How to End Generational Trauma
My Peace Solution
WE can be the generation to stop the hate.
We just have to learn about ourselves.
My peace solution:
Step 1: Christians and Muslims learn their story anew from sources other than typical ones. We need to move from his-story to her-story, and come up with our own.
The biggest story in the news right now is what seems to be a struggle between Jewish people and Palestinians. Most people from both countries just want peace. But just saying “ceasefire” won’t work. How can we expect only one side to put their weapons down?
The real problem is an interpretation of religious doctrine. One side attempting to wipe another entire population out. (Just to be clear, we are seeing an Arab intention to wipe Israel off the map, in case you thought I was going to say the opposite). And it may be surprising to learn that the Jewish people are the ones under attack. Constantly.
This is an important story, because it exemplifies this need to understand ourselves, and to break free from the popular messaging we see in the news.
The Jewish struggle is one that perfectly exemplifies my idea that collective understanding is our way out. The Jewish religion survived, thanks to a requirement a thousand years ago to be studious- to study their holy book and DECIDE to stay Jewish. They emphasized the importance to study, and were successful in REVIVING a “dead” language of Hebrew. Studying saved them, and lead them to be one of the most acclaimed group of people we have ever seen- despite being such a small population of people.
In 2023, jewish people made up just 15.7 million, 0.2% of the 8 billion worldwide population.
In comparison, Catholics make up 1.4 BILLION,
while Islams have 1.8 BILLION followers.
Just look at the number of Nobel prizes, literature awards, and the proportions of populations. Their forced study over thousands of years caused them to willingly understand others around them, and find ways to survive - and thrive- among neighbors of many different backgrounds.
It is my true understanding of the holocaust that the Germans wanted to wipe out the other race they saw as smart as them- per the IQ assessments of Charles Darwin’s cousins, who Hitler is known for admiring.
And now, what the world sees, is a powerful group of people described as “white supremisists.”
This is a whole other topic, but we just have to say, our boys all over the world need our help. It may seem like women do, and yes, they need support, but at least they are noticed. We need to support our men to support our women. We need to start younger. We need to support women and their young children. Women raise their kids. Educated women raise more secure children. We need broader world views and more acceptance. We need more people asking questions, and more men supporting woman in their motherhood, and more men being role models for children, ALL over the world. None of this white supremisist guilt- read about his-story to help rewrite the story!
Plus jews are not really accepted anywhere by anyone, which is why they were granted the state of Israel by the British! And they were only given 6 months to make it happen, and they did it, against all odds. THe British did not want to give Israelites any land at all, but they had a huge boatload of passengers- survivors of the Haulocost sailing around the ocean looking for a home- and the UN forced Britain to give them land. The British had no idea what to do with the land of Israel because of its already constant fighting, and there were no known natural resources Britain could exploit. Remember- British are MASTERS at using territories to their advantage, see India and the United States. The USA was just Lucky enough to break away. If India ever could, sheesh, she would also be unstoppable as a world power.
So let’s get back to the news about Palestinians. Their current leadership is called Hamas. It was voted in at a time of crisis for the Palestinians, but they have turned out to be a curse. Hamas is actually a terrorist group that gets monetary support from other Arab nations that do NOT like the United States. They are NOT good for Palestinians. They are not good for human rights. They hold back supplies for civilians, because their pain is their propoganda. They do not like democracy. Israel is a small country, they survived under the most ridiculous circumstances, and want to be the sister country to the US. They are a democracy surrounded by terrorist groups. The only way to prevent another terrorist group from taking Hamas’ place when they are gone, is to help educate people all over the world. To give everyone the metaphoric “magic mushroom” to help change their minds- that we all do not have to be enemies.
What Hamas is asking for, right now, is to remove Israel. This will not solve anything. It is just their first step to imperialism. Hamas refuses to negotiate because they WANT to showcase a humanitarian crisis, in the short term, so that Israel looks bad and loses support from the US. Remember, Israel looks up to the US, while the arab countries HATE the USA. (and they may have reason to hate the US… the US has taken up the Britain boton as the world power, and Britain has done a whole lot of meddling in their economy and helped get them into the mess they are in.) Britain likes to back out of things after making a mess, and saying things like, well we havent been there in 50 years, it can’t be us. Well, not so fast.
