Midway through the conversation, A asserted that B and I looked so much alike that she could not get over it. She went on and on (and on) about it for a while and said something along the lines of us looking like sisters. I did not think that B and I looked related, though we definitely had the same “look,” ie, a similar overall coloring and appearance as, oh, maybe a few million people in Spain, Turkey, Italy, Greece, the Middle East, and Jewish communities from Central and Eastern Europe.

I felt uncomfortable, but I could not put my finger on why, so I just stood there with a frozen smile on my face, looking from B to A and back to B again. As A continued to make me uncomfortable, going feature by feature through a comparison between B and me, I even chipped in about how we both had square brown glasses. I just felt so awkward and irritated, I was looking for something to say. In retrospect, a statement along the lines of, “I don’t think we look the same” would have done just fine, but sometimes I freeze up and opt for playing along with something dumb, so as not to appear rude. Even though, you know, the person doing something dumb is the one being rude.

Finally I was able to articulate in my head what was bothering me, but it did not seem like polite conversation, and I could not remember the damn term for what I was thinking of – namely, cross-race identification. A is black, and I got the sense that she was rather blind to the distinctions between B and me. But I don’t know A well, and race matters are kind of dicey to bring up directly while standing around socializing, especially when you don’t know where someone is coming from or what their track record is on race matters in general, so I said nothing.

After A went so far as to suggest that B and I exchange notes to see if we are in fact related, however, I had to put the matter to rest. As soon as A left, I approached B, to confirm my suspicion that we did not have one country of origin in common. Sure enough, B is 100% Portuguese (Catholic), and as we all know, my family is Iraqi (Jewish), Danish (Protestant), Welsh (Quaker), and Irish (Catholic – oh wait! Maybe that’s why B and I look so indistinguishable!)

Anyhow. I’m still not entirely sure why it bugged me so much. I suspect it had to do not only with the delivery but also with the fact that I’ve recently been dealing with a lot of people’s projections onto me, which leaves me feeling unseen and splattered on. Plus I had a liberating experience while visiting a Sephardic Jewish community recently: When I asserted that I look like your basic Ashkenazi, a Moroccan-Israeli guy sitting across from me disagreed, saying that I have distinctly Iraqi features. “Nobody ever tells me that,” I said. “That’s because they don’t have a point of reference for Iraqis, so they put you into the closest category with which they are familiar.”

That was really cool. I felt seen! Sort of. Not sure he detected the Danish/Welsh/Irish thing going on, but then again I don’t exactly have freckles and red hair.

In high school, my best friend and I looked identical. We even bought the same damn clothes, without shopping together. Everyone mixed us up, though it took a while for us each to figure out why people we’d never talked to were being super friendly to us. We had not one common line of ethnicity, so it was quite odd that we looked so much alike. But in that case, we actually did look alike. I saw it, she saw it, everyone saw it.

Still, I’m not sure why this thing bugged me so much. I must ponder some more…

A few days before, I had gone to a 12-step group and, as part of my share, talked about feeling alienated from the local Jewish community, and therefore, from myself. Because my abusive father is in this community, I explained; because I have a long-ass Arabic name; and because the Jewish community here is almost exclusively Central and Eastern European, meaning that an Arabic name sticks out, it’s impossible to go to synagogue without getting the, “Are you related to _____” routine. In other words, if I do not risk running into my father himself, I risk encountering his shadow everywhere I turn.

In addition, I shared, given that my father plays a good game and is a master manipulator of perception; given that he went to Harvard and uses that to generate respect and admiration; and given that the Jewish community is super tribal and family-oriented and, stemming from that orientation, oblivious to the existence of domestic violence among Jews, it is extremely challenging to walk through the Jewish world at odds with a family member also in the community.

I did not get into details about that last piece in my share, but the issue is that religious Jews do not pick up on cues or respond appropriately to very obvious boundaries, like, “I do not have a relationship with my father and do not want to talk about him.” A typical answer to that is, “Why?”

After my share, I stuck around, to see if anyone who resonated with my share might come up and talk with me. Several people did talk with me, but not one actually responded to the content of my share. Instead, a mixed black/white woman told me all about getting to know the Jewish side of her family – attempting to bond with me about our presumably common white Jewish lineage, when in fact the Jewish side of my family is, as clearly indicated in the share, Iraqi, and the white side of my family (not addressed in my share but present in my physical features) is Irish, Danish, and Welsh – Catholic, Protestant, and Quaker, respectively.

