The Virus of Hate and the Cure of Harmony
In a world already totally upended by COVID-19 and the ensuing social and economic consequences, we observe an additional emergency, in the form of rising incidents of racism, xenophobia and hate crimes.
Just last month, several crude yet sizable banners were hung from an overpass above the I-405 freeway in Los Angeles. The largest sign read “The Jews Want a Race War”, and the other “Honk if you know”.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documented more incidents of antisemitism in the U.S. in 2019 (2,107 incidents) than any other year since it began collecting data for their annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, over 40 years ago.
Since January, xenophobic and racist incidents targeting members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community have significantly increased. Many of these incidents are related to COVID-19. An ADL report says: “There have been a significant number of reports of AAPI individuals being threatened and harassed on the street. These incidents include being told to “Go back to China,” being blamed for “bringing the virus” to the United States, being referred to with racial slurs, spat on, or physically assaulted.”
The same is true for the Muslim community. According to FBI’s latest report (2018), hate crimes against Muslim Americans accounted for 14.5 percent of all hate crimes committed in the U.S.
This July 21, my own Azerbaijani American community was violently assaulted in Los Angeles, what the Los Angeles Police Department is investigating as hate crimes. It began because radicalized Armenian protesters, led by the Armenian National Committee of America — a notorious lobby group — staged a demonstration at Azerbaijan’s Consulate General, to rally support for Armenia’s continued assault and aggression against Azerbaijan, and for the ongoing, U.S. and U.N. — condemned occupation of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory. A small group of Azerbaijani Americans stood across the street, to condemn this aggression and occupation, and show solidarity with the over 1 million forcibly displaced Azerbaijanis, who are still awaiting to return to their stolen homes and lands. Eventually, hundreds of Armenian rioters broke the police scrimmage line and attacked the small and peaceful group of Azerbaijani Americans, while shouting cruel and hateful slogans as they injured nine of them, including a young woman. Five of those victims were hospitalized with various injuries. One of the police officers guarding the line was also attacked and injured by an Armenian assailant, who was taken into custody.
This tragic event has given me great pause, as it is outrageous in such an era, on a safe and busy boulevard in Los Angeles, that even in the presence of uniformed police, the radicalized protesters felt entitled and empowered to violently assault another group, for no other reason beyond hatred. To the Azerbaijani Americans and to everyone back home in Azerbaijan, this scenario is absolutely appalling, because it goes against the most venerable tenets of our nation, the principles which have kept us safe in a region embroiled with violence and even world wars, throughout centuries and into today. Azerbaijan is renowned and celebrated as a beacon of hope in the achievement of peace and acceptance amongst diverse religious and ethnic communities — as a place where Shia and Sunni Muslims, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews peacefully live together, in mutual respect and dignity.
Azerbaijan is known as the “Template for Peace”, and our strength as a nation, historically and contemporarily, is that we celebrate diversity and vociferously reject xenophobia and intolerance. So to have our community members brutally attacked in broad daylight in West Los Angeles, while the assailants shouted vicious and spiteful words, is nothing short of shocking.
The assailants in every case of hateful violence should be held accountable. On a broader scale, here in the United States, a nation of endurance, innovation and progress, there are plenty of possibilities to push back on the movements of hatred and to capitalize on what is so abundantly strong and beautiful about this great nation — the American people, represented by literally every ethnicity, religion and culture under the sun; an incomparable treasure chest of diversity and opportunity. The diversity of the United States is one of its greatest strengths, and as we have seen in Azerbaijan, celebrating and bringing together people of all cultures and religions can not only work successfully, but it can bring about a greater consciousness of peacefulness and tolerance that can and will outlive the movements that work to tear people apart.
