Let’s talk about privilege

Dear Person Who Thinks They Are Going to Bring Peace to the Middle East with Their Wokeness,

So you think you know what privilege is?

You think you can look at me as a middle class ‘white person’ and tell me to check my privilege?

Please enlighten me and remind me what this so-called privilege is all about?

Is it the sinking feeling I get when I travel abroad and someone I’ve never met before, asks me where I’m from and my heart sinks because I know, as soon as I say ‘Israel’ that will be the end of the conversation?

Is it standing in line at McDonalds with my son, and watching a slideshow of faces of the hostages who are still being held captive for almost a year now with no communication and not one visit by the Red Cross?

Is it knowing that as far back as I can trace my family, we have either been subject to expulsion or forced migration from almost any and every country where we tried to settle? (Yes, that also includes England. On July 18, 1290, King Edward I issued an edict expelling all Jews from England. This expulsion lasted for over 350 years. Jews were not officially allowed to return to England until 1656, under Oliver Cromwell’s rule.)

Perhaps it’s businesses around the world now putting signs up saying “no Jews allowed”?

Is it not being able to look at a photo of a couple posted on social media without wondering “is this a couple that survived the Nova Festival?” “Is this a couple

Who were taken hostage?” Or “Is this a couple who were burned alive in their home?”

Is that my privilege?

Is it the constant stress we felt on behalf of Israel’s representative in the Eurovision this year as we legitimately feared for her life?

Is it having to explain to my youngest child what rape is, and why Israeli women and men are not believed by the rest of the world?

Maybe it’s when I join networking groups outside of Israel and talk to people who won’t even say the word ‘Israel’ but instead say ‘your country’ or ‘where you live’ ?

Is that my privilege?

Is it visiting the local car dealership to look at leasing a new car and seeing a yellow chair there in the waiting area, dedicated to the hostages?

Is it having someone who you are FB friends with, tell you that they think establishing the state of Israel was a mistake, that the Jews should have gone back to Europe but there’s nothing we can do about it now?

Maybe it’s keeping my British passport renewed so that I don’t have to travel on my Israeli one and spend the whole flight stressing about how they will treat me at border control?

Is that my privilege?

Is it the experience of having your whole entire history as a Jew, rewritten for you to fit the new, woke, TikTok-informed narrative? One in which the Jews, of Judeah, whose whole existence began in Israel, have no right to be here?

Is it hearing the debates about whether Israel has the right to defend itself? What other country on earth has EVER had to be given the right to defense by other countries?

Perhaps it’s joining online group programs, receiving the calendar for the year ahead, and seeing that there’s not one Jewish holiday mentioned among all the others?

Is that my privilege?

Is it seeing the phrase ‘all eyes on Rafah’ plastered everywhere, when the real reason we were meant to stay out of Rafah was because they knew we would find their hundreds of major terror tunnels and weapons?

Maybe it’s watching the Olympics with my eleven year old son and seeing him watch all the counties displayed and hearing him ask “are they pro Israel?” Or “Do they hate us?”

Is it my privilege to update my profile photo to a French flag and the tagline ‘Je suis Charlie’ after the Charlie Hebdo attack, or post a black square to Instagram for Black Lives Matter or post about the London Bridge attack in 2017, only to find that this support and solidarity is not a two way thing?

Is it watching the news, hearing the non-stop talk about the lack of proportionality in this war and seeing everything twisted to fit the narrative of Israel as the oppressors and Palestinians as the oppressed?

Is that my privilege?

Is it feeling so pathetically grateful when the likes of Col Kemp and Douglas Murray speak out on behalf of Israel that it’s almost embarrassing how grateful we are to have these people ‘on our side’?

Is it when Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill were asked if “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against school policy, and the most they could both muster up was “it is a context-dependent decision.”?

Perhaps it’s the knowledge that my grandpa fought in the Battle of cable street in 1936 and for the British army in the Second World War and would be heartbroken to see how extremism and intolerance have returned today in full force.

Is it the fact that thousands of years of trauma, expulsions, inquisitions, ethnic cleansing, slavery and a holocaust, are handed down to us as generational trauma in our DNA?

Is that my privilege?

No.

None of this is a privilege.

It’s a nightmare.

It’s a burden.

It’s terrifying to our cores.

It’s exhausting.

It’s something that no one should have to get used to.

It’s beyond human comprehension.

So what is my privilege?

My privilege is that I have 1 and a half minutes to get to shelter from the time I hear the air raid sirens.

My privilege is that I have a bomb shelter within my own home.

My privilege is that I live in central Israel, not far north or far south, so I haven’t had to evacuate from my home for the last 10 months, with no end in sight.

My privilege is that I get to live in the only country on earth where I don’t have to be afraid of wearing my Star of David around my neck.

Where I don’t have to tell my boys to take off their kippot and not speak any Hebrew in case someone recognizes the language.

Where our national airline proudly displays our flag the tails of all its planes.

My privilege is that I don’t have to explain why I left the UK and moved here.

Here there’s no confusion as to why a Jew would move back to Israel.

My privilege is that I can walk down the street and never hear someone shout out their car window for me to ‘go back where I came from’ or ‘Hitler should have finished the job’.

My privilege is that I get to live in the country where the Jews began, speaking the language of the bible, walking in the footsteps of my ancestors, surrounded by my very extended family.