Here is something I wrote as an Anti-Zionist Jewish somatic-spirit world ancestral deep dive. Finished this just in time for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). This is actually very much directed towards non-Jews and some parts are specific to Jews, so PLEASE read, I wrote this in large part for non-Jews to think about some stuff, but I expect you to be respectful of the really Jewish lived experience aspects of this.
Trigger warning: genocide, torture, starvation, lots of terrible, the fucking worst.
Despite what popular narrative often suggests, Holocaust and pogrom trauma is not healed. Being talked about in histories more than other genocides is a damn shame, is a whiteness problem, is absolute suck. But the fact that countries like Germany, and Western academia have some super mid mainstream respectability white guilt stuff to say about it, often and ineffectually, with their (tbh retraumatizing) stone monuments, does not equal anything remotely like trauma healing. Combine that with the fact that on account of we get some monuments, people think we’re healed and should shut up now. I’m saying it hasn't been dealt with at all!!!
Those who say that what Israel is doing to Palestine is a trauma reenactment, I actually REALLY agree. This isn’t even about who is or isn’t really from there, that's not my point right now. My point is once a bunch of people with fresh unhealed Holocaust and other antisemitism* trauma lineages were actually there, their very powerful ghosts came with. A gigantic amorphous horrific trauma ghost raft made up of millions of unhealed traumas worked it’s will, because it hasn’t been dealt with. I’ve seen it often. People can’t get at their actual oppressors so they work it out on more vulnerable populations they do have access to. Lateral Violence. Not only that but trauma repressed becomes more and more powerful in the collective unconscious and will try to resurface endlessly. The parallels are undeniable. Separatism, blatantly discriminatory laws, Apartheid (Shtetls, different laws for Jews). Dehumanizing language (Palestinians called animals, Jews called rats, vermin). Medical horrors. (Nazi’s experimented on Jews w/o anesthesia, stole organs, made furniture from Jewish skin, Palestinians have surgeries w/o anesthesia and their organs and skin are stolen). Starvation. (concentration camps, blockades) Supremacy language. (Aryans, Children of Light). Cultural sites destroyed. Mass graves. Horrific childhood trauma and mass orphaning. Nothing grows where the crematoriums stood. The earth in Gaza inundated with salt water and white phosphorus. The parallels are near exact. This is a trauma ghost possession running rampant. Trauma ghosts often see lateral violence as an opportunity to eke out some semblance of supremacy in hopes of offloading any amount of this massive trauma glut on the easiest target.
There’s an enormous whole culture fight and flight charge with nowhere to go. If you know anything about somatics or trauma, unresolved intense activation wrecks havoc, causing illnesses, chronic anxiety, depression, and even cycles of abuse; nationalism too can be a trauma response. Many of us have ethnicity-specific syndromes that I believe are 100% ancestral trauma caused. In fact the chronic pain and connective tissue deficiencies I navigate everyday are almost definitely the result of Jewish trauma attempting to work itself out through my body. My Grandmother had them too and they are well documented to have much higher rates in Jewish populations. Animals who could not discharge this energy have often died from the stress. Mammalian systems can’t handle it alone, it spills over into the spirit world and becomes monstrous.
This is a MASSIVE unhealed ghost ship in the spirit world, and it will keep sailing around indefinitely till we deal with it in some therapeutic way.
Who’s we deal with it? Not Palestinians that’s for sure!!!! So Jews with persecution histories (which is all of us, even though I’m writing about about European antisemitism today), we need to deal with it, and by deal with it, I mean get gentle focused therapeutic attention and love on our ancestors for as long as needed. Reclaim our traditions-our foods, languages, (and i do mean Diaspora ones). Folk healing. Bonesetting, cupping, herbalism, amulets. Practice our spirituality and find the power, beauty and strength of it, even if it’s being co-opted. Take it back, don’t lose any bit of it to them!!! And Free Palestine, stop the horrors being done in our names!
European Christian Ancestored Folks:
European Christian ancestored people should include this historic and current antisemitism along with all the other horrible injustices in your “get your people” sentiments, and by “people” I mean the live and dead. Departed and current antisemites are your responsibility since your people fucking invented antisemitism, so don’t let the focus get diverted off yourselves just because all the accountability is directed towards some Jews right now, this is not breaktime because some other people are doing oppressions. (FYI I have both European Christian and Jewish ancestry so I include myself). Christian European ancestored ppl: This is one of the things your ancestors did besides enslave and colonize. If you are cognizant you have ancestral work to do around your colonizer ancestors who enslaved people, do you not think you have work to do around how your people subjugated and killed so many Jews for so long? How that legacy is the same as the one that has Christian Zionists backing Israel so they can get all Jews in one place for them to die in the Rapture? That I don’t see mentioned as shit one should be accountable for like EVER. Did you know that all Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492? That that edict and the sail of Columbus are part of the exact same Colonialist agenda by Ferdinand and Isabella? Bet you didn’t know that, most of you.
