Bowling Alleys, Mass Murder, Schizophrenia and Hate Crimes

Joseph Cuba, murderer, suffered from schizophrenia

 

Mass murderer Robert Card suffered from schizophrenia

That sounds like a lot for one post. But it so happens that there have been two mass murders (over 4 makes it massive) in bowling alleys in the past few years, the latest in Lewiston, Maine. 

The shooting rampage, took 18 lives and lest 13 injured on October 25, 2023. 

Lewiston is a close-knit community. The shooter is a licensed gun instructor. He teaches people (taught them) how to shoot. And here I thought I would learn, now I'm not so sure trusting an instructor is the best idea. 

And yet, we have learned that Robert Card, the murderer, a whispy 40 years old, suffered from schizophrenia. This is a disorder that can affect the brain to such a degree that the person with schizophrenia hears voices or sometimes sees things that are not there. Usually it presents with auditory hallucinations and they are paranoid, the person is highly anxious and hears voices telling him (it is usually a him, but not always) to shoot others and then, oftentimes, to shoot himself.

Interestingly, we recently heard of another murderer, a man who murdered a child in Plainfield, Illinois, a Muslim child. It is assumed that the murder is a hate crime because the man who murdered the child professed to not trusting his tenants, Muslims, and intended to do something about it. Eviction, apparently, wouldn't do the job, not according to whatever voices Joseph Cuba had in his head. 

'You Muslims must die': 71-year-old Joseph Czuba, said.  to remain behind bars, faces hate crime charges in murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume.

Wadea, 6 years old, didn't have a

chance, stabbed 26 times as Cuba looked him in the eyes. His mother, Hanaan Shahin, fared better, although she suffered stabbings, too.

I read: Many Pro-Palestinian and Muslim faith leaders placed the blame for this crime on the shoulders of President Joe Biden, U.S. support for Israel and the media's coverage of the war.

Not a word about what schizophrenia does to a person. This is unbelievable, to me, that in one case, the case of a MASS murder in a bowling alley, schizophrenia is the known cause, the one to worry about, the one to treat.

And in another, schizophrenia had nothing to do with it. Joe Biden, the support for Israel, this prompted a mentally ill man to go off the edge. 

Every opportunity, every single one, that the media can glom onto to support the underdog, is blown up, is taken way out of proportion, in this case the slaying of a child. The Palestinian people are afraid to not support Hamas. If they don't they are killed. So yes, they have problems. 

But Joe Biden did nothing to cause the death of Wadea Al-Fayoume, no more than he had anything to do with the 18 victims in Lewiston, Maine. 

Should the community of Lewiston have been aware that they had a very sick man in their midst, someone capable of a terrible crime? Apparently the police did know, had been sent out to investigate that possibility six weeks before the shooting. 

Card was a reservist in the US Army. 

Coastal Defense Firearms in Auburn, Maine, refused to issue him a silencer because on the request he wrote that he suffered mental illness. The Sagadhac County Sheriff's Office told the press that Card had a 14 day psychiatric inpatient in July due to concerns about scuffles with other soldiers. He had begun hearing insulting voices in the spring which worsened. He accused three men of calling him a pedophile and said he would take care of it. The men, one a friend, calmed him down and they went back to their hotel where he locked himself into his room and wouldn't come out. This resulted in the hospitalization.

Soon thereafter another incident resulted in an Army well-being check on Card.

Once again Card told a friend to stop calling him a pedophile, but he added that he intended to shoot up the drill center. Authorities called him in, apparently, but he did not show. A unit commander told an officer that Card no longer had any military issued weapons, and at a home visit (Card would not come out to talk), his brother told the commander that Card had no personal weapons, and that he and his father would be sure of that. The unit commander let Card alone to have time for himself. 

Note. Untreated schizophrenia only gets worse. Time alone to think is very dangerous. Thinking is the opposite of healthy. 

Eighteen people dead.

So. Should the community of Lewiston known about Robert Card? Apparently the important players knew. But not his neighbors. Probably not the people bowling. 

Should the Plainfield community have known about the strange man who rented his home to a Palestinian family? Should they have known he would be dangerous?

