What do you do to humans who no longer act like humans?

Throughout the last two plus years, as we’ve heard the horrifying reports, eye-witness accounts, and now the personal experiences of hostage survivors, it’s hard not to ask some very rudimentary questions concerning how we, as human beings, react to those of our species who are no longer worthy of sharing that title.

Undoubtedly, these are the same issues going through the minds of the 24 who, until recently, were trapped in the bowels of the earth and forced to endure the worst indignities known to man.

Survivor, Rom Braslavski described his own hellish torment when invited to speak in Rome about the captivity he suffered in Gaza. What he saw is something which no one should ever have to play back in their mind over and over again. Sadly, the 22-year-old will never be able to erase the ghastly demonic images which will stay with him over his lifetime.

Speaking about the massacre itself, Braslavski recalls “young beautiful women thrown to the ground, riddled with bullets, their clothes torn, rivers of blood on the road and a garbage bin filled with large numbers of bodies of women, adults and children, all drenched in blood.”

Unable to detail the torture he personally experienced, Braslavski failed to go into detail about what was done to him. Only able to say that he had been physically, mentally and psychiatrically abused, as well as sexually humiliated, he is convinced that even the Nazis didn’t go as far as these monsters did. 

How much more imagination does it require to understand that these individuals are unfit to bear the description of human beings? Yet, these are the ones with whom the world expects us to make peace and accept as our neighbors, entitled to a state of their own on land divinely promised to the Jewish people.

It doesn’t get more absurd than that!  Would those who are insisting that Israel enter into negotiations do the same with devils who tossed humans into garbage dumps, splattered with their own blood and the blood of others? Do they perceive them to be decent folks who have earned the right to a second chance? Would they agree to live alongside of them, with mutual trust, believing that what happened on October 7th was just a one-off? 

How would they sleep at night, knowing that the atrocities committed upon whole communities could be repeated by creatures devoid of a conscience? 

When you consider the acts of depravity which emerged from the innermost parts of these sub-human ghouls, the only reasonable and sane conclusion which can be drawn is that the moment humans no longer act as humans, there must be a fitting solution.

Justice demands it! But it’s not only that. When there is a realization that someone can no longer live with fellow humans, because that person has become too much of a danger to society, the obvious is to completely remove them from the public.  

But is prison the answer? In the case of the Middle East, it must be remembered that all too often, hard-core murderers are set free in hostage situations where the only way to return innocents is to release the worst of the worst.

It is, perhaps, that horrifying reality which leads normal people to justify the death of terrorists in the same way that one would kill in self-defense – knowing that it’s them or the murderer.

Thousands of years have passed since the biblical account of Amalek, Israel’s archenemy, represented by Esau’s progeny. Constantly attacking the Israelites, making their lives a living hell, God commanded His people to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” (Deut. 25:19)

But this wasn’t a directive to ignore them, because God specifically told the prophet Samuel to “spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.” (1 Sam. 14:3)  

It is these words, uttered by the Almighty, which immediately drew harsh criticism and outright condemnation when Israel’s prime minister invoked this well-known story of Amalek, likening Hamas to the consummate enemy of Israel, following the October 7th massacre.

His correlation, seen as a genocidal intent against Gazans, was then cited as the reason that charges of war crimes were brought against the Jewish state by the International Court of Justice.

But is there a difference between genocide - the wanton act of killing off an entire race or ethnicity of people, and the legitimate right of self-defense? When brutally attacked by a terrorist regime, which spent 20-years, planning what they believed would result in the end of the Middle East’s Jewish presence, should Israel have not responded?

It’s hard to argue with the fact that the diabolical plan of Hamas was to slaughter and butcher innocent Israeli civilians while they slept in their beds. Setting them on fire, decapitating, mutilating and disposing of them, as they did, could only be seen as barbarism which cannot be permitted to take place.  

And although, some are crazy and ignorant enough to make a case in favor of these savage acts, no justification could prevail if those same defenders would have been present as those unspeakable acts were happening to their friends and family members.  It’s just extremely easy to make a case from thousands of miles away.  

Yes, even the turquoise-haired, nose-ring, kaffiyeh wearing lost souls, who have thrown in their lot with demons, would not remain silent in the face of such a barbaric and devilish assault, accompanied by the vilest of crimes against humanity.

For them, it would be a long-overdue wake-up call, that they have naively backed the wrong horse. When seeing the same inhumane images which left a searing permanent scar in the life of Rom Braslovski, they would finally see the light.  

It is only because of their total ignorance, their attraction to violence and anarchy as well as the great geographical distance between them and Hamas that they are able to support terrorists who no longer resemble human beings. 

If faced with the events of October 7th, you can bet that they would repeatedly thank Israel for eliminating the existential threat which would not hesitate to come after them. Only then would they realize that God’s command to destroy that depth of evil was exactly the right thing to do!