"Those People Over There Speak A Different Language, They Worship A Different Religion, I Do Not Like Them": Your Personal Story

The discussions have been so top heavy with political stands and believes. Now we are going to head in a different direction. We are going to discuss what permeates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: prejudice. How we are going to address prejudice, is that participates will be sharing their personal stories about how they have experienced it. This will give others an opportunity to read your stories, and to write about them, to reflect on what you experienced. In other words, this is mepeace group therapy. For our group therapy can translate into national and international group therapy. And do we need it!

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Permalink Reply by Tanya Kasim on June 9, 2012 at 10:35am

I've experienced prejudice in one form or another as a college student who is a mix of nationalities and who was raised as a Muslim. This was in my first year at Regis College back in 1991-1992. The kind of prejudice I have encountered and experienced was more of the "My father doesn't like Jordanians; he doesn't trust them" sort. There was more prejudice against black women and others than there was against Arabs, although I was warned about anti-Arab feeling in the States.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Upham on June 9, 2012 at 8:13pm

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. I can identify with you over being a mixture. I myself, am a mixture of Sephadic Jewish and Hungarian Calvinist. But I fall into the category of being a child who was not raised by its biological parents. I was 17, when I found out what I was. So it was going on a long journey to discover by my heritage. My paternal side was easier, because I linked up with them in Budapest. There I discovered how mixed marriages were so frequent. My father married a Jew, but I also had a second cousin who had a Jewish wife. Her and I went around Jewish Budapest, and I loved it. It was one of the most fascinating experiences I have done. Coming back to the United States, I wanted to get into a synagogue. The first one was so paranoid over me, because they looked me as a potential spy, or somehow wanted to hurt them. I finally got into surprisingly enough an Orthodox synagogue, where there I learned everything. It was just as fascinating as when I went through Jewish Budapest. Looking within changed the way I looked outside. Instead of feeling threatened my Muslims, I just want to know about them. Doing so made it just as fascinating as the experiences I had with Jewish Budapest and the synagogue. So Muslims are not dangerous, but just a continuation of humanity. So what does the Jewish Siddur say, "You will love your fellow man, as though you will love yourself." I interpret that as all of humanity.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Upham on June 12, 2012 at 5:35am

The discussion was to provide you with the opportunity to express about what type of prejudice you have experienced. So far, there has not been much contribution. If this remains, then I will have to throw the accusation that people of this website are self-righteous and two faced. Self-righteous and two faced, because you can claim that you are speaking for those people who have been so much the victims of injustice. If the people who claim to be speaking for, does not personal include you, then what gives you the credibility to be able to speak for them. So you can show yourself as a credible spokesperson by mentioning how you were the victim of Anti-Semitism, discriminated against for being a Muslim or Palestinian, or as a Christian living in a predominately Muslim society. It would be nice to hear from some reparable sources.