Does my life matter if I'm not white?

On our way to the march last Saturday, my brother and I were speaking in Bangla about intersectionality amongst the Middle East. We were speaking about monoliths created by the Western media and the sadness in dehumanising the innocent lives lost, and turning them into statistics. We talked about how people use the queer struggle to justify why queer people shouldn’t be supporting Palestine (inspired by a queer couple who just came on to the train hoisting a huge Palestine flag). Everyone on this carriage was enjoying their usual Saturday morning conversation, the usual diverse London that I love.

Upon hearing the word Palestine, a man jumped into the conversation, asking if he could ask us a question. I said ‘sure’, a bit redundantly given that he was already thrusting his phone screen into our faces. I actually love it when strangers talk to me on the train, what can I say, I’m a total sucker for human connection.

“Did you know that 66% of Arab-Israelis actually agree with Israel’s right to defend itself?”

Bit abrupt, I thought. Usually I like to get to at least a second date before we get political. (I’m joking, this was not my initial thought, I just often use humour to deflect what I’m truly feeling, which we’ll get to in a while).

I asked him to repeat it to me twice because either I couldn’t hear him, or I was in shock at what my cognitive dissonance was teaching me was a blatant lie. I asked him to show me the article. He did. (by the way, I searched for the article so I could at least link it here for you, I couldn’t find it. It’s rather telling. Do link it if you can find it).

When I finally worked out what he was trying to tell me, (that Israel has a right to defend itself), I responded with “okay, is that your question?”

“Well I just wondered what is it that people get out of going to these marches when the Arabs who live in Israel literally say that they want Israel to defend itself?”

And the physiological responses began. My voice started shaking, my hands shook, and my legs shook. But I spoke.

“Well, the point of going to marches is to demonstrate solidarity and represent the voices of a people who have their voices omitted for so long.”

“But the voices of these Arab Israelis are here- it’s showing you- 66%”

I wish in hindsight I had my academic researcher hat on and challenged him about the remaining 44%, as if their voices don’t matter at all? It appears that as long as some people find one piece of evidence to support their beliefs, they’ll run with it, no matter how flawed or incomplete. Where’s the humility in accepting an alternative view? (I apply this to myself as well!)

I then challenged him and said that the evidence I prefer to look at is what’s on the ground, through citizen journalists who are working day in and day out to document and share with the world. This one felt raw to say because just a few hours ago, I cried myself to sleep again upon the news that Israel had hit communication towers and plunged Gaza into darkness so they could carry out their atrocities. I woke up in the morning to a clip of an imam crying on the loudspeakers of their mosque “can anybody hear us?”

He completely retracted the initial question he asked about why people go to marches, blatantly denying that he ever asked that. When I challenged him about the sources of his information, he retorted:

“Oh so if it’s not a media that aligns with your values then it’s wrong?” (It’s a fair point because the exact argument could be made towards him as well- and anyone for that matter, we have so much choice in what we consume and create our own algorithms) and yet he went back to deflecting when I said,

“Actually that’s why I prefer citizen journalism, I like to hear from the experiences of individuals rather than a major news outlet so my evidence comes from the ground, but even that’s been taken away by Israel right now.”

I won’t go into the further details and intricacies of that conversation but the gaslighting that I experienced during that debate from a man who invaded my conversation with my brother was second to none. Every time an argument was posed, I got challenged for “is that how you win arguments, you just raise your voice?” when the reality was that I was doing my best to speak with clarity to fight back my stammer. The raising voices was also simply to battle the usual chug-chug of the district line and other people's conversations.

It felt like classic Israeli warfare. Demonstrate your power, then gaslight when you get a reaction that you don’t want, before exerting more of your own power.

It ended with another woman jumping in to challenge his thoughts about the war crimes that Israel is committing. Everybody has a right to defend themselves, but there are parameters about how they do that, which Israel has broken multiple of (many dating back to the 2009 by the way). We got applauded and commended by other bystanders who I had no idea were watching and listening. He wanted to engage further. But our stop had arrived. And she calmly said,

“I don’t want to engage anymore. You asked a question. I answered. That’s it.”

And I rate that. I’m gonna use that more often.

Because we’re tired. We are so exhausted of having to justify our existence let alone have the right to defend OURSELVES. You ask us to condemn Hamas? Easy. Done. I've BEEN condemning crimes that had nothing to do with me for the last 25 years, but it's rather telling when you can't condemn Israel for committing more murders in the last 2 weeks than the deaths caused by global terrorism in the last 2 decades.

It tells me that our lives don't matter to you and that the rules of what constitutes a crime changes based on who you are, what you look like, and whether the government and media deems you worthy of being seen as human.

I’m broken. I feel ashamed at my government. I feel like an outsider, and like I don’t belong more now than ever before. But why now and not the prior 30 years of existence?

Traumas are being triggered. Traumas I never knew I carried. Let's rewind to the 90s and 00s.

