(Nov. 9, 2023 ● Oslin Pierrette)
I would like to say, I come in peace. These are not judgments I have. These are just observations and a theory I have, that I feel should be expressed to get to some sort of understanding for these relationships the world has with Jewish people and vice versa.
I was always so confused by Jewish relations, and when trying to understand, I felt like there were these canonized views and aspects, where you can’t really challenge any of the surfaceable views. Basically, it’s the gospel and you can’t challenge these views. If you ask any questions there was always this fear of antisemitism, that you’re anti-Jewish. Which can get frustrating, because no I’m not, I don’t even know enough or have a relationship with Jewish people to even dislike them. So there was this dissonance and confusion I felt. I just have these honest questions based on my curiosity, but those questions are being rejected as antisemitism. I just feel that the aspect of not coming to a conclusive understanding, or even close to any type of true understanding where you can’t have any space for discourse of understanding, will brew animosity. I have these very simple questions to try and understand and I’m being called antisemitic, that just doesn’t feel right. Then all I have are the things I’ve been hearing, the nefarious stereotypes and such. Where very understandable thoughts of what’s going on over there, are they trying to protect something. Like this wall of separation is making things much worse than it has to be, let’s have this conversation and put the honesty on this table of how we all just truly feel and sort through what yours, mine, and then ultimately our truth is, even in the uncomfortable, and being challenged and wrong in our own views. But nope, that reasonable peaceful option doesn’t seem like it’s on the table. For the most part it just seems like two sides, and some smaller alternate ones having anti-dialectical polarizing views and animosity, that just creates more animosity. “Those that make peaceful action illegal, make violence inevitable”.
Like for example I remember I was in a hotel, and I wasn’t supposed to be there at the time, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I just wasn’t supposed to be there, I just knew someone and happened to be there for a bit at the time. And when I’m walking through the hallways, I see only Hasidic Jewish people. A group of people I’ve never seen before in life. So I asked what’s going on, and the people that worked there replied, “oh, they do this once a month, or every few weeks, they rent out the hotel, or large portions of it sometimes.” And I was just intrigued. I’m just seeing so many families of Jewish people, and I’ve never seen them before, so it was an interesting sight to me, like surreal. What type of thoughts do you think a person that experiences that would formulate. Like they seem so intentionally secluded from everyone else, thoughts of, what’s going on over there with them, what are they up to. And there’s this skepticism that can arise, that’s not malicious at all, but just based more on natural curiosity. Especially something you’ve just never seen before. Like how can they just afford to rent out this hotel for the weekend, especially continually every couple of weeks. And yes these can be seen as ignorant thoughts, but they also can be real, and what someone actually feels. This misconception of formulated thoughts that naturally were formed, can easily be debunked and cleared up if there was that communicable space with the people renting that space, basically of hey what’s going on, and they simply answer with an honest response, that simply clears up any skepticism and nefarious curiosities, that someone ignorantly thought. And maybe that specific situation is an odd one to question like that, but if that method and mode of communication was open, I feel a lot of the turmoil and misconceptions could be cleared up, we can all come to a common understanding. As long as we all can come to the table and express how we truly feel, no matter how ignorant our views are. But that’s not the way of life today, we just continue with this wall of separation between the communities, we don’t understand each other.
Then recently with the whole Israel-Hamas-Palestine conflict, there has been a magnifying glass on these different communities. Showing the public what’s truly going on in those places, spaces that were subject to scrutiny if you had an opinion on it. The scrutiny is still there, but since we came as a masses to view what atrocities are going on, the scrutinizers and cancellers can’t stronghold us into shying away from our views. What struck a chord in me very deeply that gave me this deep level of confusion were from Jewish people, and maybe it was more Israeli Zionist Jewish people, because I’m newly learning all these different subsets of Judaism and Jewish culture. But basically I’m never truly shocked by the actions of the state, political leaders, and authority. Because so many of those types of people are so deeply corrupted and psychopathic, so I’m not confused or naive to their nefarious actions. Also I’m not naive, and wise enough not to attribute those actions and decisions of the leaders onto the people. Like I would want others not to attribute America’s atrocities and decisions political leaders have made onto the people, the nefarious political and corporate leaders have their own agenda that doesn’t align with the general public and humanity. And typically the people don’t agree with decisions of the leaders. So what confused me here with the Israeli Zionist Jewish people, that’s the group I’m assuming it was. But when I saw them mocking the destruction and the heinous war crimes being done to innocent Palestinians, it just struck a deep chord of disgust in me. Like how could you adopt such views, that I’m pretty sure would doom you to hell, how could you look at other humans like that, and accept their suffering, and in a dark sadistic manner as a positive for your own life. How can you not understand as human to human, that could be you as well, you could be in a similar predicament. Like for example your ancestors, or even some of your present-day family, they have been in that predicament with the holocaust and other expulsions, and persecutions. So with a history of that happening to your people, with attempted ethnic cleansings, how could you find sadistic joy in others facing a similar destruction. Also from my point of view, people who believe in a religion. I will never understand how people believe in God, and what to do good by God, will also adopt ideas, views, and do things that obviously God wouldn’t ask for, or accept. I don’t believe there’s hatefulness when being righteous, those don’t go together.
