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Dear Friends,
The strict use of the term depravity has been much considered by legal and psychiatric experts in USA, where many State laws provide for severe penalties where a crime can be judged depraved or heinous, atrocious, cruel, in regared to either the [a] intent, [b] actions, or [c] attitude, which is displayed in the criminal act.
In the case of this West Jerusalem massacre of 8 students at Merkaz HaArav Yeshiva in Kiryat Moshe, by Ala'a Hashem Abu Adhim [Dheim], 20, the element of [a] religious Hatred at its core, is one factor recognised as a seriously aggravating one in the US when it comes to sentencing, including executing the culprit.
Other such factors relevant to this case are [b] an intent to terrorize, [c] targeting helpless or unarmed victims, [d] the age of victims, [e] total disregard for human life, [f] exploitation of trust in that an employee, a school driver, abused his knowledge of the premises to commit mass murder, [g] the mass nature of the murder, and [h] the attitude afterwards of Hamas, his own family in Jabel Mukaber, SE Jerusalem [displaying both Hamas and Hizb-ALLAH flags], Fatah's Al-Asqa Martyrs Brigades, and many Arabs in Jerusalem as well as in Gaza, where not merely satisfaction but relish at the crime was publicly displayed, plus [i] the incitement to such further Depraved Crime when Hamas proclaimed that this would not be the last, and Al-Asqa Martyrs Brigades also called for further massacres.
The cumulative weight of these 8 precise factors categorise this crime as depraved, wantonly vile, and inhuman, and equally depraved is the Hamas criminal conspiracy which orchestrates such outrages as a matter of policy, and also their Iranian paymasters, trainers and weapons suppliers [as evidenced in UK Sunday Times article, Page 9 of Sunday, March 9, 2008, by Marie Colvin].
Two Forensic Psychiatrists in USA, Dr. Michael Stone and particularly Dr. Michael Weiner of NY University, have done much work in this field, in identifying precise factors which warrant the judgment of depraved in relation to a criminal act.[1] This analysis is about the features of a crime as such, not about the record of the criminal. Stone constructed a 22-point Scale of Evil, while Weiner is researching a Depravity Scale of 26 factors, to assist US Courts in a consistent, objective application of the factors of depravity in determining sentences.
The international literature on punishment recognises 5 aims involved ––
[a] Incapacitating the criminal to prevent repeat crimes,
[b] Personal Deterrence whereby their punishment may motivate them to abandon crime,
[c] General Deterrence whereby punishment of the guilty may motivate others to abandon crime,
[d] Rehabilitation of criminals, and
[e] Retribution.
IN DEFENDING ITS MULTI-FAITH CITIZENRY from such Depraved Crime, the democratic State of Israel has no duty or right to rehabilitate any citizens or residents outside its own jurisdiction, such as in Gaza, or to engage in internal policing of such areas or populations. But the refusal of the Jihadi Hamas regime in Gaza to prevent, or even itself refrain from, such cross-border Depraved Crime, requires Israel to deploy the IDF to serve the 4 other normal purposes of criminal punishment, i.e. [a] Incapacitate the criminal culprits, by force or capture, [b] Deter the culprits, [c] Deter other actual or potential Jihadis, and [d] Retribution on the culprits.
In the case of Gaza, [i] the overwhelming Jan 25, 2006 electoral support for the Gaza Muslim Brotherhood arm, Hamas, with their clear and public agenda, specified in Section 13 of their un-amended and un-qualified August 18, 1988 36-Article Hamas Charter, which involves the violent destruction of the UN-mandated State of Israel, and {ii} the re-iteration of that genocidal attitude in mass popular celebrations, throughout Gaza, following the Thursday March 6, 2008 Jerusalem student massacre, indicates that the moral culprits for such Depraved Crime include not only the immediate armed gangs, and their political wings, but also the great majority of Arabs in Gaza.
Indeed the Nazi Party did not obtain majority electoral support in Germany in 1932, but Hamas did in Gaza in 2006. And some 600,000 German civilians, a very large minority of whom must have been Nazi voters, paid with their lives in the Allied aerial interdiction of the Nazi war-machine, but in Gaza the great majority of accidental civilian losses from IDF operations must be Hamas voters.
