I never thought that a column encouraging people to vote would draw so many hateful comments.

Last week, I wrote about growing up in Damascus without the privilege of a free vote. I have lived in this country for nearly 43 years, and that privilege still stuns me. I crossed an ocean at 18 looking for freedom. I found it here. I live in it, and I love it.

When I shared the column on social media, I didn’t expect hate. Why would anyone attack a man for saying “go vote”? Unless that man writes a newsletter called Arab in Alabama. And wears a keffiyeh around his neck.

It wasn’t the first time. Just a week earlier, someone told me to “get out now,” the comment that led me to write “Alabama, Stop Telling Me to Get Out.” I thought that might be the end of it. It wasn’t. The hatred continues, and I keep asking the same question: Why? We may pray to different gods and vote for different people, but we all wake up worried about the same things: our children, our health, our bills, our neighbors. We are all the same.

Here’s what I posted:

“When I was a boy in Damascus, a soldier with a machine gun stood behind my father as he voted and watched where his pencil landed. Years later, I stood in my first American voting booth, and nobody was behind me. The booth was quiet, and that quiet was freedom. Vote however you choose, but vote.”

And here are some of the responses, along with my friends’ replies. I have left the names out.

A commenter: I bet he didn’t vote for socialism.

My friend: lol, Mamdani is amazing.

The commenter: Keep telling yourself that while you’re in that bread line.

My friend: I am a private chef with my own business. Let me know if you need a hot meal because you can’t afford to eat. Unlike you, I want everyone to have what they need. Also, you know Mamdani is doing an amazing job, right? Unlike the rapist in office. True story.

Another commenter: He’s a communist, you moron.

My friend: I am not the moron who voted for a rapist.

When commenters started throwing around the word “antisemite,” one of my friends replied:

My friend: It is not antisemitic to criticize the state of Israel with Netanyahu as its leader. They are responsible for mass atrocities in Gaza, killing doctors, journalists, women and children. And in the West Bank, they are terrorizing farmers, ripping up their olive trees and destroying their villages and homes, homes and villages of Christians as well as Muslims. Week by week, Israel is losing support from around the world, and Netanyahu is wanted as an international criminal.

Then came the comment about my keffiyeh (Arabian scarf).

A commenter: Why he needs to wear the fakestinian scarf? Hamas also stood behind the Gaza residents with guns to make sure they knew whom they were supposed to place their votes!

My friend: I have Palestinian-American friends, Christians, and the grandfather would drape the scarf, a keffiyeh, around his neck at home. He was proud of his ancestry. Good man, good people. Great Americans.

I wear the traditional Arab scarf because I am an Arab, something I will always be proud of. Have some young Palestinians wrapped it around their faces while protesting the injustice they live in? Certainly. But the Ku Klux Klan burned crosses while claiming Christianity as their excuse for white supremacy, and no one looks at a cross around a grandmother’s neck and sees the Klan. A symbol belongs to the people who wear it with love, not to the few who misuse it.

A few more:

A commenter: VOTE RED..SAVE AMERICA FROM democrRAT communist muslim terrorists

In four decades in this country, I have been called a terrorist more times than I can count. It never gets any easier.

Another: Free Palestine is an open call for Jew murder.

Others posted graphics. One thanked “the haters, antisemites, and self-appointed moral authorities” for exposing themselves. Another was a meme with a slur I won’t repeat here.

And one posted a red-white-and-blue graphic that said, “Every vote matters. Every voice counts. Show up, stand together.” Funny thing: I agree with every word in this one.

To the haters, I say this:

I wish you would get to know me before passing judgment. I invite you to a cup of coffee, or lunch. My treat. I’ll bet you a dollar that afterward, you’ll think twice before hating someone you’ve never met.

To my friends who defended me, I say this:

Thank you. Thank you for standing up for what you believe in. But please, never feel that you must.

Let’s stop letting politicians divide us into us and them. We are neighbors before we are Republicans or Democrats, Arabs or Alabamians, believers or doubters.

Humanity should be one.