Kinocide as a Strategy of Terrorism: Legal Frameworks and Case Law Analysis
The intentional targeting of families by terrorist organizations constitutes a particularly egregious form of violence that weaponizes the emotional and social core of civilian life. Recently termed as “kinocide,” this strategy involves the systematic destruction of family units through acts of murder, abduction, separation, sexual violence, and psychological trauma, which the assailants often perpetrate in the presence of family members, or through their exploitation, to intensify the victims’ suffering.
These acts are not incidental to broader campaigns of violence; rather, the targeted destruction and torture of families is a core component of the strategies employed by listed terrorist organizations such as ISIS, Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and recently by Hamas on October 7. As noted in an earlier post, kinocide is not a theoretical construct but a documented tactic used by terror groups to disrupt social cohesion, demoralize communities, and perpetuate fear and multi-generational trauma through the deliberate exploitation and annihilation of familial structures.
After the October 7 attacks in Israel, during which entire families were executed, tortured, or taken hostage by Hamas, the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes Against Women and Children, together with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights in Canada, published findings on at least six consistent and repetitive patterns. In conjunction with the distinct timing and circumstances of the attacks, these patterns suggest the October 7 attack on families were widespread and systematic, exploiting familial bonds and emotional ties to maximize pain and suffering.
Among the identified patterns of the Hamas operation were: committing acts of violence, including killing and severe injury, in the presence of other family members; eliminating entire family units; abduction and hostage-taking of families, including children; using digital and social media to broadcast abuses directly to the victims’ families and the general public, including by commandeering victims’ own social media accounts; intentionally separating family members; and burning and vandalizing of family homes. Often, homes were set on fire with the families still seeking shelter inside, with responders later discovering the charred bodies of victims in the rubble.
These acts resulted in a profound breakdown of family bonds and community life. The report concluded that the targeting of families was not random, but intentional and systematic. Significantly, by using social media, including the victims’ accounts, Hamas aimed to broadcast their crimes to the family and friends of the victims, and the public. This digital display of familial suffering not only magnified the psychological harm but also risks inspiring imitation by other terrorist groups worldwide. Such cases underscore the need to examine kinocide not merely as a collection of individual crimes, but as a coherent and escalating strategy of terrorism.
Kinocide and the Strategic Logic of Terror
Kinocide functions by targeting what is most intimate and stabilizing in civilian life: the family. Terrorist groups that engage in kinocide understand that the destruction of familial bonds can yield disproportionate psychological and social destabilization. The harm extends beyond individual victims and ripples through communities, paralyzing resistance and weakening collective resilience.
ISIS’s campaign against the Yazidis in Iraq illustrates the systematic logic of kinocide. Men were separated and executed, women were enslaved and systematically raped, and children were abducted, indoctrinated, and assigned new identities. These actions often took place in the presence of their family members.
The Nigerian Islamist terror organization Boko Haram similarly carried out coordinated attacks in the Lake Chad Basin region, where they abducted girls from schools, forced conversions with families, and coerced children into combat roles. The abduction of the Chibok girls became a global symbol of such violence, but the deeper strategy extended beyond that single event. Testimonies from survivors reveal consistent patterns. Families were deliberately torn apart, and children returned with trauma so severe they were often unable to integrate. The acts of Boko Haram deliberately exploited familial bonds by recruiting through relatives, severing children from their parents, and weaponizing the family unit as a tool of terror, indoctrination, and control.
Similarly, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), listed as a terrorist organization by the United States in 2001, brutalized communities in Uganda and the Central African Republic through a relentless campaign of child abduction and targeted violence against the family unit. The LRA employed terror tactics that systematically dismantled family life as part of its strategy to control and dominate civilian populations. The LRA abducted tens of thousands of children from their homes, subjected children to forced indoctrination, and compelled many to commit atrocities that severed ties with their families and communities. Many girls were forced into sexual slavery with LRA commanders, erasing traditional kinship roles and reproductive autonomy. These actions deliberately fractured kinship networks to weaken resistance and ensure the subjugation of abductees. In so doing the LRA generated long-term familial and community trauma.