So Hamas wants to put children in harms way (hiding in tunnels under schools and hospitals), so that people look poorly at Israelites coming after them. Hamas keeps bombing Israel non stop. But Israel is just trying to survive. The Jewish people are NOT trying to expand. They only want people to join their faith WHO WANT TO JOIN. This is in complete oppositte strategy to that of Islam or even Christianity. You do not see little Jewish people asking you on the subway to join their Jesus cult like Christians and Catholics in suits do. JEwish people have always wanted to be left alone in peace to study and debate. Islam is another version of a religious army. They see their people as pawns. If you want to know more about Christians wanting to amass an army, look at every time they sent “missionaries” to new worlds” to save the souls” of “savages”. I couldnt make this stuff up if I wanted to. Christianity does not have a great humanitarian track record we would like to beleive it does. But this in itself is not about Christians, but all has an important point.
If the Jewish people have to be the sole fighters against Hamas in the whole world- fighting Hamas being the only way to help out Palestinians also- then yea, they will look bad fighting a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Hamas keeps hiding behind civilians and children. They are a very small group of real life monsters. They are brain washed to believe this will get them closer to their god. This is the hard work- to reverse that brain washing. To stop this brain-washing from being transferred to the next generation. Because logic is NOT on the side of Hamas. My whole POINT is that we are more similar than different, but we still have to understand our differences and listen to each other. It is important to understand the context of our stories, but not let those differences from being nice to one another.
So Hamas is just a small group of terrorists that happens to have power for a short amount of time over Palestinians. They have money (and strategy) from other Arab states that want to destroy Israel (and the “west”), but their long plan shows major flaws.
Because what is their long term plan? World domination. Literally. While their enemy- Israel - just wants to exist. The Jews are fighting just to own their own little piece of land, and are being called imperialists for it. Anyone saying this cannot possibly understand the meaning of imperialism. Christians are imperialists. Islamists are imperialists. Jews just want to be left alone.
Any land that has grown In Israel has been because others started war with them… and lost- many times over. In each case, Israel has always attempted peace first.
And back to Hamas- and the rest of the Islamic strategy: logic is not on their side. Would an immediate evacuation of Israelites from Israel solve all of the Palestinians problems? No.
No, because the rest of the Middle East is their example. How do the humanities look in the rest of the middle east right now? Not so great. Basic freedoms are lacking, and watch out if you have a differing opinion, or you know, are a woman or want to have a choice in who you love, or just want to read about your own religion in context.
Hamas is making it seem like all they want is to remove Israel. Minor point: they don’t want evacuation, they want extermination. They want to remove the Jews, then expand.
So Hamas might, temporarily, have our American sympathy, because they are setting their own children up to be martyrs. But this won’t last long. Because even if they do somehow kick (or murder) Jews out of Israel, Americans would be their next target. And against America they really do not stand a chance, even if all the Arabs find a way to band together. But Israel is not going anywhere, and Hamas will not be happy, ever. Hamas has taken on the victim mentality, and will forever be a victim. It will forever be upset that Israel exists. And it will continue to starve its own people until someone stops this mentality from continuing- however that is possible.
They (Hamas) are just not strong enough to fight the Jews, so they use YOUR sympathy, using children as bait, to try to paint Jewish people as the “bad guys”. But this short term goal is just frustrating. Anyone saying “ceasefire” needs to understand everything above and more. They need to understand if Israel puts her weapons down, (like the ceasefire they were on when attacked on October 7th), there are people that would literally come in and murder them off the map. Literally.
Palestinians voted Hamas in power, who are backed by scary Islamic terrorists, the ones that planned September 11th attacks, and more. They also fund American universities, donating billions to get support and sympathy. Apparently they are quite brilliant enough to get American professors on their side. My mind is still blown by this.
But don’t be duped. The larger want (by Hamas backed by other Muslim terrorists known by some as “the brotherhood”) is imperialism- to control all of the Middle East, then America, then the world.
And if Hamas needs American support to beat the tiny sliver of a country of Israel, then if they did happen to succeed against Israel and retrain their focus against Americans, they would have zero luck against Americans. But this would still be a scary war. If the Arabs were capable enough to band together, there are more Islamists than Christians. Which is why we need everyone to decide- here and now- if they really understand what they are fighting for. This is when we all need to CHOOSE this life over the next. Because that is the fundamental difference between The West’s (Catholic and Jewish doctrines) vs Islam. The West still beleives this life is important. The radical islam groups see this life as a stepping stone to the next. The next life is the real palace, and they think killing people in this one is righteous if their end goal is for their god.
