Let’s play a game. It’s simple. There is only one rule: I say a word and you must say the first word that comes to mind.

Ready? Go!

I say “Colorado” and you say … “skiing.”

I say “beach” and you say … “ocean.”

Excellent! You catch on fast. Let’s keep going …

I say “Hersheys” and you say “chocolate!” (with a smile)

I say “Catholic” and you say “priest.”

I say “Mexico” and you say “vacation” or perhaps (with another smile) “margarita.”

Good. Very good. You have not missed a beat. Now, let’s mix it up a bit.

I say “American flag” and you say “freedom.”

I say “Mexican” and with just a moment’s hesitation, you say “illegal immigrant?”

I say “China” and you say “Communism.”

I say “Islam” and you say “extremist.”

I say “Palestinian” and you say … “suicide bomber.”

Ah. Amazing how strongly these are correlated in our minds, how quickly they roll from the tongue. As humans, our brains are designed to memorize things in pairs or as parts of a story. Tricks for memorizing often include word associations. The media, advertising, and political campaigns use these word associations and sound bytes (short stories; Tweets) as some of the most powerful tools for building and maintaining a following. Unless we, as the recipients have direct experience to counter what we hear or read, they are absorbed, quickly becoming something we make our own—a part of us which we will defend and readily transmit to the next person as though we experienced it personally.

There is very little, naturally, which compels us to look beyond that which is stored in these memory banks. The nature of this recall is incredibly complex. It involves not just synaptic bridges firing, but the flush of chemical signatures which invoke a full body response. And those chemical signatures invoke additional memories of a similar emotional base which reinforce the primary recollection. We can and do rise quickly to heightened states of both pleasure or pain at the simple invocation of a word correlation such as those I opened with, above.

It is for this very reason, as a species which has propagated its history through the spoken word for some forty thousand years before the invention or writing, that TV and radio ads have so much power, some echoing for decades through the popular vernacular: “Ancient Chinese secret!” “Reach out and touch someone,” “Blue light special” (which the Bedouin of Petra use to draw attention to their stalls) have the same power as “Till death do us part,” “Remember the Alamo!” “May the force be with you” and many, many more.

If each of us questioned everything we are told, demanding full research and transparent exposure of all the facts before allowing our brains and bodies to settle into acceptance and subsequent defence, we would not only likely never get in a fight (let alone a war) but we would also find solidarity a foreign concept, incapable of moving as a group for the greater good of … anything.

Social and cognitive research has made clear our ability to unify under one philosophy, one religion, or one nation as central to our behaviour as individuals and as a species. We are inclined to take at face-value the words given to us by our political or religious leaders, those who provide our paychecks or teach us in school.

It is human to hear something and repeat is shortly thereafter with the fervour and conviction of a religious experience.

My own reprogramming
What I write next is difficult for me to admit, but it needs to be said.

When I first accepted this position in Jerusalem, even with some notion of the complexity of the situation in the Occupied Territories, in my mind I saw Palestinian kids running through the streets at night with black and white checkered bandanas pulled over their faces. I imagined angry young men overturning cars and seeking to do harm to anyone American. While I logically knew this was not the case, yes, those images remained as I rewrote my will and spoke to my parents about the potential of my not coming home (alive).

To date, not a single interaction with any Palestinian, not with those who protest, not the women who teach at the kindergarten nor the man who cuts my hair, nor Fatir who serves pizza, nor the owner of the International Bookstore have offered anything but warmth and hospitality.

Yet tonight, as I walked through narrow, poorly lit streets just after sunset in the Arab quarter of the Old City, I found myself walking faster than I do elsewhere. I forced myself to slow down, to interact, to make eye contact, to just breathe for I realized I was falling victim to my own xenophobia. Not out of logic or personal experience, but something deeper which whispered, “They can see you are different. You don’t belong here.”

Of course, the slower I walked, the more conversations I was given opportunity to engage. I stopped to purchase an ice cream bar and even helped to break up a fight. Five preteen boys playful wrestling had become a kid brawl in a corridor parallel to the Via Dolorosa. I waited for the arms and hands to drop below my eye level before I pulled one boy off and set him aside, only to watch him jump back in. A shop keeper came out and held another back. I grabbed one around the waist yelling “Khalas! Khalas!”