Next a woman approached me with the opening statement, “I had this lawyer…” I knew where the conversation was going from there and knew that it would not be good. Suffice it to say the terms “rich,” “smart,” and “Jewish” were strung together as if they were both inextricably-intertwined and sinister. This woman went so far as to link her racist rant with my share, saying how much she “resonated” with what I had said. Apparently my very personal description of dealing with the fallout of family violence made her “realize” that the rich-smart-Jewish-lawyer who had screwed her over was enabled by the protection and cover-up of the Jewish community.

Great. Yet another reason to hate Jews. So glad I could help with that.

When an earnest-looking young woman then approached me, I thought I was being rescued by someone who would actually connect to my share. “Do you know Gertrude [insert very Ashkenazi sounding last name]?” Immediately I bristled. “No,” I replied. “Oh well she’s very active in the Jewish community in Los Angeles,” the woman said. While it just so happens that I moved here from Los Angeles, I do not recall mentioning that in my share. Regardless, of course I would know Gertrude Shmutsky, because she’s Jewish, and I’m Jewish, and well. There you have it.

Which all goes to say, there I was, arranging myself on the medical bed, getting ready for my ultrasound, when the tech said, “Do you mind my asking about your name?” I did not mind at all and informed her that it is Judeo-Arabic. That usually gets a blank stare, so I helpfully added, “which is the Jewish dialect of Iraqi Arabic.” As soon as the tech heard the word “Jewish,” she jumped in and talked over me, not hearing anything about the dialect.

“Oh, I thought Jewish,” she said, seemingly pleased with herself. “Really?” I asked, surprised. “Usually people think it’s French or Hawaiian.” It seemed odd that someone would assume my name is Jewish, unless that person not only was from the Middle East and not only from Iraq, but also from the Iraqi Jewish community. Even Iraqi Muslims are not familiar with “Loolwa,” because in their dialect, the name is “Lu’lu’a,” with a more guttural sound. This woman was pretty damn white looking, so how could she possibly tease apart Iraqi Arabic from Iraqi Judeo-Arabic? “Well, you’ve been here a few times,” she responded, “so I’ve seen you, and you look Jewish.”

I’m tired.

People hear “Jewish” and run with it, to places that have nothing to do with me. Then they project these images onto me, despite my clearly indicating that my “Jewish” is something entirely different than what they think they know. In this case, the tech asked about my name, but really the question was not about my name or about me at all. It was about confirming a projection, replete with matzo balls and gefilte fish, black hats and curly locks. I felt tempted to inform the tech that there is no “look Jewish,” that there are Ethiopian Jews and Indian Jews and Brazilian Jews and Yemenite Jews, with every shade and physiognomic feature.

But seriously, I just came in for an ultrasound. So I said nothing and lay down and took a little nap, practicing gratitude that I had the gift of working with such a gentle tech.

I remember feeling giddy with excitement and happiness as we prepared to search. My father, to the contrary, was having none of it. “Just tell us where it is, and let’s get it over with,” he snapped, irritated, at the outset of the search. He wanted to get back to work.

My 43 year old self says, “You have got to be fucking kidding me. Your daughter is so committed to her Iraqi Jewish heritage and family that she flies 3,000 miles to come home, despite sleeping a scant two or three hours a night because of the deluge of work, and you cannot spare 15, maybe 20 minutes to have a little family fun? For the ritual, I might add, that you taught her, that you wanted her to commit to?”

My 20 year old self, however, peacefully and sweetly offered that my father could do a speedy version either then or later with my mom, whatever his preference. I, however, had flown across the country to be home for this very ritual (despite the massive pile of work on my head); I had looked forward to it eagerly; and it was very important to me to do it in the full spirit of the holiday, before or after a turbo-charged version.

I was disappointed that my dad did not want to participate in the full celebration, because I loved him and had looked forward to sharing the event with both my parents. But I respected his choice. By age 20, I had been in therapy – both with my father and alone – for just shy of five years. After a lifetime of my boundaries routinely getting bulldozed by my father, I had become skilled at asserting my boundaries, in a way that was loving, firm, and taking into consideration the needs of all parties involved. To this day, I am proud of how I handled the situation. I felt calm, peaceful, and loving, inside and out.

