I am supposed to be judging an Anti-Racist Poster competition on friday along with some other people. K let it slip that one of the entries had the words, "Kill all Jews", on it and that it had slipped by the attention of the other organisers, who are not Jewish. K had insisted that it was taken out of the entries immediatly, but, she said, it took many days before the entry was actually removed.
I explained to K that it doesn't surprise me. I know that other people, especially Bengali Muslims don't recognise anti-Semitism as a real and on-going threat. Maybe because they experience high levels of Islamphobia and fear on a daily basis, they relegate anti-Semitism to a thing of the past, as part of history and not current. That's how I explain it, whether its right or wrong. I know I am always the most afraid to 'come out' as Jewish to a Bengali Muslim. I am always most afraid that they will see me in a very negative light as a consequence of my identity, my cultural and ethnic background. That they will suddenly only see the stereotype instead of me, the real person.