To me when I go to Europe it’s kind of a graveyard, there’s trauma sites all over the place for Jews. But Non-Jewish European ancestored folks go over there to learn about folk herbalism or paganism and don’t really sense all the Jewish death like we do. When you all go to Europe to sense into the Land and hang out with Baldur and Mother Holle, do you all also feel all the Jewish trauma and death? Because we do!! Maybe next time you go on some ancestral healing journey, ask your ancestors and guides to tell you how you could address the harms of antisemitism committed in your lineage. Now that is some shit I have never heard said in ANY ancestral healing for white ppl workshop. Yet it’s as key to European colonialism as all the rest. Israel is the current manifestation of this, it’s not separate.
In fact in order to understand white supremacy historically you need to realize that antisemitism was foundational to the development of racist ideologies and sciences very early so it actually set the tone and framework for most other oppressions, i.e. race sciences, the idea of an exotic nefarious other who undermines society and is ethnically, inherently corrupting and dangerous by their nature and their features, genetics.
Now, also, all the soft Holocaust and antisemitism deniers that many of you are becoming (I know it’s hard to see through the propaganda, hard but totally doable! And your responsibility.) Invalidating a trauma so huge and unhealed makes it only more monstrous. The more you invalidate it the more talking points Zionists have, you get that, right? You think you’re sticking it to them but it's fodder to them, they use it to uphold their arguments. But that's not the main reason I’m writing this. What I have to say is more spirity. That Ghost Ship is the gnarliest horror movie shit you could possibly imagine. I used to think you all couldn’t imagine it but now that you’ve seen what’s happening in Gaza so super up close, I think you can. Maybe you should. Why? Does it matter now?
Yes.
Because the Ghost Ship full of trauma zombies will keep surfacing, that’s exactly how trauma works, other people invalidating it plus us Jews not working with it will make it more voracious. I believe that’s what we’re seeing now. We need to address this, tend to this monstrous zombie ghost barge roaming around the Underworld as part of Freeing Palestine, I mean that so literally.
One of the premises I’ve asked you to be open to by following me is that stuff happening in The Spirit World is the cause of events here. Call it Collective Unconscious, I don’t care. It’s the iceberg, we’re the tip. Till that ghost ship gets released from Sheol it’s gonna keep causing devastating, retraumatizing events.
So Jewish people, we need to talk about how we’re going to do this. Seek true healing. And other folks, you need to learn about antisemitism in a visceral, somatic way, not an academic, grainy photograph, college lecture, Disney special kind of way. So you actually care about it and want to keep it from happening again. It’s part of your legacy if you have European ancestry so literally how dare you roll your eyes and call it a “card”. AND because it’s the actual real driver of the militarized ethnostate we’re all protesting, so kind of vitally relevant.
QUESTION FOR JEWS (non-Jews can read but not answer, respectfully): What did your relatives do to heal from their trauma from the Shoah or pogroms, displacements or general life for centuries under antisemitic societies? What trauma healing methods have they used? Did anyone give them time and attention and validation in a therapeutic way? I think sometimes yes, sometimes people have had talk therapy support groups or maybe had access to psychotherapy, but I think not super often. My family, who are not even themselves Holocaust survivors but come from multiple shtetls that were liquidated (that means everyone got killed by Nazis) and no longer exist, so tons of people they lived in community with for generations, AND were related to were killed- even they were just super silent about it and dismissive if asked. “Eh, it's in the past. Lets not dwell on it”. And you all don’t know my grandmother, she was NOT the silent type, not even close, she was a beautiful kvetch queen. I’ve heard same from so many other Jewish people. Don't dwell on it it's in the past. But this is the mirror of it alive and carving a path of destruction JUST AS WIDE. Transferring the traumatic charge to another population.
So to summarize:
Christian European ancestored people, especially if your family has any ties to Evangelicals, get your people, living and dead, do your work, commit to protecting all targeted people, research and understand the role of antisemitism in shaping European colonial legacies.
People in general: stop denying or downplaying current and historic antisemitism, shut that shit down wherever you see it. Let us know, just how do you plan to help keep us safe in Diaspora when you know damn well there are Nazis about? When you see people invalidating our trauma calling us whiners omg, don't give that pass??? I can't even believe that's where we're at now.
Jews, we need to heal our ancestral trauma as well as stop the genocide of P with practical strategic action.
(These 2 things have overlap.)
One way I've been doing that is by finding the aspects of Judaism that are directly opposed to what Israel does. The words about sanctity of life and the body, repair of the world. There's so much. There’s even an ancient law that you aren't to cut down the fruit trees of another people even if at war with them. Finding that is ancestral healing and then fighting to free Palestine is rooting in those values. So it's doing both.
That's all for now, but please see footnote
*But wait, I hear you say, aren’t Palestinians Semites too? YUP. Yes, actually! However, the term antisemitism is part of the same racist sciences that brought us “Armenoid” and “Mongoloid” so who cares? You want we should fight over a term coined by a white supremecist race scientist? The point is how it was historically used and that happened already, you can’t erase 1000 years of oppressions that already happened by changing the meaning of the word that was previously used to enact them, so I’m not gonna entertain that today. (although 100% fuck the ADL)
And Free Palestine.
And remember, I do ancestral healing sessions, so please hit me up if you need more help with this!
I appreciate these insights, Amber. thank you.