The end of my love affair with the West

Along with my brown skin, OCD and functioning anxiety, my father also passed on to me his unconditional love for America. This love affair began in the 60s, when my father left his home in Kuwait to finish high school in New Hampshire. As a young brown Arab man landing in the midst of a civil rights movement, he was surprised when he braced himself for racism and discrimination but didn’t encounter any.

Instead, he was hosted by a lovely family, forged deep friendships at school, and fell in love with all things American. Twenty years after he moved back to Kuwait, the USled war liberating Kuwait from Iraq cemented my family’s blind, unapologetic love for America. My mom even kept a framed picture of President George H W Bush in their room! The love goggles were etched on for generations.

It was impossible not to drink the American KoolAid when I grew up drowning in it. After graduating high school in Kuwait, I went to the US for school. And just like my father, I loved all things American. The music, the landscapes, the way strangers greet you on the street...pecan pie!

But it was during my time at the University of Oregon that my irrational love for the US butted heads with reality. As part of a women’s studies class, I learned of 20th century forced sterilizations performed by the US government on Puerto Rican women. Yet even more disturbing than the experiments was my inability to believe America could perform them, despite all the evidence my textbooks were showing me. The only way I could deal with such cognitive dissonance was to pretend I hadn’t learned it and to move on.

This occurred once again when I watched Colin Powell give his speech to the UN Security Council, asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The logical side of my brain knew Iraq simply didn’t have the capacity to create and harbor them. But could such a respected American secretary of state lie before the United Nations and the world? No way Jose. Another case of sweeping clear evidence under the rug for me and moving on.

In the months and years after Sept 11, my Arab friends would often complain that they were profiled at the airport and sent for additional security screenings. Always on the defense, my response was to tell them that I, a brown Arab woman, had never been sent for an additional pat down. I also told them about the older white lady I once saw receive a very thorough screening. I used that same story for years before it dawned on me that in order for it to be a valid counter argument, it would’ve had to occur more than once. But my rosy American goggles remained stronger than logic. Under the rug ethnic-profiling went.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve experienced an awakening. It was gradual but visceral. I, along with everyone around me, was appalled by Hamas’ attack on Oct 7. I believe I had a normal human reaction to horrific aggressions carried out against civilians. Then the Zionist entity retaliated. And it kept on retaliating every day for over two months. The Zionist entity retaliated against people who had nothing to do with Oct 7, and who themselves blamed Hamas for nearly everything wrong in Gaza.

I woke up daily to footage of mothers cradling their dead children’s bodies. As a mother of four, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help but glimpse my own children in those lifeless bodies. So I wept. I wept for weeks. And when I stopped long enough to look around, I noticed the blinding absence of outrage around me. The same people who were outraged on Oct 7, the same ones who were beside themselves when Russia invaded Ukraine two years earlier, were at best silent. At worst, they said things like, “Oh, well, they voted for Hamas,”— as if that would ever justify the slaughter of generations.

Hard as it was, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I blamed not them but the bias in Western media. But it continued. It continued even after I explained that the selective empathy I was witnessing was both disheartening and painful. That I couldn’t help but take it personally. I found myself posting more images of dead children on Instagram, children missing limbs, children crying out for their mamas, something I had never done before.

But, the more deafening the silence, the more I posted. With every desperate post I thought, surely after seeing this one, they would feel something. And once they felt something, they would do something — like demand a ceasefire to stop what they could no longer stomach. But nothing happened. Those who were always empathetic continued to be, and those who weren’t, remained silent or worse.

“Do you think it’s because they’re brown”? My sister-in-law asked. “No, they’re Palestinian,” I answered. “Most of them look white. It’s probably all the hijabs in the pictures.” We were genuinely trying to understand the clear double standard we were witnessing. Why the silence now? Why is it that, two years ago, my kid’s schools in Boulder, Colorado encouraged them to write letters to Ukrainian kids, as well as spoke to them about the tragic events of Oct 7 — yet have not uttered a word about the human casualties since?

How did I find myself in a position where I was actually wishing for the victims in Gaza to be just a little bit whiter, just a little bit cleaner, just a little bit more appealing to a Western palate so that their humanity can finally come through? The dehumanization of Palestinians seems to have been so successful that any pleas for their freedom have become suspect. It’s even become controversial to call for a ceasefire to end their massacre.

I was happy being a Western groupie. My love-goggles were comfortable. I was also content holding much higher standards for the West than I did my own people, because that way, I could avoid disappointment, or so I thought. The West, with all its values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law surely wouldn’t let me down like my government had perpetually done in the past.

But the events of the last two months have shifted my entire worldview. I realize now just how indoctrinated I had been, and how little critical thought I had exercised in the process. I don’t know when this war will end or how, but I know that it has already had a profound impact on me. It has fundamentally changed my view of the world. And if this war has caused me to question my view of the West, what has it done to the millions who have suffered because of it?