Our love is stronger than your hate
Douglas Murray believes that when you read a lot, your head turns into a cathedral — make a sound and it echoes beautifully. His head is, obviously, a cathedral. Mine is more like a cluttered shed, where as soon as you step inside, various haphazardly piled up junk comes crashing down.
Last week, as I was maneuvering along the Vancouver Art Gallery plaza with the “Hamas is a terrorist organization” sign, I imagined myself being Winnie-the-Pooh surrounded by a swarm of angry bees, and humming quietly “I'm just a little black rain cloud, hovering under the honey tree…”
A police officer approached me and explained:
"You have the right to a peaceful protest, and they have the right to a peaceful protest. How about you stand here with us so we can ensure your safety?"
"If their protest is peaceful," I countered, "why does my safety require me standing with you in the corner?”
A hint of a smile started forming at the corners of his mouth, but he didn’t smile. Instead, he repeated patiently, as if to a sick child:
"When you're walking back and forth, I cannot ensure your safety."
Somewhere in the very depth of my jumbled shed of a mind, a quote fell from the top shelf with a thud: “Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Out loud, I stubbornly said:
“Sorry, but if I don't walk around, no one will see my sign.”
Thirty minutes later, I let the police officers talk me into it. After all, having seen their London and Toronto colleagues’ conduct, I was grateful that they hadn't put me face down onto the asphalt. For a couple of minutes, I stood with my sign surrounded by five police officers and their three bicycles. Then, out of nowhere, a man sprang up to me, snatched the sign out of my hands, and ran off with it.
One of the police officers escorting me to the car asked me not to repeat my counter protest.
"I understand your impulse," he kindly acknowledged, "but I can't guarantee that we will be able to ensure your safety."
That I noticed, I thought, but I bit my tongue. Likewise, I refrained from saying how generally unsafe I felt for the past six months even within my own home.
Reviewing and editing the video afterwards happened to be far more exhausting than walking around the plaza with a sign in the first place. I stayed up late working on it, really wanting to finish and put it behind me. I almost slacked off and did not write this final post, but then, as if a reproach from the universe, another quote fell from one of the boxes in my shed right at my feet:
“My uncle Alex Vonnegut,... taught me something very important. He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to notice it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery; or fishing, and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.
Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: ‘If this isn't nice, what is?’ ”
And so I sat down to write this most substantial takeaway. While I was standing in the plaza with my sign in front of the hating and hated crowd, some random passersby would nod at me approvingly. Several drivers in passing cars gave me thumbs up and subtle encouraging honks.
A few passersby said, “We agree with you, you are so brave”. One guy had walked past me first, but came back and spent a few minutes expressing his support. “Of course, Hamas are terrorists”, he said, “it's clear as day, they themselves posted their atrocities on Telegram…”
I was even more surprised by the tremendous wave of support I received on social media. Never had I felt before that we are so many.
Last week, we organized a local initiative to print three different types of stickers and put them up around the city. Initially, one of the stickers seemed somewhat cheesy to me. Only after reading the endlessly warm and supportive comments and private messages, many from strangers across the globe, only then did I truly feel for the very first time, that indeed: our love is stronger than their hate.