My father, however, was having none of it. Not only did he want a clipped version of the holiday celebration, but he wanted everyone to have the same clipped version of the celebration. In other words, we all had to do it his way, and it was absolutely unacceptable for me not to comply.

I remained loving yet firm. If he wanted my participation, I needed the full megillah. If he wanted an abbreviated version, he could do it with my mom, either before or after I did the full version with her. My father, true to form, stormed out in protest — his trademark end-of-the-world, disaster-and-misery, tohu-vavohu look in full effect. It was the look that accused one of being a horrible, atrocious, meany-pants, ugly monster – a very, very, VERY bad person who had behaved egregiously and would be subsequently punished, by the complete and total withdrawal of affection.

I neither bit nor collapsed. Instead, my mom and I went ahead and did a proper biur hames. I do not have clear memories of that search, but I vaguely recall enjoying the search – determined not to get thrown off track by my father’s run-of-the-mill temper-tantrum.

The next night, the night of Pesah, my father was busy pouting in the den. He had been going at it a full 24 hours. It is unbelievable to me how much time and energy was spent in my family over matters that would have been so tiny if handled appropriately. I recall being aware of how much emotional destruction my father created over something as petty as a minor purchase. “He is willing to emotionally crush someone,” I remember thinking in my teenage years, “to save a tiny bit of money.” (And so my money issues began. I never wanted anything to do with money. I never wanted money to compromise the quality of a relationship or interaction. But I digress.)

I went into the den and said to my father, “When you’re ready to have a conversation like a mature adult, I’m here.” He made a face. I left the room – again, not allowing my father’s black cloud to affect my state of mind.

We all gathered at the seder table and began the ritual. By that point in my life, I had progressed from participating in the first part of the seder and falling asleep for the second half, to leading the majority of the seder, from the beginning through well after everyone else had fallen asleep. So there I was, actively remaining calm and joyful, leading the seder, when my father announced, in his trademark miserable, end-of-the-world tone, “I’m going to sleep.”

He got up and walked out on the seder.

I stopped reading the shetacha, took off my glasses, and put my head in my hands. I said nothing for a while. Five years. Five years of therapy, and nothing. My dad would seemingly make progress, then go right back to where he had started. More progress again, then right back to zero. It was not three steps forward and two steps back. It was two steps forward and two steps back. Over and over and over again.

Finally I sat up in my chair and looked at my mother. “I’m done,” I said.

That was the night my father lost me. From then on, my goal was simply to coast by until graduation, to thank my father for all he had provided me, most notably an outstanding education, and then get the hell away from him, to a life of safety and freedom.

“Christian gospel blah blah blah, Holy Father, blah blah blah, and the word of Gd said, ‘All agents are busy assisting other customers. You may continue to hold or press one now, to leave a message.’”

While there is no guarantee that you’ll be running marathons if you score well on the gamut of lifestyle habits, you have a much higher chance of being healthy than if you score poorly. Think of it this way: If you are exercising regularly but eating junk food and sleeping infrequently, chances are you will remain in poor health.

Similarly, a successful media and marketing campaign involves a multi-layered strategy, looking at and optimizing the “health” of your business on different levels – your brand, messaging, target audience, online presence, multimedia products and services, professional network, speaking engagements, media interviews, and so on. Each of these elements either contributes to and supports, or detracts from and undermines the other. For example, if you are not clear on your brand, chances are that, in a chain reaction…

1. You will not properly identify your target audience.
2. Your messaging will be off.
3. Your online presence will not attract the right people.
4. Your marketing efforts will be ineffective.

Taking all the right steps to optimize each element of your business does not guarantee that you’ll be the next Andrew Weil or Deepak Chopra, but it does greatly increases your odds of achieving your goals.

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s those men who need to be run off the streets, not the women. The appropriate response of a sane society would be to immediately implement mandatory self-defense classes for all women and girls in the school system, and to offer these classes free of charge throughout the greater community.

In addition, fuck this California law allowing jewelers to carry guns but not women. Our bodies, souls, and lives are far more important than diamonds, gold, and rubies combined then multiplied by a hundred million bajillion, infinity times over. A sane society would arm women and girls to the teeth and instruct them to shoot point blank, bullet-through-the-eyes, take-no-prisoners style, anyone who would even think about considering the possibility of maybe perhaps grabbing them.

