Don't look now -- or ever

Horrendous material has been released by Hamas, featuring footage of violent, barbaric and inhuman treatment of Jews captured and kidnapped in last Shabbat’s invasion of Southern Israel. Many institutions and individuals are urging that children, in particular, should not see these images since they are likely to disturb anyone viewing them and may inflict deep psychological scars. This toxic, hate-filled material is being publicized through TikTok, a social media app that is popular among teenagers, a vulnerable and impressionable audience.

For me, the question is not one of whether children and young adults should be shielded from these vile materials, but of whether anyone of any age should choose to see them at all.

Pirkei Avot offers guidance here, at Avot 4:23, where R’ Shimon ben Elazar says, at the end of a four-part teaching on respecting other people’s wishes and personal space:

אַל תִּשְׁתַּדֵּל לִרְאוֹתוֹ בְּשַֽׁעַת קַלְקָלָתוֹ

[Translation] “Do not endeavor to see [your friend] at the time of his degradation”.

Early commentators on Avot have little or nothing to say on this topic since, for them, its meaning and its import are self-evident. But we now live in a technological environment in which the person viewing events may be distant in both time and space from what the mishnah calls the “time of degradation”; he may replay offensive and degrading material as often as he wants and can also forward it to any number of friends and followers.

While the underlying reason for R’ Shimon ben Elazar’s axiom is not hard to discern, we can add to it. In the first place, the act of watching the Hamas video clips may have an adverse impact on the voyeur. If any reader with the appropriate qualifications in psychology can supply us with some useful reference material on this issue, I should be most grateful.

Further, it is not hard to imagine the discomfort and embarrassment of a person to whom you are talking if someone comes to realise that you have watched them taking part in humiliating acts that were designed to break their spirit and dehumanise them. Having already suffered once, these tragic victims may (according to Midrash Shmuel) worry that you have enjoyed the spectacle and have even obtained some gratification from it. A further dimension is the distress of the humiliated person’s family, when they know you have been watching things that should never have been done to a loved one, let alone made public for the world’s entertainment (see R’ Abraham J. Twerski, Visions of the Fathers).

However tempting it may be to watch real-life scenes that correspond to the horrific descriptions which previously existed only in the form of the podcast or the written word, do please resist that temptation. I believe that you will be the better, and the stronger, for doing so.

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