I hate the word should. But I will say that when we get to know the people in our neighborhood, as Mr. Rogers always advised, we are more likely to find such things out. 

That's modern day community mental health. 

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MOTHERLAND מולדת

 The song I wanted to post is called Motherland. 

I posted the wrong one, sorry, although that was nice. 

Chanan ben Ari, pictured here, wrote the song before the war, grieving the political conflict within the country, seemingly irresolvable differences regarding the Supreme Court. 

The war proves that there is no dividing the Jewish people when it comes to defending the country. Forced to defend Eretz Yisrael the Jewish people, at least in Israel, are one..  

 Here's a link to the article. You might have to look for the place at the top of the page that translates it from Hebrew to English. 

In case that's too complicated, here's some of it:

Chanan ben Ari on Motherland

Ben Ari released "Motherland", which he also wrote and composed even before the war broke out, and dedicated it to the State of Israel which is facing difficult and terrible times the likes of which it has never known. "We have the most beautiful nation in the world," he said, "don't look at the news, don't look at Twitter. Go to the streets and see. The nation of Israel is alive."

This morning (Monday) Hanan Ben Ari released a new song called "Motherland", which he wrote and composed even before the war broke out . Ben Ari dedicated the song to the State of Israel, "not the one that was here until a week ago", he clarified, "but to the one we will rebuild when all this is over. When we rise from hell, when we return from the battle. Not because we have nowhere to go, and not from the fire of revenge." 

The song is accompanied by a clip with photographs from the last few days, in which we see the good people of Israel in countless voluntary initiatives, reservists at the front who maintain high morale - and even the President of the United States, Joe Biden, appears there for a moment.

That's the cameo worth waiting for, but the video is beautiful. It's embedded below. No matter the song it seems, these Israeli artists make me cry.

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חנן בן ארי - מולדת | Hanan Ben Ari

חנן בן ארי - עטלף עיוור | Hanan Ben AriT

They Sing, they sing

If Bob Hope were around today, he would entertain the troops in Israel. I'm sure. 

Why Israel is Forever the Fall Guy

 I can’t say it any better than this. Even if you only read the first few paragraphs you’ll see where it’s going. 

Yossi Klein Halevi in Times if Israel.

I like their reporting in general, Times of Israel.

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Taking a Side

 I think we can sum it up like this, regarding what happened on college campuses last week and the week before: 

If you don't condemn it, 

   you condone it. 

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Blood Libel Confirmed

Protest against the War in Gaza at a Skokie Marianos

A prayer meeting in Skokie, Illinois is interrupted by protesting Palestinians harassing Jews trying to get into the assembly hall to pray. There are two thousand Jews trying to pray peacefully in an assembly hall. The mob scene, people praying, people protesting the war in Gaza, is difficult to leave. Hundreds are crowded in a Marianos parking lot where the overflow is parking their cars. 

The Palestinians make up a story that one of their children has been run over, a Jewish person did this, wanted to do this. There is no evidence that this happened. None.

Today a New York Times headline reports that Hamas actually failed to prove the accusation that the missile that hit a hospital in Gaza came from Israel. Turns out, it was a Hamas missile that backfired. The Times finally caught on. You can see the video in the previous post. 

If you want to blame Israel for something, just don't present any evidence to the contrary

Those who know about propaganda understand that to win a war sometimes takes more than rockets. It can take a good deal of psychological insight. Hamas has it in spades.

Never miss an opportunity to malign the enemy, to make the enemy look really bad, even if that enemy feeds, houses, and finds you jobs on her own turf.

Historically, pre-Crusade but well before that, when Christians (many of whom are now the best of friends with Israel) wanted to slander the Jews they constructed malicious lies about the Passover custom of dipping a finger into a glass of wine, decorating a plate with red droplets. Ten droplets are the equivalent of each of the Ten Plagues. 

Dipping a finger, or a spoon, into a glass of grape juice or red wine is a way to teach children to remember the plagues unleashed by God upon the Egyptians because their king, Pharaoh, refused to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. 

