In September 2001, I was living in Boston, forty seconds out of college, trying to be an adult. I heard about the attack on the World Trade Center while listening to NPR on the air mattress I slept on for an entire year.
My friends and I were decidedly radical, we worked hard at it (most of us still do). On the same day as the attacks, we crowded together in an auditorium at Brandeis for a teach-in on what has happened and the implications of it. We imagined World War III. In that moment, it seemed very possible.
A few weeks later, I was on a crowded train at rush hour. There were still rumors;“they” would attack Boston, Cleveland, anywhere that was accessible and unprepared. I wanted to run back to college. Instead, I watched a man with light brown skin get onto my T car, and proceeded to freak out. I actually got off the train. I waited for the next one, and as I stood there, I thought about how sometimes you just know you’ll be thinking about a certain thing for the rest of your life, like the moment you no longer recognize yourself. I actually got off the train because I’d decided in a moment of absolute, random terror, that that passenger was Arab, and that he might blow us all up.
I did the same thing a few years later in Jerusalem, on a particularly packed bus into the center of town. I supposed that sort of thing happens often in Jerusalem, although maybe less so now, along with things that are much worse. After I got off that bus, I took a long, sweaty walk. I hated myself that day, but ultimately, of course, hating yourself, feeling guilty is nothing if not completely unproductive.
What I remember in retrospect was how hotly, how effectively my fear and adrenaline concentrated, like gasoline, and completely overran my ability to be rational, clear thinking and not knee-jerkily racist. Fear can turn you into a lot of things. People who spend their time capitalizing on fear, on perpetuating it, know this.
Islamophobia was gaining momentum long before September 11th. The Jewish community has been injecting it in various shades into curricula, shul sermons, Kiddush conversations, Israel education, but it isn’t that simple. We are certainly very culpable in its perpetuation, but we aren’t alone. An insidious concoction of our own desire to assimilate, the debasement of Islam and the Arab world in the media, and the creation of a climate of fear as to the nature of the Koran is at work. The thing is, knowing that, dissecting it from all its angles is valuable, but ultimately, not so helpful on the ground. What we need is a different arsenal, which comes from dismantling the fear and hate that lives inside all of us.