Women and girls need to take up arms and take back the streets. I am not playing. Rip off the stiletto heels that keep you on shaky ground, and hoist on a pair of combat boots. Accessorize with smooth black semi-automatic handguns on each side of your pants — which happen to have enough stretch for you to kick the bejesus out of an otherwise potential assailant. Because THIS. SHIT. NEEDS. TO. STOP. And women have the power to stop it. Yes we do.

In 1997 I wrote a book, Consequence: Beyond Resisting Rape. Not even the feminist press would touch it, because apparently women physically fighting for our space is apparently oh sooooo controversial; so I self-published. And it sold out instantly, through the riot grrrl underground movement of the 1990s.

I have about 10 books left, and the printing press deleted the original manuscript and artwork years ago. But even if I have to photocopy the damn thing and put some crap-ass copy online, I’m going to do it. Because between this Chico fiasco and that bass-ackwards Mourdock sanctifying rape as a holy act (seriously someone needs to shove a pole deep up his ass while shouting, “How do you feel about it now, fuckass?!”), it’s time to dish out the Consequence.

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TEL AVIV — “I want to tell people about the racism I experience,” says Tarik Malko, 16, who aspires to be a rap star. “It’s hard for me to talk about it, because people don’t understand. But when I sing, I say what I love, what I hate. I even curse. I get everything out of myself, everything inside me. I love this music!”

Malko and her peers from Efsharut Aheret (A Different Option), an Ethiopian-Israeli youth group from Ashdod, Israel, were among the 700 concertgoers at the recent third annual Hip Hop in the Park in Tel Aviv, sponsored by Yaga Production House, a studio promoting up and coming Israeli hip-hop artists.

“Through hip-hop, we look at black people in America succeeding,” Malko continues, “and we know that we can succeed, too.” Ethiopian-Israeli rappers Bar and Jeremy assert that scores of community youth are drawn to hip-hop for this very reason.

Like their Ethiopian-Israeli peers, Arab-Israeli rappers such as MWR (Mahmoud, Waseem and Richard), Dam, and Tammer use hip-hop as a medium for discussing their struggles with discrimination and poverty, as well as the drug and crime problems arising from these struggles.

Arapiot (a hybrid Hebrew word for Arab female rappers), apparently the only Arab female rappers in the world, additionally sing about their struggles as young women in the Arab community: “We have families that don’t give us our freedom to determine our fate, to get an education, to go out with friends, to choose whom we will marry,” says Arapiot’s Safa. “In our songs we demand our freedom.”

Shiri and Shorti, Israel’s first female rappers — together a mix of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern / North African Jewish), Sephardi (Spanish-Portuguese / Latin Jewish) and Ashkenazi (Central / Eastern European Jewish) backgrounds — focus mostly on gender issues.

“I give my point of view as a 20-year-old girl in Israel, with her own problems,” says Shorti.

Most men in Israeli hip-hop, she says, focus on general issues, such as politics and economics. “I’m talking about subjects I haven’t heard here yet. I’m taking it in your face, really personal, really out there.” Shorti’s first single is about her experience having sex with another girl — not yet a subject of mainstream Israeli music.

The messages of Israeli hip-hop are “very individual,” explains Chemi, a member of the now-defunct band Shabak Sameh, which pioneered hip-hop in Israel 10 years ago. “Hip-hop is a tool. Everyone uses it to say what he or she wants.”

Chemi’s new group, Haloutsei Halal (Space Pioneers), frequently works with Arab-Israeli rap artists in concerts and on recordings, promoting messages of tolerance. As the words of a recent single in Hebrew and Arabic state: “Look into my eyes. We both have the same blood. In the end, they will bury us both the same way. Come, let’s be neighbors and not enemies. Because there is nothing more important than life.”

In addition to the messages of hip-hop being diverse, hip-hop cultural norms — such as clothing and body language — also vary from artist to artist. “Look at me, I’m dressed in a dress,” says rap and soul artist Me2qa, who performed at Hip Hop in the Park. “I’m not trying to look like ‘Yo, yo, whassup?’ I’m being myself.”

Subliminal, Israel’s leading hip-hop group, strictly adheres to the bandanna, baseball cap, sports jersey, and baggy pants get-up associated with mainstream rap in America. But whereas the Subliminal artists may look as if they jumped straight off the set of MTV, their message is unique:

“Are you wearing a Star of David proudly on your chest?” Subliminal bellows into the mike at the opening of a concert, as thousands shoot their hands skyward, screaming enthusiastically.