Legal Frameworks: Gaps and Emerging Norms
Existing international legal frameworks, such as the Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions, address many of the individual components of kinocide, such as murder, rape, torture, and forced displacement. They do not, however, recognize the coordinated targeting of families as a distinct category of crime. For instance, the Rome Statute provisions on genocide (art. 6) and crimes against humanity (art. 7) include extermination, sexual slavery, and persecution, yet they do not articulate the compounded harm caused when such acts specifically target the family unit.
The Geneva Conventions emphasize civilian protections during conflict, including specific references to the rights of women and children. While these instruments prohibit collective punishment and terrorizing civilian populations, they do not directly address the exploitation and abuse of families as a deliberate tactic. National counterterrorism legislation in States such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom similarly defines terrorism in terms of politically or ideologically motivated violence against civilians, but remains largely silent on the systematic destruction of familial structures.
International bodies have taken incremental steps towards this recognition. For example, the UN Security Council has acknowledged the strategic use of sexual violence and human trafficking by terrorist groups in Resolution 2331 and Resolution 2349. These resolutions recognize how groups like ISIS and Boko Haram have used such tactics to target women and children, but they fall short of identifying family-targeted violence as a distinct practice. Likewise, NATO’s civilian protection doctrine includes guidance on minimizing harm to civilian infrastructure and population centers, yet it does not conceptualize the family as a protected legal unit in and of itself, nor does it address kinocide in operational terms.
Precedents from Terrorism Cases in Germany and Uganda
The Jennifer W. case before the German Federal Court of Justice provides a powerful precedent for understanding kinocide as a component of terrorist violence. Assailants forced the co-plaintiff, a Yazidi mother, to watch her daughter die of heatstroke after an ISIS member tied the girl to a window grille. When she cried, the accused threatened to kill her as well. The court held this act was committed with full knowledge of the harm it would inflict and in conscious alignment with ISIS’s broader goal of obliterating Yazidi identity.
The accused not only facilitated these acts of violence but actively reinforced ISIS’s system of domination by compelling the victims to adopt Islamic religious practices and names. Through this case, the German judiciary laid a foundational example for how national authorities can prosecute kinocide as a strategy of terrorism tied to genocide and crimes against humanity.
A parallel legal recognition of kinocidal acts emerges in the prosecution of Dominic Ongwen, a former commander of the LRA in Uganda. The International Criminal Court judgment in Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen offers one of the clearest judicial articulations of how the LRA used terror to deliberately dismantle family structures.
The Trial Chamber found that the LRA had abducted children en masse, tore them from their homes, and subjected them to rituals that psychologically alienated them from civilian life. LRA members often forced the abductees to witness or participate in killings, including of their relatives, to destroy pre-existing attachments and deepen their dependence on the LRA. Though the Court did not label these actions as kinocide, the record demonstrates an orchestrated campaign by the LRA to sever family bonds and reconfigure identity through coercion, violence, and ideological control.
Further, the Court extensively analyzed the LRA’s gender-based violence, which played a significant role in its strategy of terror. Women and girls were abducted, forcibly assigned to commanders as so-called “wives,” and subjected to systemic rape, forced pregnancy, and enslavement, often in the presence of family members or through the deliberate rupture of familial ties. These practices were not only crimes against the individuals involved but also mechanisms designed to destroy familial continuity and undermine cultural transmission. The Ongwen judgment recounts how sexual violence served not merely as an opportunistic abuse of power, but as a structural tool for disempowering communities.
The Ongwen case further recognized how the LRA’s crimes inflicted distinct and compounded suffering upon families. In its reparations order, the Court emphasized the intergenerational impact of these crimes, particularly the breakdown of family structures, the separation of families, and the profound familial and communal harm caused by the murder, abduction, and removal of daughters, sons, and spouses. As a result, the Chamber mandated reparations specifically designed to address the destruction of familial bonds. In particular, the ICC detailed moral and material harms arising from family members being separated, harmed, or killed in front of one another, as well as the trauma of witnessing such atrocities and the enduring impact on the family unit.
