrating people having their babies killed, gloating about it in songs at he dinner table, when one could just celebrate the liberation without all the horrors that befell the captors and their innocent families? We could make all religions look very, very horrible by focusing on only the bad stuff. Crusades…

As for the rapist part. When did Islam start? Back when rape wasn’t a huge crime and neither was pedophilia which, by the way, is also found in fundamentalistic Christian communities, and outside of religious frameworks. Let’s take a moment to be ashamed of modern society for around when spousal rape was finally outlawed. But Muslims are savages for following a prophet who was a rapist when it wasn’t culturally considered a big deal, and when they do not actually emulate his actions? And mass murderer? Every leader who has led his country into a war that killed significant numbers of innocent people, is right up there with Mohammed.

Liar, cheater, thief? Most of us are. Everyone who’s illegally downloaded, is a thief. Millions cheat on tests. EVERYBODY LIES. Adultery? Have a gander at how many non-Muslim married people cheat. And sex slaves? All those white Christian and Atheist men fuelling Asian child prostitution…. And speaking of slavery, again, Mohammed was 1000+ years ago, black slavery merrily celebrated by Christians is recent enough to still resonate within society in the shape of race dynamics.

Yes, the Qu’ran encourages many horrible things, but so does the Bible, where are the hate tirades and the fear mongering against Christians because while they don’t hurt anyone, they may believe in someone who has? Christians, too, are committing many atrocities to this day, but people see a cross and feel reassured, how can that be? The reason why Islam doesn’t scare me is because I have faith in human nature, which is the hypocrisy of picking and choosing what part of your religion you wish to represent with earnest conviction. MOST religious people including Muslims, will draw the line at violence. Yes, the book is brutal, no, the prophet wasn’t a nice guy, but as with any questionable religious passages, people conveniently skip them for the most part.

Actually, even in Muslim countries and communities, rape and violence has been largely outlawed. Palestinian girls go to parties and concerts unaccompanied and dressed as skimpy as Israeli girls, and they can, because just as Christian atrocities, Islamic atrocities are largely a thing of the past and not fit for our times. As everything else, Islam is subject to change and interpretation. Some take it too literally and go bomb people. Others, most, take what agrees with them and their social upbringing, and leave people alone.

Social upbringing is key. It’s always easy to radicalize or turn into a criminal, someone from a crappy background, religious or not. Brits have been recruited into radical Islam, without regular Islam as a gateway, and they were all from not-so-enviable environments. A Muslim raised in a decent setting is far less likely to become a violent Islamist because violence is the language of the desperate and the angry. Islam doesn’t make you angry, radical Islam recruits those who already are. Actually, many civil wars and conflicts among Muslims today have not started through religion, but religious nuts resulted from the frustration and hopelessness, and escalated or exploited the situation.

Why are so many Muslims fleeing for Europe? Because the Islamic extremists are not who they want to live under, because that is not what they believe in. Many of those who join, do under duress rather than conviction. Hell, I’d join if the alternative were a bullet in the head.

Muslims commit crimes under Mo’s name just like other creeds. All in the name of God or his spokesman, either as an excuse or out of fanaticism. Her singling out Islam is like a Christian nutter singling out gay people. Hitler was a Roman Catholic. If we were to condemn a culture, a people, a religion, over their (long dead) leader’s crap, there wouldn’t be much left to praise.

As for Jihad, she fails to consider that everything in religious books, whether the book allows it or not, is up to interpretation. Jihad means struggle, fight, but it can mean all sorts of personal struggles. It can mean hitting the treadmill and quitting smoking – and for the nutters it can mean to blow up a bus of unbelievers. But when she said, “You deserve anything that comes to you”, she pretty much showed us who the bad person is here, because if you deserve potentially horrible things just for believing something, well… I have a Muslim friend whose name is literally Islam. I’m sure he believes in Jihad. In terms of: stop brawling, quit smoking, start saving money. He believes in it and he practices it. So if some nutwing goes and stabs him for that, he deserves that? That is what this woman is suggesting, and that’s a very violent way of thinking… thoughts need to be free and wishing “everything that comes to you” on a person for their thoughts, is exactly what radical Islam would be all about. I love the irony of it and it’s so typical.

Anyway, exerting effort for the sake of Allah? Allah wants a lot of things, many of which good, others bad, but so do all gods. The Christian God threatens with Hell and floods and Armageddon for every wind you break, can’t even masturbate safely. How can you single out Allah’s wishes? How much murder has been and is being committed in the name of the Christian/Catholic god, how much hate is being spread? All these Gods ask a lot, and every believer will choose other things to fulfill. I think the picture sums it up that shows radical Islamists and the KKK next to each other and saying, “If this represents all Muslims, then this represents all Christians”.

She presents only a fraction of Islamic “commandments”. Another is to feed the needy. If you see bread left outside on walls etc. that’s mostly Muslims being Muslims. Every God wants everyone to adhere to his religion unquestioningly, and even Judaism, while not encouraging conversion, places significantly less value on people outside of that religion. Islam is not special in this aspect, either. Bullying people into conversion is an extremist action, and extremists are called that NOT because they’re common. Most don’t CARE what religion you are as long as you leave them alone. They may sneer at you, but isn’t that mutual?

And while Islam is not a race, it’s still dimwitted to say they’re all terrorists just because their religion endorses conditional violence. Most religions do.

And worshipping a man who has committed or ordered horrible acts, may be questionable, but it’s not a Muslim exclusive as I said. Bush was reelected. Hitler still has fans. Satan has a cult. And the 7 plagues that hit Egypt? Yeah, slavery is horrible, but killing everyone’s babies..? Not that I believe in the 7 plagues, but it still shouldn’t be the subject of happy dinner table songs.

It’s true that Islam is currently a major perpetrator of religious violence, but this is now, and Christians mustn’t forget what atrocities have brought them the powerful, influential position they have in the world today. One day, Islam will be in the past, so let’s not excuse Christianity for having bettered itself somewhat.

The biggest rapist, thief, and murderer is not Mohammed and not the average Muslim, it’s the male human on a global scale from New York to the Masaai Mara. We shouldn’t just focus on religion in regards to violence and hate. When we take religion out of the picture, we’ll see that it’s everywhere and it doesn’t take a Muslim to walk into a classroom with a gun.

She should check her country’s statistics and then run her mouth about what group is most violent in %. My money is on white males.

This woman is the prime example of what happens when you choose to only read and see what fits your belief system. She too is an extremist. She presents the subject in a very one-sided way for the sake of spreading a certain opinion of it. That’s extremist indoctrination at its finest.

Lastly, Italians aren’t a race either unless you’re gonna lump them in with other white people. They’re an ethnic group within whites. While ethnicity and race are often used interchangeably, strictly speaking, they are not the same. Making race about country, has been debunked when Hitler tried to declare Germans a race when half of Europe looked Aryan.