Editorial: What the reaction to Omar’s candidacy reveals about us
What is perhaps most troubling is not just the hate itself, but the indifference
Omar Rababah is not a new face in Malta. He is a vocal activist for human rights. He is a half-Maltese, half-Syrian social worker who was raised in Malta and who often spoke out against racism, prejudice and xenophobia.
It was therefore rather ironic that he was subjected to a torrent of online hate, racism and abuse barely minutes after he was officially unveiled as a Labour Party candidate for the general election.
The insults did not just come from opponents to the Labour Party, they were unleashed by people claiming to be Labourites who vowed they would not vote for the party now.
If we ever needed another reason to believe that racism in Malta is not an occasional aberration but embedded, normalised, and too often excused, this is a prime example.
Rababah did not react with the same hate addressed at him. When our journalist contacted him, he said he believed in the politics of love, not hate and pledged he will be the politician he would like others to be.
It is not an easy statement to make considering the prejudice and venom addressed to him online.
We cannot pretend this is new and nor can we dismiss it as the ugly voice of a vocal minority. Racism has been quietly tolerated for years, surfacing in moments like these with alarming clarity.
What is perhaps most troubling is not just the hate itself, but the indifference that surrounds it. We continue to choose to scroll past, to rationalise, or remain silent, lest we are attacked for standing up against hate.
Part of the problem lies in how Malta has approached demographic change. Over the past decade, the country has opened its doors to thousands of foreign workers, many from different cultural and religious backgrounds. This influx has been driven largely because of the economy that we have chosen to build, not foreigners.
Yet, while the labour market grew and grew, social policy lags far behind. Integration remains a dirty word. With the possible exception of the labour policy unveiled last year, we have seen no serious, sustained effort to build a framework that could help newcomers and locals understand each other. Instead, foreign workers, particularly third-country nationals (note Asian, African and dark-skinned), continue being treated as interchangeable units of labour.
And this is why many of us choose to dehumanise them. This is why it becomes easier to scapegoat them when frustrations rise.
The role of institutions cannot be ignored.
The manner in which authorities handle migrants with irregular work permits often borders on spectacle.
Publicised raids and round-ups of third-country nationals may serve a deterrent, but they also risk portraying entire communities as suspect. These images feed perceptions and prejudice.
Likewise, media coverage, particularly by the public broadcaster, has at times reinforced harmful stereotypes, even inviting them on prime-time TV.
So why should we be surprised that Rababah has been targeted in this way? For many, his religious beliefs are judged before his values, driven by the persistent and misguided tendency to equate Islam with crime. He is quickly labelled the “foreigner” (il-barrani) simply because he has an Arabic-sounding surname.
Some have even gone so far as to accuse the Labour Party of seeking to impose cultural change by fielding him as a candidate. Yet, ironically, it is the same Labour Party that has, whether inadvertently or not, accepted racist elements within its ranks.
It is deeply troubling that racism is so often met with silence from those in power, only drawing meaningful attention when it culminates in tragedy, like the 2019 killing of Lassana Cisse, targeted simply because he was black.
As we are now in the middle of an election campaign, we will hear a lot about economic growth, wealth and infrastructure. Apart from Robert Abela’s comment yesterday embracing Rababah, the problem of racism is unlikely to be mentioned by any of the two main parties. Because, all too often today, common decency and core values are pushed aside in the pursuit of money.
We all have a choice: we either confront it or continue looking away.