Shalom means peace

The absolute best thing about smoking is you meet a lot of random people. Last week, while staying in Amsterdam, I met two guys smoking in front of the hotel. We started talking. Initially, I thought they were Armenian. I thought “fuck, they will be biased against me because of… y’know, the genocide1.” I asked where they were from. They responded: Israel. “Fuck, I’ll be biased against them because of… y’know, the genocide.” I repeated internally: we must separate regular Israelis from the racist and genocidal Israeli government. I’m sure there are a lot of people in Israel who are genuinely against the repression and slaughter of Palestinians. We started talking about shawarma and döner kebab. I learned that they use tahini as a sauce for döner, which intrigued me a lot. I also realized they can’t imagine döner without sauce, which means they have shitty döner, lol. We were just three guys arguing about sauce. We finished our cigarettes and were about to go our separate ways. One of…