So I wanted to understand where this extreme disconnect comes and stems from? Where do all these misunderstandings come from? Where do all these conflicts stem from? It’s always just written off as complicated and we all are just supposed to look a different way. But I don’t like sitting with dissonance and confusion. So I went out to understand what was going on. I went to try to understand a bit of Judaism and Jewish culture. What are their views and upbringings that lead to whatever views they have. For one, there’s a diversity of Jewish communities, so it’s reductive to look at them as one group, simply because they aren’t a monolithic uniformed group under the name Jewish or Judaism. Like any other major group name like Black, White, Christian, Muslim, Spanish, etc. there’s a lot of diversity within those major groups, where none of those groups should be looked at as a monolith. But there are few underlying attributes and values sometimes within a group, that bring most of them together, or they are alike in.
In many Jewish communities, they are a very disciplined group of people who adhere to strict rules and values, to preserve a lot of the Jewish Identity, maybe to create this sense of ritual purity, which they have been very successful at. Which I believe is a very honest and non-problematic practice. One of the practices that multiple Jewish communities practice though, is Jewish people separating themselves from the Gentile. This is where I think a lot of the issues stem from, creating these complex conflicts, that at the root may be more simpler than we think. With the Jewish separating themselves from the gentiles. You only interact with Jewish people and everyone else is an other. Where you can create this hierarchical mindset where you value Jewish people more than others. This can easily breed contempt from others onto Jewish people that breeds antisemitism, but also create this aspect where Jewish people feel everyone is against them. Also when you surround yourself with only your people, it becomes an echo chamber of only your views, so that becomes amplified and maybe sometimes sincerely exaggerated views you have. You aren’t around diversity, to understand different types of people, experiences, and views. Your rhetoric and views are the only thing that most likely is pedaled throughout your community. That can lead to you and your people having this sort of hyper self indoctrination of your own views, and that’s the law and gospel for you and your people, anything outside of that is heresy, blasphemous, or sacrilegious. So the way many Jewish communities separate themselves from gentiles or others, can create this inevitable contempt. That separation can create this wall of ignorance that breeds fear onto each other. And in many situations in general, people just haven’t liked when others get clannish, especially when it’s exclusionary. Maybe if we were able to get beyond this wall of separation to try and understand each other. Maybe we would see that at the root of these issues are very trivial differences that just sprouted and spiraled into these very vitriolic resentful complex issues and conflicts.
So the hate for Jewish people can stem from the beliefs, feelings, skepticism, and notions that they are too clannish of a people that keep to themselves. That they are proclaimed to be more intelligent than other groups, have more money and better at obtaining it than other groups. But a lot of these sentiments can come from that Jewish vs Gentile way of life. Many Jewish communities live amongst themselves. It preserves their identity, especially with strict disciplines and their way of life that preserves it. Basically in those secluded communities, they all look like each other, and have shared identities. So with that when you look at prosperity, they can come to more common goals. And have the discipline, trust, and shared values to create prosperity. These are great aspects that create great teams and teamwork that lead to success. Also I believe that literacy, education, reading religious text, and being able to write, those aspects being a priority for Jewish people leads to higher intelligence. When in other regions like for the European Christians, only the clergyman and prominent figures are allowed to read. And I believe that’s an admirable aspect for Jewish people, and a very dishonorable aspect for the other Europeans, with their elitist classim values. So that naturally and honestly creates a head start to intelligence for one group. Where they are able to expand themselves exponentially more than others with the access to literacy and intelligence they have. So all those aspects create prosperity for a community. And I think it’s a natural and fair success when you look at it from within. But from the outside, it may breed contempt when there’s a wall of ignorance blurring it. You just see Jewish people succeeding, and it creates this aspect of what are those people doing over there. It can seem nefarious from an outside perspective. Where everyone gets skeptical about what the Jews are doing. That may have led to their expulsion in multiple countries. That leads to Jewish people feeling that the whole world is against them. Maybe there were small truths to the nefarious actions. But that’s an inevitable course of evil. Evil conspires where the power is. Evil goes through all people, but will present itself the most where it has the power to do so. And when Jewish people naturally become one of the more successful and intelligent groups. They are more vulnerable to the corruption of evil. Within those evil doings, that come from the core of evil, but from Jewish representation, valid animosity towards those people are valid, but has been met with claims of antisemitism, maybe due to evil forces, or because of Jewish people’s natural secluding preservation. And maybe that story has played out. Just my theory.