God wanted the Jews out of there, wanted them to go, to inherit their land, the very land that we are fighting over today. 

Thus at the Passover seder, to remember the story, to celebrate freedom, we take a spoon, or dab a finger into a glass of red wine, make a droplet on a plate and recite the plagues. We don't use the blood of Christian babies, as the blood libels of old actually believed.

Blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, livestock, boils, hail and fire, locusts, darkness, and the death of the first born son. 

Yes, the ten plagues imply death, but the word blood refers to rivers in Egypt turned into blood, God's doing. Let my people go. 

The 12th century pre-Crusader libel and many both before and after, is that Jews kill Christian children and dip matzahs into the blood during the seder to celebrate. Absolute libel. Extraordinarily ridiculous, nothing could be farther from the truth. To read more, click below.

The proximity of such charges to Easter was thus also often associated with the continuing belief that Jews were responsible for the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus. Blood libels, together with allegations of well poisoning, were a major theme in Jewish persecution in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern period. They were a central component in the development of modern antisemitism in the 19th century.

Blood libel accusations often led to pogroms, violent riots launched against Jews and frequently encouraged by government authorities.

Murder is expressly forbidden in the Torah, as are the blood sacrifices which were practiced by ancient pagan religions. In fact, Jewish dietary laws (kashrut), forbid the consumption of blood in food and require all blood to be drained from slaughtered animals before consumption.

Thus if a Hamas rocket misfires and hits a hospital in Gaza, Hamas can spin this and jump on the opportunity to lie and say, The Jews did it. 

Ditto, if a prayer meeting in Skokie is interrupted by protesting Palestinians harassing Jews, the Palestinians will make up a story that a Palestinians child was intentionally run over by a car in the Marianos parking lot. 

This is what we are dealing with. 

Those responsible for the mayhem (Palestinian war protesters) maced two policemen. 

This is what we are dealing with. You can see, psychologically at least, who is winning the war. 

You win if you lie, is the thing. You win if you can slander the enemy, lie about the enemy, make up terrible stories, the more terrible the better. Tale as old as time.

This is the kind of thing you teach your kids?

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Misfired rocket from Gaza Likely Caused Deadly hospital blast | AP visua...

Here's a video of what happened to the hospital in Gaza.

 

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That is from an Al Jezeera news cast soon after the hospital missile firing.

Like everyone else, I saw the news. an Israeli missile hits a Gazan hospital. It must be true, right? It's in the news. 

But then I saw a video by Al Jezeera, of all networks, showing that the missile actually originated in Gaza, that it didn't make it, and fell back, landing on a hospital. In Gaza. 

In a follow up from an Israeli feed, which had already posted about this, I hear that the missile fell onto a hospital parking lot, not the actual hospital, and only a dozen victims fell to the fire. 

In yet another story, we learn that this happens often when Hamas aims at Israel. Missiles fail, they don't make it very far and return to Earth. Gaza. The Iron Dome doesn't have to do the work of snapping them out of the air. They simply fail. 

CNN finally acknowledges that the story about the Israelis targeting a hospital is not true but hasn't the guts to apologize for disseminating a blood libel against the Jews without checking it out. 

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The War, Uncertainty, and Depression

Israeli security-acting on a tip finds 4 terrorists from Gaza in an apartment.

Let's take a minute and discuss the misinformation about the 'Israeli' strike on a hospital in Gaza. A video from Al Jazeera, of all places, indicates the missile came from Gaza, aimed for Israel, misfired and fell on a hospital parking lot. Yes, people were killed, but not as many as the news you get will tell you. The news we hear is, I hate to say it, biased, Jew-hating media. This business about Israelis aiming for a hospital is, in four words, yet another blood libel. 

Tom Lehrer used to sing, in National Brotherhood Week, .   The punchline, And everyone hates the Jews isn't funny, but we used to laugh. Because it feels, sometimes, like it's true.

In the therapy chat groups we are told that trauma victims in Israel need therapy. I signed up as did hundreds of my Jewish colleagues. One mentioned, Well, what about malpractice. My feeling is, what about it. 

My heart is in Israel, always, so I am in mourning as I work. 

