A source on politics, war, the Middle East, Arabic poetry, and art.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
One of the things that you experience as an Arab in the US, is that, unfortunately, American anti-Semites try to confide in you, assuming--wrongly of course in this case--that you must as an Arab share their anti-Semitism. Just today, I had a plumber come to my house. He heard my TV blasting: he guessed it was Arabic. He asked where I am from, and I told him. As soon as I answered him, he yelled to me...something anti-Semitic. Of course, I had to immediately tell him where I stand on this (in opposition to anti-Semitism). Living in the US all these years only confirmed my theory all along: that anti-Semitism is a Western Christian phenomenon--not that there are no manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Arab world, but they are imported.