Also another mind boggling thing I saw was from this movie scene in ‘The Believer’ (2001). “Where this movie starts to get mind boggling, where they go to this thing called the minion for Rosh Hashanah. But I just get so confused. They allowed a skinhead in their place of worship. They acknowledge he’s a skinhead, but they were like he’s an anti-racist skinhead. Others are calling him fascist Jewish Nazi. He’s calling others Zionist Nazi, and they are defending Zionist as not evil. And Daniel’s rebuttal is that Zionist are racist and militant. Daniel is bringing up the dark acts done by Jewish people. And one says why are Jews held to a higher standard, maybe implying since the rest of the world takes part, but feeling Jewish people are held at a higher standard for their crimes. And one says it’s because they are the chosen people. And for me it was like wowwww, there are so many conflicting thoughts and views within the Jewish community, that would create all these complexities. They can’t even come to an agreement within their own community. They have this babel like aspect within Judaism and Jewish culture. But still it made a lot of the conflict make sense to me. Within some of the communities that view themselves as the chosen people, while separating from the gentiles. You see it’s inevitable, of course there’s going to be conflict from these types of views and practices that will go wrong. And I guess in this scene, they were highlighting some of the flaws that the Jewish community have, that may not even be a foundational principle of their religious text, but a man made one within their cultural community. And that’s where Daniel starts comparing early Jewry and Zionist to Goebbels. How people just submit to an ideology and infantly follow.”- An excerpt of my review on the movie. But it goes to show how much confusion they face within their own communities. Showing this babel cluster of confusion within all these different Jewish communities, that are sometimes opposing each other. Where you even get more secular Jewish groups like the ones that are amongst the Israeli Zionist, that more orthodox and traditional Jewish people vehemently disagree with. Also with the Zionist movement, and that feeling of being the chosen one, also with Jewish separation from gentiles, and being in an echo chamber of their own views and people, which lead to them valuing their own more, and not being the greatest at seeing outside of their own groups and valuing that. That can be a huge factor in the conflict with Palestine, and their views on it. You can see how many wouldn’t want a Two-State solution. You can see how many would be so hyper-prideful in their people and that land, and just want it for themselves, land that they feel promised for themselves. You can see how some are not valuing or having empathy for the destruction of non-jewish people, Gentiles, basically Palestinians. There’s just so many complexities at play that have extended way beyond Jewish communities.
When I see things like this, it’s clear that there are flaws within the Jewish community that lead to these convoluted, entitled, or elitist beliefs sometimes. That plays a part in the antisemitism that may be self-inflicted sometimes. Like “A land without a people for a people without a land”, this is propaganda that was pedaled through their own community, that may have given them this entitled view of the world and that land that is in conflict between Israel and Palestine. Like I can understand their view of, they were there thousands of years before, but it’s not understandable to say, now we’re taking back that land of no people, when the land is full of people, if that’s what they are saying.
Basically the Jewish conflict of the world is in a hyper-complex state, and it will continue to spiral and metastasize, along with so many other conflicts in this world. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t means of resolution. That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to compartmentalize the pattern in the complexities, to then break those down and get to more simple root problems, and we can see where that spiraled out of control. As long as everyone is willing to put their truths and real feelings on the table, while also putting their pride aside, for the common goal of coming up with true answers on how we got here, and how we can resolve these conflicts. By conflicts, I mean the one amongst the people, and the different communities amongst the people coming to the understanding. The Israeli-Palestine conflict is more state and political leaders conflict that can’t be solved at a table of understanding meeting. That conflict is an issue of psychopaths in power, and the people needing to abandon these psychopathic figures, with human collectivism. But again that wouldn’t happen until we as a general public come together first, and reconcile our differences.
– On an unrelated note to this whole piece. I’m also of the belief we should try to put our current differences aside for the common goal of reclaiming humanity, and getting away from the oligarchy & psychopathic control of the world. Like I don’t even care for us to reconcile our differences beforehand. Let’s just understand our humanity is in danger for all of us-
This is just my observation and theory. Yeah, I’m of the belief, and ok that my views can be wrong, but it’s all in the direction and intention in trying to get some understanding. And 100% believe this is the method of communication we need to mend these sorts of situations and conflicts.