Kinocide – The Annihilation of Familial Bonds The Impending Destruction of Humanity

The October 7th Massacre

Screenshot for educational purposes

By

Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D.

In the Civil Commission Report on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against women and children which is entitled “A crime without a name for victims without a voice,” Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy has introduced the term Kinocide into the lexicon—a specific and urgent form of genocide that targets families for total annihilation. This term has yet to be formalized in international law. But naming such acts is essential: language brings clarity and structure to otherwise unspeakable brutality. Kinocide refers to the systematic destruction of familial bonds through the murder of entire families, aiming to erase not just lives, but lineages, connections, and the very idea of home.

The term "kinocide" is a portmanteau: kin + -cide, meaning the murder of one’s family.

Understanding its etymology helps us grasp the profound weight of the term. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "kin" traces back to the Old English cynn, meaning family, race, tribe, or nature. It stems from the Proto-Germanic kunja- and the Proto-Indo-European root gene-, meaning "to give birth"—a root shared with words like genus and generation. Thus, "kin" is fundamentally tied to birth, the mother, lineage, and the human bond of procreation.

This linguistic history matters. It connects kinocide directly to kind and child, underscoring its horror: the targeted killing of parents in front of children and children in front of parents. The trauma is both physical and psychological. The acts often include rape, sexual abuse, and mutilation—an intentional severing of humanity at its roots.

What did Hamas reveal to us on October 7, 2023, when they attacked Israeli families—parents, children, grandparents, generations—in their homes? What unspoken message is carried in the slaughter of entire family units?

There is an elephant in the room: the unconscious drives behind such nihilistic violence. Why explore the unconscious of such actors? The answer is simple—it is not for them, but for us. This is not about extending empathy to perpetrators. They lack empathy; it was never nurtured within their psyche. Why? Because the psychodynamics of their shame-honor-based culture, wedded to radical Islam, have obliterated it. Death and destruction are all they know. The rage they express exceeds murder—it manifests in mutilation, desecration, shame and humiliation.

In this tactical and symbolic attack on Jews living near Gaza, Hamas and other Islamic groups—including civilians who joined in looting and mutilation—not only murdered Jews, but also non-Jews who lived and worked among them, such as Thai agricultural workers. Their actions reveal, perhaps more than anything else, the pathological state of their own family lives. Simply put: they hate their families. They project this hatred outward. The rage they cannot face internally is inflicted on others. It is terrifying to confront this reality—and perhaps this is why the concept of kinocide has gone undiscussed until now.

Kinocide is the most elemental form of genocide. Why? Because it destroys the foundational human structure: the family. In the Commission’s foundational legal document that uses the word "bonding" thirty times across eighty pages, what remains unspoken is this: Hamas deploys violence as a form of bonding. They attach to us through terror. In killing us, they attempt to fuse with us.

I borrow here the concept of "death fusion," coined by American psychoanalyst S. Orgel in analyzing Sylvia Plath’s suicide. When I encountered this term while researching Islamic suicide terrorism, I saw it as the perfect explanation for 9/11. Suicide bombers fuse with their victims, annihilating both self and other in a psychopathic, parasitic bond. cf. my The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth of Islamic Suicide Bombing, Potomac, 2010.

Modern psychology often speaks of attachment styles—secure, avoidant, disorganized. But attachment always implies bonding. In these attacks, Hamas fuses violently with its victims, expressing an unconscious fantasy of killing the mother. They are psychotically bonded to a maternal object—riddled with shame, humiliation, and violence—that they must obliterate. Under the guise of politics, they inflict this psychic wound on others.

Studies show that up to 95% of thought and 94% of non-verbal behavior is unconscious. Hamas’s actions scream of deep self-hatred and family-hatred. Yet, in today’s politically sanitized discourse, such truths are taboo. Still, we must speak them.

Violent bonding exposes a cultural bankruptcy. You cannot fix Gaza with money. No infrastructure project can address unmet psychological needs this deep. The rage that exceeds murder cannot be soothed by material aid.

Society begins with the family. As the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott said, "Home is where we start from." For Hamas, home is where annihilation begins. Their familial bonds are not only broken—they are obliterated. Nothing will improve until we, not they, understand this. Kinocide must be recognized not only as a newly coined legal term, but as the clearest expression of the psychotic collapse that threatens all humanity.

We Jews are merely the canary in the coal mine. What starts with us will not end with us. Kinocide is not just a war crime against a people—it is a crime against the bonds that make us human. To fail to acknowledge it is to fail life itself.