The mental illness component of antisemitism

Most sane people would consider a knife-wielding woman, roaming the streets of London, looking for Jews to injure, a perfect example of someone suffering from serious mental illness. So possessed with hatred and fixated on ridding her area of Jews, whom she labeled a “provocation and those who have created all the trouble in the world,” that this 70-year-old took to the streets, carrying her weapon of choice, apparently believing that she would face no consequences. She discovered her error once cornered by police who subsequently arrested her. 

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident when it comes to the obvious mental instability which is displayed by individuals who are obsessed with a revulsion and loathing towards the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. Because their inability to act and think rationally, prevents them from what each of us understands - that the desire to commit genocide of one ethnicity is always wrong.  

For people who think this way, there is no reason to get acquainted with or give any Jew a chance, because this psychological malady has them locked into a one-dimensional prism, bypassing unbiased reason and skipping right to “guilty as charged.”

Where does this pathology begin? For Gazans, it starts at birth. The moment a child is old enough to attend school, they are fed with the poison of indoctrination which is hammered into them day in and day out to despise Jews and kill them at all costs, including at the expense of their own life.  The ideology is so extreme and hateful to the core, perhaps, this is the reason that Mosab Hassan Yousef, better known as Son of Hamas has gone so far as to call Islam a mental illness Muslims are mentally ill, because, having come from that world, he knows, all too well, of what they are capable.

Several decades ago, the phrase, “Garbage in, garbage out,” became a well-known term. It meant that “erroneous or bad quality input would always result in producing a flawed or faulty output, and while it referred to computer science, the same is true for anything which is deposited into any entity, including human beings.  

During a recent program of the renowned talk-show psychologist, Dr. Phil, he aired a clip which showed Gaza and West Bank children, being educated in UNRWA sponsored schools where they were taught by 10,000 educators connected to Hamas. 

The minds of these impressionable youngsters were being bombarded, all day, every day, with the message that the destruction of Israel is their ultimate goal. In other words, they are the unwitting recipients of the “garbage” which then produces the phobia and mindless obsession that creates the mental imbalance, helping to sear the conscience, in order to perpetrate a genocidal massacre, the likes of what took place on October. 

To state it in another way, these children are being force-fed with the disorder of mental illness for the purpose of committing murder, an act which would normally go against the conscience of any right-thinking person, but which, in this case, is useful in turning off any innate safeguards that curb the commission of unthinkable actions. 

By the time these young people reach their teenage years, they have already successfully absorbed enough brainwashing and hatred drilling, that they are robotic in their behavior, ready to go out and commit whatever inhumane atrocity that is required of them, for the cause, with the full belief that they are currying favor with their god, Allah as well as their trainers. 

It is this kind of indoctrination which distorts the mind, the thought processes and every human instinct which aids in differentiating between good and evil, leading to mental illness and facilitating the violence which is a fruit of intense hatred to the point of eradication.

This has been noted in the behavior of suicide bombers who aspire to martyrdom as well as lone wolf attackers whose severe depression drove them to kill others. While many studies, on the subject, have hesitated to state anything greater than a “potential connection” between mental illness and rising terrorism, it stands to reason that in order to murder others in cold blood, solely due to their ethnicity, points to mental imbalance as well as spiritual depravity. Because no one in their right mind, who possesses empathy, regard for others and a basic moral code would ever consider taking the life of another due to the tribe into which that person was born.

The Paris knife attacker of December 2023, who swore allegiance to the Islamic State terror group, was also someone who had been “subject to close psychological surveillance for mental health issues.”

While mental illness comes in many forms, one thing, which is common to each particular pathology is the inability to think logically, clearly and exercise ethical values toward others. Mental illness tends to manifest itself in the exaggerated sense of a situation, psychotic episodes where contact with reality is lost and perceptions are completely distorted. It is during those periods when violence often occurs.  

In the case of Hamas, all of that twisted perversion was pent up from childhood and then further built up over the course of the two-year plan which was meticulously executed right down to the smallest detail, finally being released on one tragic Saturday morning when the perpetrators became worse than animals, giving in to their basest inclinations without regard for the cries and screams which must have resounded throughout those southern communities where the massacres were committed by over 3,000 barbaric terrorists who felt no pity but glee after what they did. 

If that doesn’t qualify as mental illness, then nothing does!  

Shockingly, we are witnessing this same kind of mental disorder among university students who have ignorantly thrown in with savages, incapable of rationally recognizing how far this strays from anything that resembles humanity and morality.  It is the same type of robotic hypnosis that has mesmerized a generation of young people, turning their brains into futile commodities which, if properly used and valued, would have warned them of the dangers that are present in the deception to which they have gravitated.

Its attraction and appeal, in the form of instant acceptance and belonging, are merely the false trappings which end in the loss of one’s sanity, similar to the biblical account of King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel who had been warned a year prior to his great descension from possessing all things, chief of which was a sound mind, to being reduced to a beast of the field over the course of seven years when he ate grass and began to resemble the appearance of an animal.  

It was only when he “raised his eyes toward heaven” that his reason returned to him.  Short of that, nothing will change for this deluded generation who believes that identifying with terrorists is a sane thing to do. 

The good news is that there is healing and hope from this malady.  It starts with blessing the Most High and ends with acknowledging His sovereignty, because, as it says, His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation – even this one!