What's the word for this?

What's the word for this?

You and your family have lived all your lives, perhaps for several generations even, in the country. You do the job that employs you, or operate the business you started, all very satisfactorily. Your life up til now has been unexceptional.Your kids go to school or college and do everything more or less like any other students. You dress like everyone else; speak the language perfectly and without accent, except for the regional inflections! You support local and national sports teams, and your kids play those games aspiring to be like their heroes! You watch TV and surf the Internet like everyone else. In fact, put you in a crowd and have a photo taken and ask someone who doesn't know you to pick you out by description alone; they couldn't do it! There is nothing about you in any way that separates or distinguishes you from society. You don't ask for or demand special favours or considerations. You don't disrupt the daily lifestyle of your neighbours or draw special attention to yourself; does this describe you?

Then one day, overnight, your life is turned upside down and it will never be as it was, ever again! What did you do to deserve this: Nothing!

An event in a far off country has changed a section of society's opinion of you; now you are a pariah! Your kids are harassed at school or at Uni; the police protect your tormentors; the school or college authorities and staff offer no relief; and the government turns a blind eye to the assaults on your schools and places of worship; could it get worse? Yes. This has all happened before, less than 100 years ago, and it all started like this.

There is obviously a great difference of opinion, and that's all it is, opinion, about what is happening in Gaza and one can't be sure of the facts unless one is an eye witness. As has been said many times, The First Casualty in War is the Truth! Whatever may be happening, we have to rely on the so-called news reports that these days are run through a filter to push the narrative of a biased agenda.

This person that may be your workmate or colleague, or your kid's best friend, or your sports buddy that you go to the games with, or go to the cottage with, or share a beer with around the campfire or fire pit, or buy from because they have the freshest or whatever, has changed. You haven't changed.

Nevertheless, when a society won't stand up for a section of its citizens and push back on all fronts against bigots and racists, you get a true Holocaust; not this nonsense in Gaza! How did decent Germans permit Hitler to rise to power? More to the point, is there a cure for this persistent anti-human, but all too human prejudice?

Is there a word to describe all of this? Anti-Semitism anyone?

Steve Friedman, West Kelowna.