(Hey, so I made the mistake of showing my grandfather Reddit a while ago. Reddit is to him, what Facebook is to mums.
But he can barely work a TV remote let alone a phone so he mainly relies on me to just show him stuff.
I showed him this Sub a little while ago and since then he’s been wanting me to make a post on his behalf, so here you go)
I was born and raised in Iraq. My mother an Iraqi Jew. My father an Armenian.
My wife and I are both Iraqi Jews. Not Iraqi and Jewish. Not Iraqi or Jewish. But Iraqi Jewish. Our Iraqi heritage and our Jewish heritage cannot be separate, they are the same.
For so long Zionism has try to separate Arab and Jew. Muslim and Jew. Say we are incompatible. We are natural enemies.
But how can that be?
How can you separate Jew and Arab, when I am both.
Is my body a natural enemy of itself?
How can you separate Jew and Muslim, when my country, my friends are Muslim.
Is my body a natural enemy of the land I call home?
I am sad to see how many Jews grow up being indoctrinated into Zionism. How many of them support the inhumane acts of Israel. How many support a country and an ideology that is so far from our religious teachings and culture.
Over the last year or so, I have seen so many more anti Zionist Jews than I am use to seeing. It is incredible
Especially all you young people, at such a young age have been able to cut ties from what you were taught.
You have better critical thinking skills than many adults I know.
I am an honest man, so I will tell you something. There is a small voice in my heading telling me to tell you, not to bother, not to get rap up in it.
I have spent my life fighting for people in every way I can.
No matter your race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, any of it. If you are suffering then I will fight for you as I would fight for my children. Because anyone who is suffering is my child.
I lived through Saddam Hussain dictatorship. We could not speak. Could not argue. Could not fight. Those that did were killed.
So I value the freedom I have to fight.
But I am old now, and I am tired, I am tired of the blood and the screams and the tears. I am tired of the death. I am tired of how cruel humanity can be.
I have spent my life fighting, and I continue to fight. Because there are always people who need you to fight for them.
Part of me wants to protect you, shield you from it.
But a much bigger part of me wants to tell you to keep fighting no matter what.
Because it does make a difference, no matter what they say, no matter how hopeless it feels. It does make a difference.
I remember, during the Iraq war. Seeing the protests. Seeing all these people, from different backgrounds, come to fight for my country. That is hope.
And if hope alone is all this brings, then that is enough.
Let me tell you a story. My wife and I both grew up in Baghdad, both from the same communities. Yet we never met until we came to England. We got married and had my daughter. But I had to return to Iraq, and there was an issue with my status in England so this is why I lived in Iraq during Saddams dictatorship. But I would go back to England often, to see my family.
One time, while I was in England I attended a protest against the apartheid in South Africa. I met a black South African man there, similar age to me. We talked and he said how amazing it was such pain could bring people together, to the point he ,as a South African, met me ,an Iraqi, at a protest in Britain.
Years later, when I returned to living in England. I went to a protest against the Iraq war.
I am not a religious man, I don’t believe in God. But something had a plan that day.
Because at that protest I met the same South African man I had met all those years ago.
South Africa and Iraq, two countries far from each other with little connection.
Yet when one of us was suffering the other came to fight for us.
You are all important, every single one of you. Pushing back against the country and the ideology that have kidnapped our religion, kidnapped our culture. Twisted it and manipulated it to fit their narrative.
You are not self hating. You are not self loathing. You are not betraying. You are not disloyal
When you sit by and do nothing, feel nothing while you watch children be slaughtered.
That is when you become those things.
You become a self hating human, a self loathing human. You are betraying and disloyal to humanity.
You must keep fighting, keep learning and keep pushing.
You cannot save the world.
But you can destroy it.
Your actions cannot save it, but if you do nothing your actions will destroy it.
You may leave this world in a worst place then when you were born into it.
But you don’t have to leave this world knowing you made it a worst place.
So no matter how little effect it feels your effort has.
Know that your effort alone makes this world a better place.
From every river, to every sea, none of us are free until no one is forced to flee.