For reasons not of Retribution as such, but primarily of [a] Prevention of Depraved Crime, [b] Deterring this criminal population, and [c] Deterring other populations from supportring or assisting such Depraved Crime, then Israel has a duty to devise, execute, and sustain effective forms of punishment targeted at that criminal population, until they abandon their policy of Depraved Crime. Such disciplined punishment is collective punishment since it is a definite, coherent and identifiable collective, the Hamas-supporting, pro-Jihad majority in Gaza, not random individuals, which continues to perpetrate Depraved Crime aginst the people of Israel.
If mass murder of civilians, with Jihadi genocidal intent, and as an act intended to terrorize Israelis, is Depraved Crime, then to Incite or support or assist such Depraved Crime is equally itself Depraved Crime, and worthy of similar severe punishment, and for the 3 exact same purposes.
This is a judgment of rational calculation in self-defence, of clinical deterrence and reasonable crime prevention, and not at all an exercise in retribution or in any form of mindless vengeance or emotion. It is strictly purposeful, being about achieving positive and necessary consequences, whereas retribution is not about any consequential calculation, but simply about what punishment is deemed to be deserved by the criminal culprit, and is an end in itself.
And Hamas and similar Jihadi elements, are not equal warriors or legitimate combatants, but simply treble war-criminals, who [a] systematically and cowardly use their own people as human shields, [b] deliberately attack Israeli civilians, and [c] have a criminal purpose in the violent destruction of Israel.
All those who celebrate such Depraved Crime are also morally corrupting and gravely abusing their own children, and as such not fit to have or retain or influence or teach any children. The same principle also applies to those whose Mosques in Gaza were used to celebrate the March 6 Jerusalem mass murder.
Israel has no permanent military or police presence in Gaza since August, 2005, and so normally cannot capture perpetrators, but is confined to occasional IDF cros-border ground operations, along with long-distance or aerial interdiction of identified enemies. There is simply no other extra-territorial mechanism available to Israel with which it might defend its own citizens from Gaza-launched serial mass murder.
If it is absolutely legitimate, indeed strictly necessary [for police or troops] to fire on [a] the immediate perpetrators of such Depraved Crime, as was done successfully by Paratroop Brigade [890 Bn] Capt David Shapira in Jerusalem on March 6, is it ethically any different to fire on the identified proxy serial mass murderers, whether [b] the planners and commanders, [c] the manufacturers and transporters of weapons and explosives, [d] their spokesmen, or [e] the public agitators and demonstrators for such Depraved Crime?
The latter category e, like those in a to d, do not become part of the vile conspiracy only when they themselves bear weapons, but are an intrinsic part of the same conspiracy in all their active contributions, armed or unarmed, and all are rightly targeted whenever identified.
Spanish Governments have rightly banned the political wing of Basque terror gangs, and imprisoned their members, as an intrinstic element of the ETA terror machine, and equally those who demonstrate support for serial mass murder of Israelis have no right to liberty or to the normal peaceful life which they continue to deny their Israeli neighbors.
And forcibly disarming and dismantling the terror gangs, and their whole support-machine, is not initiating terror, but simply effective counter-terror. Children in Sderot, Kiryat Moshe, Netiv Ha'asara, Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, Kibbutz Nahal Oz, or Asqelon, deserve no less. And the only true friends Arab children in Jabel Mukaber or Gaza can have are those who liberate their parents from their vile Jihadi addiction to Depraved Crime, their unchanging Itbach el-Yahud, slaughter the Jews. Loss of Child Abusers, temporarily or permanently, is not loss of decent fathers or mothers.
The only bright spots at present are the courage of the Druze Arabs who successfully insisted on inclusion in IDF National Service, and the Beduoins who volunteer for their own Recon Battalion in the IDF Southern Command. They reflect the same kind of moral beacon which the courageous few in the anti-Nazi German Resistance also showed, and remind us how the Jewish state honors Human Rights, democracy and the rule of law, respects and serves all its citizens, and thus enjoys the allegiance of those decent Arabs who reject Jihadi aggression, whereas its enemies do not, and refuse to even grant basic rights to the descendants of palestinian Arabs whom they cynically leave in squalid camps.
This war is one where the Jewish people are the front-line in the struggle for humanity, and defend the one tribe to which we all belong, the human tribe, from the inhuman Jihadist ideology.
L'Chaim,
Tom Carew,
Editor's Note: The photos are not part of the original essay; but
polls indicate some
85% of the Palestinian Arab population approve jihad.
Tom Carew lives in Dublin City, Ireland. Contact him at tmcarew@yahoo.com
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