“Once it was a shame to walk around with a Star of David,” says MC Hatsel, who like the other artists in the group comes from an Iranian-Jewish family. “Jews have been ashamed of our symbol because of what we learned from generations of oppression. We, however, are not ashamed. In our CD, everyone gets a Star of David as a gift.”

Whatever their message and style, young Israeli women and men of all ethnicities are finding a venue for self-expression in hip-hop.

“It’s how the new generation communicates,” asserts MC Remedy, who flew from New York to Israel for a tour in the early summer months.

“I think Israelis like rap music because a mike is a very powerful tool to say things,” adds Momi Levi, who is the producer for some of Israel’s biggest hip-hop artists. “And here in Israel, we have a lot of things to say.”

When people hear about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, they assume that Israelis are white, European oppressors and that Palestinians are indigenous people of color being taken over and kicked out of their native home. The familiar script of European racism and colonization thus plays out in people’s minds. It is from this understanding and the accompanying desire for justice that many people across the globe feel outraged even by the very existence of Israel.

Ironically, Jewish leaders are the ones who created the perception of Jews as white. Given the way Jewish heritage has been taught and presented for decades, when we say the word “Jews,” the vision that pops into our mind is not the black faces of Ethiopian Jews or the dark-brown skin of Yemenite Jews. When we look for Jewish names, we don’t look for names like Comerchero, Sarshar or Mo’alem.

When we think “Jewish,” we think bagels and cream cheese; we think Poland, Russia and Germany. When the Jewish community itself renders the faces and voices of Jews of color invisible, how is the world to know that Israel is not a white, European nation yet again colonizing third-world, native people of color? How is the world to know that the majority of Jews in Israel are Mizrahim — the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their millions of children. Mizrahim are indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, having lived in the region since the beginning of the Jewish people 4,000 years ago — that’s more than 2,500 years before the advent of Islam and the Arab conquest of the region.

The story of Mizrahim is inextricably intertwined with the current Arab-Israel conflict: Palestinian leadership had a strong hand in the terrorization and expulsion of Mizrahim throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In 1941, for example, numerous Palestinian leaders — most notably Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the mufti of Jerusalem — arrived in Berlin, as guests of the Nazi regime. Al-Husayni drafted a political declaration, which he presented to the Axis allies of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, in the hope they would adopt it. In paragraph seven of the declaration, he would have Germany and Italy “recognize the rights of Palestine and other Arab countries [to] resolve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and the other Arab countries in the same way as the problem was resolved in the Axis countries” — i.e., through genocide.

Furthermore, in a meeting between Hitler and al-Husayni, on Nov. 28, 1941, Hitler promised the Palestinian leader that “[the] Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany’s only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands.”

With these assurances, al-Husayni voiced his hope for a “final solution” to the Jewish presence in the Middle East in a speech given at a rally in Berlin on Nov. 2, 1943. “National Socialist Germany knows the Jews well and has decided to find a final solution for the Jewish danger which will end the evil in the world. The Arabs especially, and Muslims in general, are obliged to make this their goal, from which they will not stray and which they must reach with all their powers: it is the expulsion of all Jews from Arab and Muslim lands.”

Not long after, severe anti-Jewish riots erupted throughout the Arab world. Jewish citizens were assaulted, tortured and murdered. In a few Arab countries, Jews were outright expelled. Throughout the region, billions of dollars worth of Jewish property was confiscated and nationalized, forcing Jews to flee from their homes of thousands of years.

We do not hear about the Jewish refugee problem today, because Israel absorbed about 600,000 of these 900,000 refugees. For the past 50 years, they and their children have been the majority of Israel’s Jewish population, with numbers as high as 70 percent. To the contrary, Arab states did not absorb the Arab refugees from the Arab war against Israel in 1948. Instead, Arab states built squalid refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, at the time controlled by Jordan and Egypt, and dumped innocent Arabs in them — Palestinians doomed to become political pawns. Countries such as Lebanon and Syria continued funding assaults against Israel instead of funding basic medical and educational care for the Palestinian refugee families.

