Hamas terrorists: Psychopaths or brainwashed

I’ve had trouble sleeping the past few nights. I feel a general sense of horror and fear after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel. The stories and images are heinous beyond words. Hamas terrorists have killed more than 1,200 Israelis — men, women and children — and kidnapped more than a hundred civilians and soldiers. 

The level of brutality is truly shocking. Atrocities include:

• Hamas massacred 260 young people attending the Tribe of Nova music festival, who were dancing and partying for “unity and love.”
• Hamas broke into homes in kibbutzim near the Gaza border and murdered entire families in their beds. 
• Hamas abducted about 150 people, including men, women, children and the elderly. They are being used as human shields, under threat of public execution. 
• Yes, Hamas beheaded babies. When Israeli soldiers entered Kfar Aza, they discovered 40 dead babies and toddlers, some decapitated.

This isn’t “resistance.” It isn’t even war. It’s barbarism.

Psychopathic killers

What kind of person can chop off a baby’s head? The first answer is a psychopath. Robert Hare said that psychopaths kill with about the same level of stress that we might have when carving a Thanksgiving turkey. In his classic book, Without Conscience — The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, he wrote:

While most of us have strong inhibitions about physically injuring others, psychopaths typically do not. For them, violence and threats are handy tools to be used when they are angered, defied, or frustrated, and they give little thought to the pain and humiliation experienced by the victims. Their violence is callous and instrumental — used to satisfy a simple need, such as sex, or to obtain something he or she wants — and the psychopath’s reactions to the event are much more likely to be indifference, a sense of power, pleasure, or smug satisfaction than regret at the damage done. Certainly nothing to lose any sleep over.

The Hamas terrorists were proud of their killing. They smiled and laughed in photos and videos of their handiwork. Then they uploaded the horrifying images to the Internet for all to see.

Brainwashed killers

Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005. They gave the region to the Palestinians. A few years later, Hamas gained control of Gaza, and ever since then, it has been brainwashing the citizens to hate Jews. Here’s a quote from an article by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.

From the pulpits of mosques to the pages of op-eds to the stands of bookstores across the Arab world, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and other timeless fictions and hateful works were peddled, updated, and perfected to the point that large swathes of the public stopped seeing Zionists or Israelis or Jews as human long ago. School children are taught to hate Israel, Jews are demonized as part of official curriculum, and “summer camps” involve learning how to fire automatic weapons and kidnap Israelis.

I recommend that you read the entire article:

Let’s be honest about the hate that drove the Hamas attack, on Time.com.

So the Palestinians living in Gaza have been brainwashed for years. This is the behavior of cult leaders, and in my opinion, cult leaders are psychopaths on steroids. In fact, multiple media commentators have described Hamas as a death cult, and that sounds about right to me. 

The looters

According to a survivor of the attack on Kibbutz Nirim, some of the terrorists came just to steal Israeli property. Here’s what she said in the Epoch Times:

“Some of them came just to loot and plunder,” Ms. Raemer said. “They went into people’s houses. They went into one woman’s house. She’s over 90, and she had a foreign worker who’s her caregiver. They demanded money.

“She gave them money, and they took things and left.

“Other houses, they went in and they smashed things up. They stole whatever they could. They shot up cars. They slashed tires. Anything, just to destroy.” 

In a story from Radio Free Europe, another survivor in Kibbutz Nahal Oz said that as soon as they heard the sirens, she, her husband and infant daughter hid in their safe room. They stayed silent as terrorists entered their house and ransacked it. 

Maybe those Hamas invaders weren’t complete psychopaths. But they certainly had antisocial traits. A million Palestinians didn’t join the attacks. How do we explain the ones who did? They’re likely either disordered or brainwashed.

Evil exists

If you’re reading Lovefraud, you’ve probably already learned the hard way that evil exists. Psychopaths are the embodiment of evil. 

Psychopaths do not have the ability to love. They do not have the ability to care about the wellbeing of other people. And once psychopaths are adults, there is no rehabilitation. They do not change. They cannot transform themselves into normal, loving human beings.

Still, psychopaths aren’t all the same, and they engage in different levels of harm. Some are brutal murderers. Some are financial con artists. Some just enjoy being puppet masters — pulling relationship strings and watching the people around them jump.

Lovefraud podcast

Our most recent podcast, Fast and Deceptive — a Marriage Scam, is about a Muslim man who took advantage of the cultural tradition of arranged marriage to steal from his unsuspecting bride. 

In our follow-up expert interview, a Muslim mental health counselor describes how this behavior is thoroughly condemned by their faith. The episode has nothing to do with terrorism or political conflict. Still, out of respect for the tragedy in Israel, I am delaying the broadcast of this episode until next week. 

In the meantime, I send my prayers and sympathy to all the victims, survivors and heartbroken loved ones.