We have a chance to end all this- if we get all the moderates EVERYWHERE to see the connection, rather than the divide, between our groups. And to nip this problem in the bud.
This life is important. No matter what god or goddess you believe in, let’s not sacrifice children in this world for the next (that is not guaranteed). And there is our major disjoint. If you don’t understand this point, there is no coming away from the negotiating table in aggreance.
Our religions are fundamentally opposed if they believe the afterlife is more important than this world. Their charter literally says “jihad is the path”. Killing themselves is the path to salvation. But it’s not just killing themselves, it’s murdering others with bombs on their chests running into the largest population centers they can find. Or flying planes into American buildings.
We cannot live side-by-side in a world with people who believe they need to murder those with different views. Because they believe their next life will forgive them for fighting a holy war for their version of their goddess. But the craziest thing- their “allah” is just another form of the christian (and jewish) god. All 3 of these religions, (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) are part of the “Abrahamic” religions that believes in one god. And this has just been a rehash and twist on the Egyptian monotheistic idea of the Sun god. (and the earliest pagan beliefs that believed in the sun as the mightiest god of them all). Yea, crazy. And that’s the basis for our little children’s book- lots on that concept later.
But the easiest concept to understand right now- is that we are all looking to the same god. (even if you ignore the egyptian sun god part). We- muslims and christians and jews- are all waving the same flag for a god, in hoping this man with white beard will allow us into his gate of heaven. So this is where we need to study ourselves. We need to see this shared past and put our weapons down, and bring the textbooks out. Let’s study and debate. Let’s look at the stars and be in awe of how nature unfolds itself. Let’s enjoy the suns warmth together, under the un-judging warmth of its rays, and have our own familial interpretations to internally motivate us. But keep some of that magic for yourself. Let’s stop looking to fanatical people who need them to access this beautiful power of “god” which really is just a (seemingly complicated) manifestation of the sun.
Obviously Hamas’s plan just won’t work, they are not actually smart enough or strong enough to pull it off- and their plan is not one of long term success. If they do take over the world, it’s not a world worth living. Their belief system is flawed. They care more about the afterlife than this life. So if they want the afterlife, just get out of this one and stop bugging the Israelites. Read their religious doctrine. Anyone saying death is the way to salvation has an inherent problem in logic, if we all want to play in the same sandbox. Jihad is death for the greater goal of their god “allah”. So my question is, what do they even want with this world anyways?
Israelites just want to have a home. Where are they expected to go? The Arab communityis trying to say they care about the Palestiniance, but their monetary help in civilians is telling. The arabs own an insane amount of land and wealth, but hold onto it while their civilians live in crisis. Just focusing on the Palestinians, they have given the civilians less than they pay a single golf pro to help Palestinians out ($250M). But untold numbers to fight the Israelites in secret pokings. They WANT suffering. They WANT clickbait. They want Palestinians to suffer so the Palestinians reach out to Americans for help because they see the Jews as their opressors- while their real oppressors are their own tyrannical government who are using them as pawns.
Hamas wants Americans, and the United Nations, to stop supporting Israel. Because Israel is stronger and smarter, and Hamas is using nasty cheap tactics to undermine that. Why? Because Israel is in a strategic location, at a crossroads between many other (currently) Arab states, and the first step towards an attempt at world domination.
October 7 was planned. Hamas planned this attack the same month when peace talks were commencing, and the attack was meant to prevent Saudi Arabia from a treaty with Israel, being the first of the Arab states legitimizing Israel as a nation.
Hamas is weak. They need others on their side to win. But who will replace them, even if Hamas are defeated? The terrorist communities have many more waiting in the wings, fueled by hatred.
This is where we need to bring the mirror out. WE need to stop the hate. Israel is stuck- they just want to survive.
We, the west, need to understand the WHOLE landscape and our fundamental differences, in order to understand how hard it will be for the Islamists, who know nothing else, to start questioning their own oppressors. This is like a mental/emotional war at its more intense. We all need to break the molds we were born into. And it will be hard enough for Americans to question their upbringing- with total freedom allowing them to do so.