Many of us feel stuck in the United States, our soul tied to the land and the people, unable to move for a million different reasons. We visit, we give money. FD and I have always wanted to be Israeli citizens, even have plans to move there next year. Even now. That's the plan. 

I'm grieving (oh, we can make it about me, why not) but am depressed, too. This grief is layered.

A woman I know, not in Israel, tells me she cries in the morning, cries before she sleeps, if she sleeps, she cries at random times in between, and this is normal, she knows it. She feels guilty for feeling good when she feels good. She feels guilty for not doing enough for the war effort. People are buying supplies from Amazon, shipping over to Israel. It is hard to keep up with the opportunities to help and we all have our own domestic and business responsibilities, too.

We in America, many of us, are like her. We feel helpless and hopeless and scared, we cry. We are very sad and angry. We pray constantly. This is not an exaggeration. Constantly. Obsessively. I get it, we are a tiny minority, but it feels as if we are everywhere.

So it is strange that we are not, as I tell FD, we are not in need of Citalopram or some other antidepressant, which would take away the tears that matter. We need the tears, in my professional opinion, to purge the negativity. We need the tears, in my metaphysical opinion, to get G-d's attention. This is a merciful G-d and tears, we think, influence Heavenly decisions. 

So we need anti-depressants but won't take them.  Give me my grief, my anger, yes even the depression. That is the party line. It proves I care. That I can't control the depression is mind-blowing. It is not simply a reaction to negative thoughts and it is not simply fear. Fear? We all have fear. The challenge, as the Buddha would say, is not to listen to fear. Don't do what she says to do.

 

I am afraid, I must be, of nuclear war, but don't dwell on it. I'm not even conscious of this fear unless someone brings it up. (Mindfulness training is amazing).  But this is unusual, not feeling fear but knowing it is there. It is in a place inside of me, and I am fighting it. 

 

So no, let's not medicate. Let's lean in or distract (I prefer that, distracting). Or go ahead and feel, damn it, I told a patient this week. Just cry.

 

That's what I'm trying to do. 

 

There's a thing on FaceBook that says: 

Your Jewish friends are NOT okay. 

This is in answer to the obvious question, Are you okay?

Of course we are not. 

But do we dwell on that not okay-ness? Do we want to talk about it?  

Not so much, if at all! We have a war to win. We have work to do. To fight a war soldiers needs energy, food, dry clothes, and most important, spirit, song, social media support, a belief in a positive outcome. And anger at a bad reporting.

 

No time for tears. No time for fear. No time for negative thoughts--definitely no time for those. No time for a biased media that loves anyone who hates Jews. Don't ask us for money, National Public Radio. You should rot, go under. 

Anger is nice in these situations. 

 

Is this the usual treatment for depression, avoiding medication? 

It can be.

But when you know it's not going to go away or let up at all, meds are recommended. For some of us, fake it 'til you make it has never been more important. Find some spirit, some light, serotonin, and hang onto it, and when it is completely gone, when the tank is empty, go ahead and cry. 

Get some sleep. Give to legitimate causes. Open the pocketbook. Find out how to do something.

The thing that kills us is the uncertainty. We can't stand not knowing what's to come. But emotionally healthy people have a high tolerance for uncertainty. They have patience, know when things are beyond their control. They know when they will have to 

WAIT AND SEE. 

Tolerance of uncertainty is critical at times like these. Tomorrow is a new day, until tomorrow we can wait and see what will be. And there is always another tomorrow. We hope. We pray. 

We haven't been confronted face to face with evil for over fifty years, and yet, here we go again. 

Did you see the story about the pizza restaurant in Gaza with a banner in the window: A holocaust survivor's face, an old woman, and a pizza? Both go into the oven. This is the implication. 

I couldn't make that up. 

This time, it appears, we have America on our side. From the too, not years into a war. God bless America. God bless Eretz Israel. God bless God bless Klal Yisrael (the congregation). 

Am Yisrael Chai.

The people of Israel, as FD likes to say, believe in life. Remember the words: Therefore choose life? 

Unfortunately that isn't the enemy's world view.

Blessings, 

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