Every woman was wearing a hijab. From where I stood, looking down Karl-Marx-Straße, maybe one or two were bare-headed. On my right, I could hear Turkish. On my left, Arabic. I had to remind myself this was the heart of Central Europe, not the Middle East. (More…)
The posters were racist. Practically all of them. Living in Milano’s Piazzale Loreto, on the block next to the former Esso station where Benito Mussolini’s body had been strung up by the partisans, posters from Italy’s Lega Nord (now just Lega) focused on attacking refugees and Islam. (More…)
I’ve always had an eye for the elderly. Part of the reason is because I had older parents than most persons of my generation. My mother gave birth to me at the age of 42, which, though not uncommon today, was extremely rare in 1967. My father, four years her senior, was 46. (More…)
I nearly tripped. Opening the door to leave for work, I accidentally stomped on a man’s chest. Sheltering in our doorway, he was laying on his back. Carrying my bike and my messenger bag on my shoulder, the impact of my weight must have been painful. He screamed so loudly, everyone on our block must have heard him. (More…)
Few foreign leaders receive more attention from Berliners than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A frequent visitor to Germany, Erdogan is routinely greeted by several weeks worth of political flyers and graffiti, disparaging his authoritarianism, and mistreatment of the Kurds. (More…)
The racists have it wrong. The invading hordes of migrants are neither Arab nor Muslim. The majority, in the two cities I work, Berlin and Turin, are African. Black African that is, many speaking indigenous languages, if not French or English. If they’re religious, generally the choice of faith is Evangelical Protestantism, not jihadist Islam. (More…)
Oren was frustrated. “You always end up living with jihadists,” he said. “Wherever you move in Europe, it’s always the same.” While I wouldn’t have chosen the J-word, he wasn’t entirely wrong. I’d made a habit of living in Muslim-heavy neighbourhoods in Milan and Berlin. (More…)
The Sixties are a cliché. They have been since the 1980s. But, who wouldn’t argue that the era isn’t preferable to the one we live in now. Everything in politics is about time these days. Nostalgia, in particular. (More…)
You haven’t been to a Palestinian solidarity event until you’ve attended one in Berlin. It’s not because they’re necessarily better than those held elsewhere in the Diaspora. The demonstrations I’ve attended in Brussels and London are equally unforgettable. The difference that is Berlin is its history. (More…)
I knew he was acting. But, as the Roma panhandler precariously balanced himself, with one-foot covering two Stolperstein, I handed him four euros, and spoke to him in Hebrew. “Kol hakavod” (‘All of the respect’) I said, as I put the coins in his open, albeit crippled-looking hand. (More…)
Not everyone hates refugees. The prejudice – amongst those who subscribe to it – has been cultivated. Not just by populist political parties and ‘fake news’ disseminated by shadowy forces on Facebook, but mainstream news media, and how it has framed successive waves of mass immigration to Europe since the 1990s. (More…)
We live in the past. It’s hard to escape the conclusion when regression is more fashionable than progress. Wherever we turn, politics is about turning the clock back. Whether it’s gassing civilians, or blaming Jews for Europe’s refugee crisis, we insist on holding up the 19th and 20th centuries as though they are standards for the world we want to live in today. (More…)