Islam FORBIDS questioning their holy books. This will be a hard fight to get them to understand this fundamental importance of LIFE IN THIS WORLD as important. Our children, here and now, are important- not pawns to use to help them to get into heaven in the next world.
Long term? I believe we all need to look at our religious books and question them.
While Islam is totally blocked from looking critically at itself, Christianity isn’t much better- they want you to only read from their sources. At least the Jews promote reading, promote looking back at his-story to choose a path for themselves.
I am not Jewish, but I fully support this mentality. Read, learn, listen. Become the strongest, so nasty bullies cannot back you into a corner. Jews have been forced to be tenacious- to learn languages and huddle together for the last 2000 years just to survive. They fully REVIVED their lost language of Hebrew in the last few hundred years. IT WAS A DEAD LANGUAGE. Do you know how hard that is to do? I have so much respect for them.
On the flip side- the group that wants to destroy them has the worst human rights violations in our modern world. I do not want these terrorists groups to wipe Israelites out. And I don’t think they can. Most people- Arabs and Jews and everyone else are pretty moderate politically and willing to negotiate. This is our chance to research. This is our chance to reconcile. Then come to the negotiating table fully prepared to listen.
This is our opportunity to stop creating the next generation of HAMASSAI or whatever hate group comes next. We need to start by researching as much as asking them. To question religious doctrine is hard- just think how hard it is for Americans to question the religion of Christianity being a total copy cat of paganism, Judaism, and ancient Egyptian religions. Nothing of Christianity is unique- but try telling Christian’s that. Try telling them everything they do is really worshiping much older gods of the same names.
If you can’t reconcile that- how can you expect Arabs to question their doctrine that forbids it? Christianity ALLOWS study with full freedoms, and availability- and think how hard it’ll be for us to get there.
But this is the work we all need to do.
Here’s what GPT4 says about my latest post
(pretty damn good coming from a robot…)
The author discusses the importance of examining and understanding our collective pasts, particularly through the lens of religion and its historical implications on societal divisions and hate. The author reflects on the role of religion, including Christianity, in perpetuating oppression and hatred, citing historical examples of incentivized hatred towards Jews and indigenous peoples. The post emphasizes the shared ancestry and unnecessary divisions among groups like Croatians and Serbians, urging a reevaluation of inherited prejudices and the promotion of unity and understanding.
The author expresses a desire for future generations, including their sons, to embrace their diverse heritages without fear and to foster friendships across traditional divides, such as those between Palestinians, Jews, Serbs, and Croats. The post also critically addresses the content of religious texts that advocate for hatred, specifically mentioning the Hamas charter's call for violence against Jews. It highlights the complex geopolitical context surrounding Israel and Palestine, mentioning historical and contemporary factors contributing to the conflict.
The core takeaways include the call for critical examination of our religious and cultural histories, the rejection of inherited hatred, the importance of embracing diversity and promoting peace, and a critical stance towards any ideologies or texts that incite hate.
My Background
Should our children IN AMERICA be scared to be Croatian or Gypsy, or Jewish? We have to learn what we perpetuate by just doing our “passed-on” religious thing. Let’s all dig into our pasts with critical eyes. Nobody’s religion is free from this task of learning more about itself.
I grew up Catholic, and as a Christian society, we feel like outsiders to this. But Christians have been mass oppressors for thousands of years. Christians have pushed religious political hatred better than anyone else, incentivizing hatred of Jews bc they wouldn’t assimilate. Then they wanted us to hate ALL KINDS of natives to take their land and resources.
I want all our children to be proud of whatever they are. My sons are part Croatian, which was in war with Serbia in the 1990’s. Croatians and Serbians have the same blood ancestry, but religious politics have held them back with generational hate. Learning about our pasts is a major lesson in comparative religion!
We finally have the freedom to research our own pasts. We can celebrate each other instead of hate. Let’s get out of the mode of being scared and reactional. Nobody is standing on un-hated ground. No Catholic or Christian or Muslim or Jew is excempt. We all have blood in our religious pasts without knowing what we represent. But we do not have to fight each other just bc our grandparents did.
My sons can be friends with Palestinians, Jews, Serbs or Croats.