For demographic context, I grew up as the only ethnic minority, South Asian boy in my year group from primary school all the way until 6th form (there were 2 other girls) in a little estuary town in Essex. I was known as the family interpreter by the man at the local second-hand shop (RIP Jeff), and the lollipop lady always used to assume that the other brown people in the town must be my relatives. These things didn’t bother me. I found them quite endearing. I never felt like an outsider because I was born here and my language (spoke, reading, writing) was actually the best in all my classes (way above my white peers). It didn’t bother me when the white lady resident at the care home I volunteered at when I was 18 assumed that I had come as the ‘token brown person’ (she may not have been wrong to be honest) but these nuances (perhaps because of who it had come from) felt more like a bridging of gaps than creating divisions. I remember when my old colleagues at the library during my weekend job asked question after question about my fasting in Ramadhan- there was pure curiosity without judgement. I felt safe, because I also remember them teaching me which dishes had pork and alcohol in when we went out for Christmas dinner. They had my back.

To be honest, I didn’t feel that threatened either when a group of white teens ran past my house shouting “paki” and my elder brothers went out to retaliate, almost resulting in violence if my 10-year-old self hadn’t called 999. I knew the police would support us. I would have clapped back when the vicious lady muttered to her boyfriend “I’ve a right mind to go over there and pull that scarf off her head” about my mother after 9/11 when we were simply walking down our road, but I was taught to ignore the bullies.

You know what, I probably didn’t even feel unsafe (definitely sad, but not threatened) when I saw the words “paki cu*t” graffitied next to my newly embossed name in the school hall after being democratically elected as Head Boy. I know full well I earned that fairly and was proud to be the first ethnic minority name up there on the board of at least 100 other names. I knew the staff would deal with it. They got it cleaned. Nothing else happened after that.

When I look back, I recognise that this was such a hostile space – but in those circumstances – when you can’t fight or flight, you develop freeze responses- and this is what’s being triggered currently.

I leave my family home today after a usual visit, telling my parents to be careful and about their wits. I did it after 9/11 when I was 11 years old; I did it after 7/7 when I was 16; I did it after Lee Rigby’s death; I did it after Brexit; and I’m doing it now. And only NOW that I’m writing this, literally as I’m writing these very words, have I realised that perhaps we have never felt safe? I was so ingrained in my trauma responses that I had no idea that we never ‘unfroze’.

I discovered the Palestinian cause in January 2009 when I first saw the death tolls on Channel 4 news before heading out to college for the day’s lessons. From then until now, I have never felt unsafe while advocating for the Palestinian cause. I’d attend marches, I’d share the right articles, sign the relevant petitions, and boycott the companies that fund genocide (but never preach and shame others for their choice of where to buy).

Since 2021 however, I feel the rhetoric changing. You can’t advocate for Palestinians, but you can for Israelis. You can’t condemn the IDF, but you must condemn Hamas. (that word ‘condemn’ is so jarring, it’s used everywhere as a buzzword to ensure that you are indirectly advocating for Israel’s right to defend itself, i.e. the right to kill civilians). You can’t take political stances at work. You can’t take humanistic stances at work.

This year, is the worst I’ve ever felt, for two main reasons:

The silence of some members of my network- I have always supported the idea that ‘people protest in different ways’ and I’m so grateful for my work with trauma and neurodiversity to understand that there are many ways of doing the same thing. I will always support a dialogue towards truth option so I want people to ask me about my posts, what I’m supporting, and why- just like all those white people from my childhood did. But when I see privilege being used to switch off and feel nothing as a way to protect yourself, I feel hurt and upset that you have chosen to ignore injustice. In cases of genocide, there is a clear right and wrong. You only have to look at the death tolls to work that out. The phrase ‘its complicated’ is used to make you feel ‘too dumb’ to use your voice. I’ve even advocated for the idea that if you don’t want to use your voice for whatever reason/pressure (I get it, I’ve been there and still am), then at least amplify the voices of others!

In this digital world, I can see that whatever you ‘like’ on Linkedin, comes up on my feed, and then I get exposed to something, perhaps a view that helps me grow, learn, and be challenged. Or perhaps a view that I want to share myself but haven’t got the courage or words to do so. Is a ‘like’ even that hard to do? Because when generations are now being wiped out and omitted under the western media hypocrisy, surely, the least we can do is ensure that people’s stories are told until the last breath. Your ‘like’ can help. And if you believe “I am one person, what can I possibly do” – recognise that billions of people feel this.

Media Propaganda- For the first time in my life I feel embarrassed to be British. To have a parliament that apparently represents me. It genuinely has been the source of immense misery this month.

• When Rishi Sunak met Netanyahu and said “we want you to win”- he gave a nod of approval to far right genocide. Who’s ‘we’ Rishi? The half a million people that descended on London on Saturday? The protestors in Ireland, Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester? The sitters are Waterloo and Liverpool Street Stations?
• When Suella Braverman tried to ban protests and referred to the Palestinian marches as ‘hate marches’ (I’ve been to 4 by00 the way since 2009, she’s been to 0)- she’s telling us that your opinions aren’t valid. I go to these marches to remind myself that there are plenty of people on the right side of history, with sadness and hurt I’m sure, but above all, a shared love for justice, humanity, and fairness.
• When they don’t call for ceasefire but provide humanitarian aid but don’t advocate for opening the borders to let the aid in- they’re telling us that what they do is tokenistic and has no value
• When they fire MPs who advocate for Palestinian lives under the line of “not sharing collective responsibility”- they’re telling us that democracy means bullshit.

