A personal anecdote, which just happened about half an hour ago.

(I think sometimes the small, everyday indicators of how wrong things are hit home more powerfully than the worst horrors we see in pictures or on the news, which are often too gruesome to truly grasp.)

*****************************************************************************************

I sent a shipment to London for a trade show. Brochures, pens.

I get a message that my shipment is held up at security, with a phone number to call. I call.

The security officer asks me a series of expected questions: What is in the boxes, who packed them, were the items special order or from stock in your office, who else knows where the shipment is going… I answer.

Then she asks: Do you have any Arabs employed at your company?

I answer, no.
My stomach is knotted, because I am very unhappy that the level of discrimination against Arabs means that it is pretty obvious that we would have no Arab employees. But I am also relieved, on some level, because I need my shipment to go out, my job depends on successfully getting my projects off the ground.

She asks, do you employ any foreign workers? No.
Not even as cleaners? No.

Okay, your shipment is cleared.

Congratulations to me. I am certified to send brochures to London, all at the tiny price of apartheid.

I feel sick to my stomach.

*****************************************************************************************