Your lived experiences are valid @Acidburn- and I am sorry for all the trauma and oppression Jewish people faced for millennia. I cannot deny that and it hurts to know that in 2021, you still feel on edge whenever something happens in the Middle East.
You do not know me and so my words may mean nothing to you, but you and I are similar in some ways.
Allow me to explain
I was born in the Uk, am a proud British Palestinian. My family lineage is Haifa, Hebron and Jerusalem. Growing up my dad told me of stories of his experiences growing up in the Middle East as a refugee post 1948, and as an immigrant doctor here in the UK. My father always carried his (documents, travel ID and passport)on his person when he was in the Middle East because he never knew what was going to happen to him and whether he'd have no home to go to.
More recently, so after 9/11, we would have family drills where he would show us where he kept all the important files and documents should something happen. My father for a long time was on edge and would see very micro aggression as a a personal attack on him and Arabs.
My mother, God rest her soul, was a blonde fair skinned, but practising muslim- she endured so much abuse from Englishmen who would yell at her and call her a traitor (thinking she converted) . She wasn't really clued with the latest slang and I if I was with her, and heard someone say something, would deflect and make something else up because the abuse was dirty. She had acid thrown at her car. She had a gang of youths shake the car whilst she was sat with me when I was a baby. She would triple lock the house doors incase some youths wanted to cause trouble when my dad was locum. She remembers them yelling "go back to where you came from you dogs"- that was the 80's.
My mother always taught me to buy myself some small gold coins, or pendants, solid gold- and keep them safe, because as things were turning ugly after 9/11, we would never know when we would have to get out. I did not see or experience the threat but she must have felt it. My grandmother just have taught her the same thing.
She started to wear a headscarf in her later years but would take it off every time a terrorist incident took place, and would stop speaking arabic to us in public, so that she wouldn't stand out.
More recently, I endured the shit that surfaced after 9/11. Every single time some bastard kills children and terrorises people, I was made to answer for them, at 17yrs old, no matter how removed I was, how skimpy my clothes were, how rebellious of a teen I was, and non practising I was, but by the mere fact I was from the Middle East originally, had a funny name, and didn't look like everyone else, eyes were on me to explain why they did what they did and what I was going to do about it.
My family and I would lay low socially to avoid awkwardness and stupid questions. I lived in a predominately white and insular community so people must have thought I had terrorists on speed dial.
So even though I could take things personally, I can't and don't, because lets face it- people don't like arabs. They conflate arab with oil rich or terrorism- no in-between. People don't like muslims. Again they conflate all muslims with a bunch of far right extremists. People don't like communities that are too "tight knit" as they could cause trouble. They don't like "different", they can't understand why we eat what we eat, or do what we do and look at us weird.Some think we're filthy and ugly and uneducated and unsophisticated, barbarians who throw everything off a roof including the kitchen sink.
Many see us as one monolith that brings suffering onto themselves.