This recognition aligns with the conceptual framework of kinocide, as it affirms that terror groups deliberately target the family unit not only to maximize the harm inflicted on individuals but to dismantle the social fabric that sustains identity, belonging, and resilience. It also underscores the need for legal frameworks to name and address such conduct as a distinct and aggravating element of terrorism.
The October 7 Attacks and Kinocide
The October 7 attacks follow a similar pattern. Hamas entered homes with the intent to torture, separate, and slaughter entire families, or kidnap them for use as hostages. However, Hamas’s actions also added a digital dimension to kinocide. In several cases, Hamas commandeered the phones of victims and used them to film themselves committing atrocities. They also hijacked victims’ social media accounts to live stream the brutalities as they unfolded, thereby broadcasting the horror of the attacks to the victims’ family members in real time.
The perpetrators also uploaded images of the victims on the victims’ personal profiles, thus weaponizing the victims’ own digital identities to spread terror to their families. For example, after murdering an elderly grandmother in Nir Oz, the attackers “posted footage of [her] body … on her Facebook account,” forcing her family to learn of her fate on social media. In another case, terrorists sent Leah Zaken a photograph of her murdered son via WhatsApp as the attacks continued to unfold. This was a deliberate act of terror.
The deliberate hijacking and broadcasting of victims’ accounts was a calculated strategy by Hamas to “widely disseminate the atrocities to the public and directly to the victims’ loved ones,” magnifying the psychological torment for families during the attacks. These were not opportunistic acts but deliberate tools of terror that weaponized kinship ties to increase suffering and dismantle a society from within. The use of digital hijacking represents a modern evolution of psychological warfare, intensifying the reach and durability of trauma far beyond the battlefield.
Leah Zaken is now petitioning Israeli courts for formal recognition as a victim of terror, seeking acknowledgement and compensation for the profound emotional harm inflicted upon her. The Civil Commission has joined the case as an expert witness and has submitted the Kinocide Report to the courts in this and similar cases by the Ministry of Justice-Legal Aid Department. The report underscores the need to expand legal recognition of victims beyond those who suffered physical violence to include those targeted that day by the terrorists’ use of social media and digital platforms.
Conclusion
Kinocide constitutes one of the most brutal evolutions in the modern strategy of terrorism. It is neither a side effect nor an accidental by-product of war. Rather, it is a methodically applied tactic that seeks to multiply suffering and disempower communities through the targeted destruction, and the deliberate abuse and exploitation, of their most intimate and sustaining relationships. While the constituent acts of kinocide are known and documented, the strategy behind them has gone unnamed and unaddressed for too long.
Legal recognition of kinocide is essential to dismantling the full architecture of this form of terrorism, which relies not only on physical violence but on the psychological devastation of families. The October 7 attacks, which Hamas documented and deliberately broadcast, revealed the unique suffering inflicted through the abuse of families and set a dangerous precedent. This precedent may inspire replication by other terrorist groups and risks becoming a blueprint for future acts of terror worldwide.
Confronting kinocide as a core tactic of terrorism affirms that the deliberate targeting of families is a profound affront to human dignity. Kinocide is a crime that demands accountability under international law and necessitates serious re-evaluation of counter‑terrorism strategies by national security institutions worldwide. For too long, terrorist groups have used what we believe is family-targeted terror to sow fear, dismantle resistance, and impose ideological control.
Prosecutorial frameworks must now consider family-targeted terror as a stand-alone charge when evaluating the conduct of terrorist actors. National security institutions tasked with counterterrorism must treat kinocide as a core tactic of modern terror. International organizations charged with preventing and responding to terrorism must also recalibrate their approaches to reflect the realities of modern warfare, in which families are primary targets. Failing to recognize and address kinocide risks a critical blind spot in both legal accountability and global security.
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Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy is founder and Chair of the Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children and 2024 Israel Prize recipient.
Prof Irwin Cotler is founder and International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, an Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and longtime parliamentarian, and an international human rights lawyer.
Stewart Wiseman is a graduate of McGill University’s Faculty of Law and is a researcher with the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes Against Women and Children.
The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Articles of War is a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Articles of War does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. Authorship does not indicate affiliation with Articles of War, the Lieber Institute, or the United States Military Academy West Point.
Photo credit: Madalena Veloso via Unsplash
