When I first came to Canada at the age of 17, I was put in an ESL class (English as a Second Language) and so, one day I was sitting with an Iraqi classmate who was drawing a Swastika, and our teacher (who was a Jew) saw his drawing and got upset with him. I didn’t understand why she got upset, and so, I told her, “Ms., he is just drawing, what is the big deal?!†I think my comment made her even more upset, because in lunch time as I was sitting in the library another English teacher who knows me came looking for me. He talked to me for a couple of moments about why Jews hate Swastikas. I had known that Hitler was a “bad guy†and all of that, but I had no idea he targeted Jews specifically. You see, in the Middle East a lot… read more