Gilad Shalit on Hamas poster, Nablus

Hamas Produced Poster

The last month has seen momentous events in Israel following the release of Gilad Shalit from his captivity by Hamas.  His freedom, bought as a result of Israel’s agreement to the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, was controversial to say the least, but that is not the main topic of this article.

Instead I believe it would be useful to expand on the circumstances and conditions under which Gilad Shalit may well have been held and view Shalit’s treatment by Hamas through the lens of Professor Simon Baron-Cohen’s Zero Degrees of Empathy:  A New Theory of Human Cruelty.  

Baron-Cohen makes clear that he does not accept the concept of “evil”, rather he argues that what we come to perceive as “evil” is a complete failure of empathic attunement on the part of the wrongdoer. I admire Baron-Cohen’s work and his attempts to redefine evil.  I can see why he has taken the approach that he has and it is an exciting theory, but I do not agree that it can be applied to the rationale for the behaviour of entities like Hamas.  I shall explain why below.

Baron-Cohen’s book is, among other things, an excellent introduction for the layman to the extent to which the brain is thought to influence behaviour.  He posits the existence of an empathy circuit which can be assessed on MRI scans, and which, if the circuit is damaged by injury or fails to develop because of childhood abuse, actually shows deficit.  Baron-Cohen is himself a world-renowned expert in the study of autistic spectrum disorders and Asperger’s Syndrome, both of which may be perceived, albeit very simplistically as I describe it here, as a profound inability on the part of the suffer to empathise or to apprehend how another person might think or feel, a deficit which affects all facets of their lives.

Empathy, as Baron-Cohen defines it, is our ability to identify what somebody else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion.  Thus Baron-Cohen suggests that there are two stages in empathy – recognition and response.  A sufficiently empathic person can therefore recognise when someone is upset, for example, and in some cases even feel upset themselves and react and perhaps act with appropriate sympathy.   A person who possesses what Baron-Cohen calls zero degrees of empathy lacks either recognition of emotion in others, or the capability for appropriate response, or both.

The total absence of empathy is not necessarily evil but I argue that in certain circumstances it can facilitate evil acts.  The capability to feel empathy fluctuates in and between individuals.  I have said above that people with Asperger’s or on the autism spectrum may have great difficulty in apprehending how others feel, and of course they cannot be blamed for that.   However, what about others who know very well how their victim feels when they ill-treat him but do not care about or even enjoy the pain they cause?   Like Baron-Cohen, I would classify such people as psychopaths who are not only immoral but also amoral.  However, whereas Baron-Cohen advocates understanding their behaviour, I do not.   

Unless one is a research or academic psychologist or psychiatrist, there is little to be gained from it.   Such evil intent and action on the part of Hamas and its fellow Islamists is felt on to a mass scale towards Israel and its Jews, and is almost identical to that of the Nazis for Jews, and that needs to be fought against. Merely understanding it and reframing it as total lack of empathy cannot save the lives of those at whom it is directed.  Such reframing also conflates the possible explanation for the behaviour with the results of that behaviour.

I shall never forget how frail, unwell and emaciated Gilad Shalit looked on his release, in comparison with the healthy, well-fed Palestinian prisoners released by Israel.  What can have motivated such treatment of Shalit?  One clue lies in the statement in 2009 of Abu Marzuk, deputy chief of the Hamas Political Ministry.  Marzuk said he was not interested in Shalit’s well-being, and added:   ”We are not giving him any special guard since he is as good as a cat or less.” (emphasis added).

Here is as frank an admission as any of the psychopathy of Hamas and the utter degradation of any humanity and complete absence of empathy in its treatment of Gilad Shalit, and on many occasions towards its own people.  Psychopaths may often have a history of torturing animals for pleasure.   Gilad Shalit’s presentation on his release evidenced that he had been kept in conditions of extreme privation and that Hamas had indeed perceived him as being less than an animal.

As further proof, I invite you to cast your minds back to the egregious celebration by Hamas in Gaza of their 21st anniversary, in which a crowd of thousands mocked a Hamas member dressed up as Gilad Shalit who begged and pleaded to be set free and said that he missed his mother and father.  Did any of these have any creature feeling or empathy for the suffering of Gilad Shalit of his parents?   If so, why add to their misery?   Did they have the ability, in the terms of Baron-Cohen’s definition, to identify what the Shalit parents might be thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion?  To argue that they had zero degrees of empathy may well have provided sufficient explanation for their behaviour, but that behaviour was evil.

Here is a test for your own empathic attunement.  Remember to try to empathise:

  • How might Gilad Shalit’s parents have felt when they heard about this? 
  • Did  Hamas have any reservations about causing anguish to Gilad Shalit’s parents?  Do you think they were aware of that anguish?
  • Why do you think so?  Why not?
  • How might those who organised this travesty have felt while it was going on?   Was Gilad Shalit a flesh and blood person to them or an object to be used for propaganda?
  • Why has not the Israeli government treated Palestinian prisoners in like terms? What do you think stops them from doing that and why did that not stop Hamas?
  • In the light of what we have seen of the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails what is the main difference between the Israeli view of Palestinian prisoners and Hamas’ view of Gilad Shalit?

The willingness of Hamas to inculcate hatred and the wish for painful “glorious” death even into the very young, adds to the evidence for the existence of mass psychopathy within the organisation.   It goes against every law of nature to endanger one’s own children deliberately.   It is, quite literally, dysfunctional and it murders the nation’s future.

Therefore, in spite of Baron-Cohen’s analysis that the Hamas animals who exhibit such utter degradation of any humanity in their behaviour towards Gilad Shalit, and on many occasions towards their own people, show zero degrees of empathy rather than are evil, I have to conclude that they are psychopaths by his own definition.  Although they are indeed utterly lacking in empathy, to persist in defining what is essentially evil in their behaviour in such terms is to resort to mere semantics and almost to absolve them from guilt and blame for that behaviour.  Also, for me to remove the label of evil from them implies that I believe that they are capable of change and being reasoned with.  I do not.  It is evident that there is a total and deeply atavistic lack of creature feeling in them, otherwise they could not have treated Gilad Shalit as they did and for as long as they did.

Therefore Israel must continue to counter this evil with all the force it can muster whenever it rears its ugly head, all the while knowing that, given its past showing, Hamas cannot somehow miraculously be forced to change into a trustworthy peace partner which will mean it no harm. That is an invidious position to be in, but the psychological victory of getting its son back alive sends a positive message to its people.

Addendum:  The Israeli decision about exchange to get its son home is not without precedent and I found the following curiously comforting.  An analogy can be drawn between the following account from Roman times particularly in regard to the state of the released Palestinian prisoners and their use to their murderous masters after many years of living in comparative luxury in Israeli prisons:

The Roman senator, Regulus, (c307 BC – c250 BC) foresaw the effects of the exchange when the Carthaginians sent him on his own recognisance back to Rome to negotiate his release and that of other Roman captives in exchange for peace.  The poet, Horace (writing in 23 BC) bewailed the fact that Romans could be captured and yet endure living a normal life in the country of their captors.  Horace has Regulus encouraging the Roman Senate to reject the terms for the release of the prisoners, because the freed Roman soldiers, rather than fighting all the more fiercely because of their captivity, would be degraded and worthless as fighting men.

May this also prove to be the case in respect of the freed Palestinians and their use to Hamas.

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