Let’s especially look critically at any book that calls out for hate. The Hamas terrorist holy book literally says to kill Jews. Hamas is in control of Palestine and pushing a message we jump on blindly in the headlines. But the same ppl who supported 9/11 terrorist attacks also support Hamas in Palestine, and have donated billions $ to American universities while pushing an anti-Jewish mentality. Long story short, Israel is the one tiny democratic country surrounded by Arab states in turmoil. That land was given to the Jews by Britain (who has never been great at drawing lines on a map), in consolation of the 50% wipeout of their people in the holocaust. Many scary people want to perpetuate hate and chaos.
More detail:
When I took my husband’s last name, a Jewish last name, I knew I wanted to know more about that country (and religion)’s his-story. Prior to meeting my husband, I had already traveled to Israel for work, and had major respect for the work ethic from the team I worked with for two years. I was already intrigued with what seemed like such a tangled web of his-story.
As I started to look into it- already curious about teasing apart my upbringing as a catholic- I realized how much of the Jewish story reminded me of my mom’s Croatian story. Generation after generation, educated peoples from both (Jews and Croatians) were murdered in mass. In the last hundred years, both had mass killings with the intention to wipe them out or have the gusto taken from them. In Croatia, my grandmother lost her dad at 12 years old, when a truck came through town and rounded up every educated man and their sons, to never be heard from again, most likely murdered in the woods. (lots of scary stories here I do not want to repeat). The attempt was to leave a weakened race of women and children who were uneducated (in the modern sense) and not able to support themselves. My grandma went on to raise 5 daughters by herself when her own abusive husband became too much.
This trauma happened over and over again- reminiscent of the African Apartheid, where every attempt was made to stop people from being educated and able to rise up. An outside force held them down - hoping to continue the unrest and hatred among similar groups so that everyone could NOT come together and fight for themselves. You find out the Serbians and Croatians were actually so related by blood, many genetic tests do not tell the difference between them- meaning it was all a political (mental) divide. And this hatred was still going on in the 1990’s in Croatia, when Clinton was president, and the US hesitatingly helped break up an international fight.
The horror stories are horrible on all fronts from every angle. It is never really worth (in my opinion) to get too far into the details of the bad stuff, because all it does is incite fear. You hear something terrible, and the first instinct is to react in fear or retaliation. But what we SHOULD do is try to find out how to stop the anger from stirring. Anger is exactly what some people expect and want. Most of these places with modern friction happen to lay at a geographical crossroads- usually between the “west” and the “east”- especially mapped along the lines of religious borders. Croatia lies right at the border of the eastern and western churches, plus the turkish/muslims to the south. The C-shape of the country was formed out of the Croatians holding back eastern forces trying to make their way into the heart of Europe- something most Europeans (and Americans) take for granted.
Israel is at a similar crossroads. In the fertile crescent, the land of Israel is the only democracy surrounded by Arab states, and has fought bitterly and geniusly to hold that space in the desert given to them directly after the holocaust, where the whole world watched in shock as half the population was wiped out- after the hatred that had been seen against them for thousands of years prior. Some statistics estimate the current Jewish population is just 10% of what is would be without these mass genocides. For the modern success stories you hear of Jewish people, you would think they are a much larger population than they are. But in 2023, they make up just 15.7 million, 0.2% of the 8 billion worldwide population.
In comparison, Catholics make up 1.4 BILLION,
while Islams have 1.8 BILLION followers.
Then you see other places, like in the middle east that has so many resources and vaccuums of power - these places with valuable land, people, but those people being pushed down for generations, because others wanted desperately to take something from them.
So I saw a tenacity in the Jewish people that I felt in my own Croatian heritage. Croatians are fighters. So my sons, being Jewish, Croatian, and gypsy (my other grandma was so proud of this), we have some hearty stock. A very misunderstood stock that I wanted to understand.
So here is my attempt at sharing the stories I have uncovered trying to learn about all these places myself. I tried seeing from many different perspectives. I actually care about with neighbors think of these countries, the friends and the enemies, compared to what the headlines and his-story books say. I also like to hear the chatter- the underlying tone when these pushed-aside groups are talked about in modern day. I will be sharing more in the coming weeks on the shared past, citing specific examples where we need to look critically at the customs we take on with the best intentions at heart (or just mere laziness).
