Above is a photo from an article in People Magazine showing Richard Cottingham, the Times Square Serial Killer. Real life killers like him are also depicted in TV crime shows where dogged detectives track down murderers who commited gory crimes. Individuals and groups throughout history have engaged in brutality against fellow human beings.

Consider this from the article Horrific Facts About Scalping On The American Frontier:

Native Americans weren’t the only people who scalped their enemies. The European settlers who colonized the country learned from and copied them. Cutting off the skin on a man’s head became a widespread practice across the country—America’s dirty secret that plays a hidden role in every major moment in the nation’s history.

At first, the settlers of the New World treated scalping as a sign of barbarism and savagery. But as time went on and they struggled through more of life on the wild frontier, some started to see tearing the skin of a man’s skull as nothing worse than an efficient way to take home his head.

The American frontier became a brutal place where the scalps of dead men were a currency. White men and natives alike were massacring and mutilating innocent people for a fistful of cash—and the thin, delicate line between civilization and savagery slowly eroded away.

Reports of the artocities being commited by Hamas terrorists include the beheading of victims and also postmortem beheading.

In some ways people who would never commit such acts have become inured to the reality that there are those who relished the thought that they would be able to unleash their rage in the most savage ways, and then when they got the opportunity as the Hamas terrorists did, experience what I expect was a visceral thrill when they commited what civilized people would call unspeakable atrocities.

Most people know that what they may act out when playing violent video games or what they see on TV shows or in movies depciting graphic brutality isn’t real. This is a way that people can express thoughts and impulses that they’d never actually act on. Freud called this sublimation and considered it to be a mature defense mechanism. “Harry Stack Sullivan, the pioneer of interpersonal psychoanalysis, defined sublimation as the unwitting substitution of a partial satisfaction with social approval for the pursuit of a direct satisfaction which would be contrary to one’s ideals or to the judgment of social censors and other important people who surround one.” (Wikipedia)

I think that the Hamas terrorists, like their ISIS brethren, consider themselves to be righteous warriors and that they consider that they are justified in committing any atrocity and enjoy themselves while doing it. I can’t get the image out of my mind of a terrorist who looked to be in his late teens happily skipping as his cohorts forced a hostage into a car.

It’s not that American soldiers never commit atrocities. Those of us who are old enough remember the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War (Wikipedia) when between 347 and 504 civilians were murdered, raped, and brutalized by our soldiers. There was intially an attempt to cover it up but eventually there was a court martial but only one, Lt. Calley, served any time and then only 3 ½ years under house arrest at an Army base.

What is different between the soldiers of modern armies and terrorist groups is that committing atrocities is considered aberrant while for terrorists it is an accepted and encouraged practice.

What the Hamas terrorists have brought upon themselves is that Israelis are now beginning to think what was generally considered unthinkable is now thinkable as a way to eliminate the threat of Hamas. This is because it would mean doing what the NAZIS tried to do to England, and would have done if they had nuclear weapons. They would have turned England into a nuclear wasteland.

Drawing parallels isn’t possible but some Israelis might be thinking about America’s decision to level Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a way to end World War II. They’d never use a nuclear weapon if only because Gaza is so close, but they have the capacity to use conventional weapons to turn Gaza into a lifeless rubble strewn wasteland.

I think Israel will gradually escalate and numerous civilians will be killed in Gaza and by and large Israelis will accept this. If Hamas continues to attack cities like the one shown above under attack by Israel will be reduced to rubble and the population of two million will be reduced to an appallingly small number.

With the Israeli retaliation just beginning we are already seeing photos like these:

As the Israeli assaults continue the term “reduced to rubble” which is now being used will take on a more drastic meaning.

See, for example “Unprecedented Israeli bombardment lays waste to upscale Rimal, the beating heart of Gaza City” (AP). If it comes to this, the cities in Gaza will make the surrounding desert look hospitable.

I find it difficult to fathom what those who decided to attack Israel had as their end game. To use a well known phrase, they have gone beyond awakening a sleeping giant (a quote which may or may not have come from Admiral Yamamoto), they have roused a dozing giant who is now wide awake and is about to wreak revenge with a speed and on a level that is unprecedented.

Yesterday: Netanyahu should tell Israelis the truth about the hostages chances so they can start the grief process