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On Fear, Violence, and Safety


Image by Diego PH on Unsplash

I’ve been testing the water by talking to people IRL about my book. On the one hand, each conversation is different. I open up the subject (I’m writing a book about a Jewish Israeli woman who finds out her childhood home used to belong to her Palestinian husband’s family) and then let people take it where they want to. I’ve had conversations about Iran’s foreign policy, the feel of history emanating from the stones in Jerusalem, and the food in Tel Aviv.


On the other hand, I feel like all conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict end up being the same conversation on a loop. They started it. I’m against violence, but. It’s complicated. And while I feel all kinds of way about the violence that erupted in Amsterdam last week, I don’t want to be dragged yet again into these conversations.


There are always justifications for racialised violence. In the UK in the summer, people attacked mosques and hotels that house refugees because they thought a refugee perpetrated an atrocious attack. Currently, the Israeli government is engaged in unspeakable violence in Gaza and Lebanon. It justifies it with the right to safety as if Gazan children are an existential threat to the state. Last week in Amsterdam, people were targeted because they were wearing specific colours—the colours of their football club. Yes, some football fans behaved deplorably. Do all of them deserve to be beaten? Do we think that people on electric scooters stopped to ask the fans whether they were for or against mass killings?


There are always justifications for racialised violence. Which is to say, there is never a good justification for racialised violence. How we look shouldn’t determine our safety. Where we live shouldn’t determine our safety. The God we believe in shouldn’t determine our safety. If we are okay with violence for any reason, we open the door to it.


My immediate reaction is fear, probably because I'm a descendant of rather anxious people. The world is a pretty scary place right now, and it would be so easy for me to shut myself in the house, to disengage, to assume that I’ll be targeted because of my heritage, the language I speak, or where I was born.


But I had decided long ago to choose love over fear. And I believe, as Jacques Sémelin said, that honest words set us free from violence. I am also a descendant of survivors, of people who chose to see life as a gift and fought so that others could be safe. And this week, I’m trying hard to choose love.

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