I had always wondered how things like slavery, holocaust, south African apartheid, the ethnic cleansing of many people throughout history occurred, and now I know- through this silence and propaganda.

It feels like, it doesn’t matter how British we are, how integrated we are, how educated, how ‘modern’ we are, we will always be considered lesser because of our skin. It’s been a hard lesson to swallow. But I see it in the imbalanced reactions between Ukraine and Palestine. I see it when Suella Braverman referred to Palestine protests as hate marches. I see it when Instagram shadowbans me, I see it in unfair portrayal of media stories when they report on Israel vs when they report on Palestinians.

Anyway, if you made it this far through my rambles then I applaud you and I thank you for listening to my voice. Ironically and perhaps due to my conditioning, it feels a bit redundant though unless you’re a white person, nodding along with pity, compassion, a newfound learning of me as a person, or even just a new discovery or discomfort about your own biases and understanding- that’s the kind of validation I crave. The kind that gets you jumping into my private messages after reading this to say “I hear you, I see you, I've got you.”

I guess I wrote this primarily for you, and secondarily for my fellow second-class citizens of this country to say to you, that “I already hear you, I already see you, I already got you…and I’m learning to carry on doing so. Please can you carry me too, because I'm exhausted and broken?”

But for all-class citizens, I’d like to share a few positives that I’m uncovering throughout this last month to leave us with something to think about:

• I love that Israel-Palestine is being seen as much less of a religious Jew-Muslim issue. Because it’s not. It’s a settler-colonial issue, one that plagues all of our lives through a connected history. People are recognising that being Anti-Israel does not mean being anti-semitic. And being anti-Israel doesn’t mean being against Israeli people, rather an Israeli far right government. (This was the intersectional conversation from the beginning that instigated so much of this article). It was so invigorating when my religion taught me that Jews and Muslims are cousins. There are differences in beliefs, but they came from the same forefather (Abraham). The sit-ins for Palestinian Liberation at Grand Central Station in New York was pioneered by Jewish Voice for Peace and I felt proud of my cousins. People like Dr Gabor Maté and his family, Ilan Pappé etc- are all demonstrating such courage to fight against their own people in the face of injustice and it reminds me that love for humanity must outweigh all. I see you all.
• The intersectionality that is coming together is immensely beautiful (one of the reasons I love marches)- because I see different unions (I always get so happy seeing my old NEU friends, or something related to Essex!), black, white, Irish, Kurdish, male, female, trans, queer- liberation is fundamentally tied to self-determination, dignity, and an end to all systems of oppression. In a settler-colonial context, no clear line can be drawn where colonialism ends and patriarchal violence begins for example, and that’s why the fight against misogyny is intertwined with the fight against settler-colonialism and capitalism. I have particularly been moved by queer liberation- “a political approach to sexuality and gender, rooted in the rejection of heteronormativity and patriarchy, which is the basis of every system of oppression.”
• Economical boycotting is working! The 3 major companies that fund genocide- Disney Plus, Starbucks and MacDonalds are all noting falls in stocks, many stores are reporting a decline in customers, and have resorted to special offers to reel the customers back in. It’s important to stay consistent. In all my years of following this struggle, I have never seen as much momentum as I see now.
• Media Censorship- the hypocrisy and double standards of media reporting is probably my biggest heartache because of how many people indoctrinates. To those people (including myself), I say, make sure to read something that makes you feel uncomfortable at least once a week. It’s why I kind of appreciate the instance of the man invading my conversation that I mentioned at the beginning of the article. It reminded me that I can’t sit in my privileged bubble, simply sharing stories all the time; it was a great place to start, but I need to make a difference instead of reiterating what my network already knows. It’s one of the reasons I advocate for citizen journalism. One side’s citizen journalism is TikTok trends mocking the Palestinian deaths while the other side is real live footage of picking humans out from underneath rubble (whether dead or alive) (still think it’s complicated?). Hear experiences of individuals as well as the larger statistics. Both are important. Let’s rehumanise the dehumanised.

One final note, before you start using bites of this to feed your stereotype of the angry South Asian male who never smiles, I deal with my anger by crying. I don't want to, it just happens. My legs shake, I stammer because my words don’t come out, and I sob like a baby. So don’t worry, I won’t be planning to blow anything up, I’ll be too busy blowing into my handkerchief. I also practise positive psychology the best I can, that’s why I ended with the good stuff that I’m noticing despite still feeling hurt and broken. (Both things can be true at once.)

Prayers and thoughts are with all those who have been impacted by this physically, mentally, and emotionally. We grieve and mourn for all the civilians lost. We grieve the children who didn’t have a chance at life, the women who have yet another system to battle, and the forgotten men who are just omitted from all forms of victimhood- I see you, I see the traumas you will have to carry. I grieve you all.