Hamas Hostage Taking
By Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D.
War Blog #2
Screen shot London billboard campaign of kidnapped Israeli children https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/london-billboard-campaign-features-faces-of-israeli-children-kidnapped-by-hamas/
“We have joined the effort by Jews all around the world to show the faces of those kidnapped by Hamas in the worst single antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust.”
Lifting the Curtain on Hamas’ Psychosis
The deep dive into the psychotic world of Hamas continues. We focus on the concept of bonding which relates to maternal attachment. This is the central pathological issue which they disclosed by taking hostages. Not only did they tell their Palestinian people to be human shields, it is the Jews they took back to Gaza who are the most “valuable” human shields in their jihadi arsenal. They know we would give just about anything to get our people back home as in the IDF hostage Gilad Shalit. Today the Israeli hostages are civilians – women, children, babies, elderly and disabled – the most vulnerable.
Jihadi Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome
How do we know Hamas is psychotic?
The key lies in their nonverbal behavior. Think of the children’s story The Emperor’s New Clothes. What the child saw but not the adults because the adults were too terrified as they were in denial. The child knew that the emperor was naked. By lifting the curtain on the cruelty, we gain the psychological edge. We cannot afford to be in denial – think the tragedy of the $220 million fence.
We cannot dismiss out of hand when we hear warnings from others. This makes us prudent NOT paranoid. This is precisely the case for the heroine of the Kibbutz Nir Am, Inbal Nir-Liberman, head of security. The men blew her off probably the gender card played a role, yet she understood and was NOT in denial sensing the impending threat of destruction. She saved her kibbutz. Cf.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-767920
If you take this simple perspective and look at the way in which Hamas nonverbally bonds to the hostages, you come to understand the nature of the psychosis - that the perpetrator jihadis forcefully merge with their victims into a single entity. Jihadi + Jewish hostage = 1. This is a symbiosis and pathological fusion.
Hostage Taking
Hostage taking as a psychological dynamic harkens back to the re-creation of the maternal relationship in a state of merger. “Social media and its graphic imagery for jihadi violence creates a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome forming an identification with the aggressor. Its perversion functions as a lure for those who are mentally unstable and vicariously enjoy violence.”
A Fusional Psychotic State
What is fusion?
Maternal fusion is a “symbiotic relationship ... in which ... the mother fuses her identity with another’s, usually a child. The results are extremely detrimental to the functioning of all parties involved. This ego fusion usually occurs when the child is very small, earlier than age two, according to psychology textbooks on the subject, and leaves the child in a lifelong servitude of sorts.”
How the Maternal Fusion appears in Jihad
The maternal relationship is the launching pad for jihad. Its graphic representation can be seen in images of fusion — by which is meant, primarily, the mother holding the infant or the mother with child. The maternal platform is the crucible that molds the minds of these terrorists. The self fuses with an object and harkens back to the first primary fusion in life, between mother and baby, or the maternal fusion.
In jihadi culture the terrorists are undifferentiated and chronically fuse with their objects, projecting their fears into them and then killing them off because they have never been able to developmentally move beyond a fusional state with their mothers. They have not gone through an individuation separation phase in development. This is common in shame–honor cultures. The children become pawns in the parents’ hands. Power is wielded by men, while the female has illusory power over the infant. The jihadi uses his grandiosity and omnipotence as a defense against his early dependency needs. If male, the infant is an object of honor; if female, the infant is a devalued object, only having value once she is old enough to produce a male baby.
Sex is also a life fusion. Hence the perversion of sex by the Hamas rapes.
Military Instructions for Hostage Taking
When the military schools instruct personnel about things to do if taken hostage, they teach them to try to humanize to personalize the situation by using the first names of their captors. This strategy articulates how to shift from being perceived only as an object in the terrorist’s mind to a real human being with feelings. It is an attempt to create an empathic bond with the perpetrator who lacks empathy.
This is exactly what Rachel Edri intuitively knew to do. She was not in denial. cf.
“Held Hostage” was a report authored by the Center for Counter Terrorism, West Point, but there was no discussion of terror bonding nor understanding of early childhood development.
Revisiting Hijacking
Finally, we revisit hijacking as it was initially viewed as hostage taking and using the hostages as pawns. This, of course, changed with the PLO murdering its hostages and with Al Qaeda on 9/11.
Hostage taking embodies the Hamas’ psychotic behavior of taking that which is not theirs and claiming possession. This reveals their level of greediness and deprivation. Moreover, it enacts a maternal fusion. The term has also been used by some Muslims, non-Muslims and analysts to claim that jihadis have “hijacked” Islam rather than understanding it is a defensive maneuver to avoid dealing with those ideologies that promote violence in the Quran as part and parcel of Islam.
I work and pray to bring our missing families and hostages home now. You can too.
More information concerning Hamas' psychosis can be found in my The Jihadi Dictionary
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