It is high time that we all hold Arab leadership accountable for their actions against all the refugees of the region — Jewish and Arab. Without an accurate and complete view of the history in the Middle East, government leaders and peace activists will continue to push the region into an unstable future that lacks integrity, and peace will remain an illusive dream.

Loolwa Khazzoom (www.loolwa.com) is director of the Jewish Multicultural Project (www.jmcponline.org) and editor of “Behind the Veil of Silence: North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Women Speak Out” (Seal Press, 2003). She lives in Israel.

“Hi, uh, I need to prepare for the war,” I awkwardly told the clerk at the Tel Aviv branch of Home Center. Somewhere in my tree-lined Northern Califonia brain, I expected him to have no idea what I was talking about. Instead, he efficiently led me to a section replete with full body chemical protection gear, fire extinguishers, battery-operated radios and lights, a miniature Port-o-Potty for the sealed-off room of choice in one’s apartment and what seemed like miles and miles of plastic and tape for covering windows, doors and every other conceivable means of ventilation. Forget chemical weapons. I could just imagine myself suffocating from no oxygen.

But my shopping experience was nowhere as creepy or surreal as trying to get my hands on a gas mask. While those trying to help me were focused on where and how I could pick up a freebie without yet having Israeli citizenship, I could not get over the subject matter at hand: I was looking for a gas mask!Â

When I moved to Israel four months ago, I was fully aware of Iraq’s threat to attack Israel if America attacks Iraq. Given Bush’s penchant for combat and control, I was convinced war with Iraq was inevitable. But abstract knowledge and visceral reality are two different matters. This past week, I have woken up screaming three times. Clearly, fear has imbedded itself deep in my subconscious.

My sense of fear here, however, pales in comparison to the frustration, hurt and anger I felt in the Bay Area, where I had to deal with incessant Israel hatred in progressive movements. I was reminded of these feelings when, after spending a full afternoon chasing down a gas mask, I received an e-mail informing me that due to his “pro-Israel” views, Rabbi Michael Lerner has been banned from speaking at the anti-war rally in San Francisco this coming weekend. The ban came at the behest of a group called Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) and was supported by rally co-organizers, United for Peace & Justice and Not in Our Name.

During the Gulf War of 1991, Iraq attacked Israel about 40 times, in some warped notion of retaliation against America. Americans did not suffer, but Israelis did. More specifically, Iraqi-Israelis did. Scuds aimed at Tel Aviv often landed in Ramat Gan, a suburb comprised predominantly of Jewish refugees from Iraq — including all my relatives. For their neighbors whose homes were destroyed, Iraq took everything they had, twice in a lifetime.Â

Yet according to ANSWER and its cohorts, one cannot be pro-Israel and against this looming war. Apparently they see Iraqi Jews as being less human than Iraqi Muslims and Christians. Since that’s a form of racism, perhaps ANSWER should change their name to ANSW.

My family has lived in Iraq since 586 B.C.E., when the Babylonian Empire conquered and destroyed the Kingdom of Judah — the Southern region of ancient Israel. After demolishing the kingdom and leaving it in ruins, the Babylonians took the people of Israel as captives, to the land that is today Iraq. My family remained on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers until 1950, when the modern Iraqi government forced the Jews to flee as refugees. Ironically, they were absorbed by the State of Israel.Â

Who is anyone to tell me, the daughter of a Jewish refugee from Iraq, that I cannot be pro-Israel and anti-war at the same time?

I did not move to Israel to escape the infuriating, self-righteous Middle East politics of America’s progressive movements. However, I am tickled pink that I no longer have to deal with anti-Israel rhetoric spewed by people who do not know basic facts about the country’s demographics or history – people such as the organizers of the recent anti-war rally in San Francisco. In Israel, I can be a Middle East peace activist without participating in hatred of my people and negation of our history. And of course, that’s the only way peace will happen: when everyone’s lives and stories are respected.

So even as I hustle to the local supermarket to stock up on canned food, in preparation for the looming war, and even as I freak out about plastic covering, Port-o-Potties and, most of all, gas masks, I am still glad I’m in Israel. Â

Loolwa Khazzoom, an Iraqi-American now living in Israel, has published articles in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including the Washington Post and the San Francisco Examiner. She is editor of Behind the Veil of Silence: North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Women Speak Out (Seal Press, Fall 2003) and director of the Jewish MultiCultural Project (www.jmcponline.org) and can be found at www.loolwa.com.