Diversity Rules Magazine

3 Diversity Rules Magazine September 2017 David-Elijah Nahmod is a film critic and reporter in San Francisco. His articles appear regu- larly in South Florida Gay News and Hoodline.com You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter. Long long ago I came out as a gay man. Even before that I was out, loud and proud as a Jew with strong Is- raeli roots. But there was another part of my multi-fac- eted heritage that I wasn't as open or as honest about. I am, at least in part, an Arab, a Jew descended from Syria. All four of my grandparents were from Damascus, one of Syria's largest cities. ey were fluent in Arabic. ey cooked Middle Eastern dishes. Both of my grandmoth- ers belly danced, their many bracelets clanging on each arm as they did so. My paternal grandmother smoked a water pipe--every September her sister, my Great Aunt Latifah, would fly in from Tel Aviv, where she had moved to after leaving Damascus. For a month it seemed that Grandma and Aunt Latifah did nothing but sit in Grandma's Brooklyn kitchen, eating "bizzer" (the Arabic word for nuts). ey drank Turkish coffee while they chatted in Arabic. I never learned Arabic, but I could converse with my Great Aunt in Hebrew-- they both called me "yawaladee"--the Arabic word for "my dear". It was my closest friend, who is half Black, who made me realize what should have been obvious to me from decades ago. "You had an Aunt Latifah?" he asked me. "She and your Grandma spoke Arabic and belly danced? And this is white how?" He's right. In spite of my fair skinned complexion, I'm not white, not Caucasian. I'm a Jew--and let us not forget that Jews were targeted by the Nazis because they weren't Aryan--Jews are not white. And neither are Arabs. So why did I remain closeted about my Arabic heri- tage for so many years while I shouted my Judaism and homosexuality from the rooftops? e answer might offend some, though that's not my intention. As I've written earlier in this publication and else- where, in 2010 I needed police intervention after Niki D'Andrea, a lesbian journalist, inflamed anti-gay and anti-Semitic hate against me for a cheap laugh-- D'Andrea actually told me that her lesbianism justified what she had done. For more than six years a variety of gay men and lesbians used the inflammatory--and false--stories that D'Andrea had written about me as a justification for spreading more lies about me--this included multiple incidents in which D'Andrea's lies were forwarded to my editors in attempts to take my livelihood away from me. ough it all I was accused of "anti-gay bigotry" for not supporting the behavior I'd been subjected to. Concurrent with that horror I was subjected to equal- ly disturbing amounts of bullying, and even threats, from the psychotic fan base of the classic TV series "Dark Shadows"--they claimed that I had outed series star Jonathan Frid when I wrote about what he and his performances meant to gay fans of the series--personal, offline friends of mine were contacted and "warned" about me by these sick people. Again, police interven- tion was needed. "How many of the perps were white?" My aforemen- tioned half-Black friend asked me. "And how many were people of color?" After giving his question, some thought, I had no choice but to face the truth: in both spheres in which I was bullied, the perps were white. Not a single per- son of color had taken part--in fact it was people of color who had consistently offered me kindness and support. PTSD - Con't on page 9 If You Could Read My Mind Coming Out As My Whole Self By David-Elijah Nahmod

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