Vengeance can be transformed into compassion by humanizing the offender

Evidence

The transforming effect of perceived common humanity is further illustrated in a daughter’s mission of vengeance (Blumenfeld, 2002). Her father, a New York rabbi, was shot and wounded in Jerusalem by Omar Khatib, a Palestinian militant. Twelve years later, the daughter set out to exact revenge by forcing Khatib to confront his victim’s humanity. Concealing her identity, she exchanged letters with the jailed gunman. The militant gunman, the victim, and the filial avenger were humanized through this process. In a dramatic courtroom parole hearing, the daughter identified herself to Khatib as she pleaded for his release from prison, vowing he would never hurt anyone again. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 665 (#expands, via linked claim)

The pernicious legacy of the Holocaust is that today’s persecutors may inflict new pains and create new generations of victims eagerly awaiting their chance to do the same, while acting under the conviction that they are avenging yesterday’s pain and warding off the pains of tomorrow; while being convinced, in other words, that ethics is on their side. This is perhaps the greatest among the Holocaust’s curses and Hitler’s posthumous victories. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 671 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Justice is revenge deferred and transformed into objective legal procedure — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 305; Forcing a perpetrator to confront his victim’s humanity can dissolve hatred into compassion. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 665; Perceiving a victim’s shared humanity can break the disengagement that enabled violence — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2424 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Forcing a perpetrator to confront his victim’s humanity can dissolve hatred into compassion. #expands (0.95) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 665
• Support teams humanize executions to alleviate their own moral burden #complicates (0.78)
• Perpetrators can sincerely believe their own cruelty is ethical vengeance. #complicates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 671