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The Age of Incuriosity

We live in an age of soundbites and quick fixes. People want to be spoon fed information and don’t wish to research anything for themselves. They see a headline, read it, and believe what it says without reading the full story, which often says something completely different from what the headline implied. They see a post on social media which is a sentence taken out of context, and make an assumption about the person making the statement, which may be far from what that person believes. They don’t go looking for the whole interview to get to the truth. I have seen this a lot recently.

This, of course, can be a dangerous thing if the person disseminating the information is either deliberately or unknowingly incorrect. Those with an audience have a responsibility to that audience, to ensure that what they state as true, really is.

It isn’t just individuals who hold a responsibility. The media, our governments and international agencies should all be held to account when they propagate lies. One of the most egregious recently bandied about, was by the UN when they stated that 14,000 infants in Gaza would die in the following 48 hours. What they should have said, was that the figure was projected for the next 12 months, should aid into Gaza not be increased. Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, made the claim to the BBC. Of course, with the speed of light, the claim travelled around the world and was posted all over news channels and social media. The subsequent UN correction debunking their own statement was not.

It points to a general trend in a lack of curiosity, critical thinking and desire for the truth.

This can only be the start of a slippery slope. If people can’t sift through information and work out what a true and what is not, they can be fed a diet of half truths and lies and not realise it.

It will lead us into a nightmare we are not able to get out of.

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International Women’s Day

We now know that the two Bibas boys and their mother were murdered while in Gaza. They were not killed accidentally or by an air strike, their deaths were deliberate. The two tiny boys were murdered with bare hands. Let that sink in for a second. A 10 month old and a 4 year old, were killed deliberately, their bodies mutilated to try to cover up the cause of their deaths.

What sort of society does that? What sort of society is it where mothers openly talk about sending their children to become martyrs because of their embedded hatred of Jews?

Contrast that with those Jewish women, who on October 7th sacrificed their lives to protect their children, or Shiri Bibas who cradled her boys to try to protect them while they were all being abducted.

Today, on International Women’s Day, I think of all those women who were killed at the hands of Hamas and their supporters on 7th October.

I think of all the women of Ukraine who have been killed by Russian aggression.

I think of all those women in Syria currently being murdered by the new regime because they are members of the Alawite, Christian and Druze communities.

I think of all those oppressed women of Afghanistan and Iran.

I think of all those women whose freedoms are curtailed simply because they are women and the place of their birth.

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Since October 2023

I don’t know when the world’s moral compass was tossed overboard to be lost to the deep, but it has become clear to me over the past 15 months that is just what has happened.

On October 7th 2023, Hamas terrorists broke into Israel and tortured, raped and murdered 1200 people, wounded 4000 and kidnapped 251 Israeli and foreign nationals who were taken to Gaza. As I started to write, 94 were still in Gaza and there were 4 additional hostages who have been held from an earlier time. No-one is yet sure which of the hostages are alive and which are not. There are still two infants among their number.

At the Nova music festival, a festival for peace, 10% of the attendees were either murdered or kidnapped. Young women tied to trees were raped and murdered, nails inserted into their genitals. Other festival goers had to listen to their screams, knowing they could do nothing to help.

In the kibbutzim, family homes were set on fire with the occupants, in many cases children, inside.

Even as the news was still trickling out, even as the horrors of the events were still being revealed, people around the world began marching “for Palestine” with chants calling for intifada. Even before the bodies had been gathered and the families informed.

Various news outlets reporting the events of October 7th, did so in an almost cursory way and some of the reporting has been far from balanced.

Prior to October 7th, I didn’t particularly support either Israel or Palestine but if pushed, because I typically side with the underdog, I would have sided with the Palestinians. The logic being that Israel can take of itself and is economically more vibrant. Now, that has changed.

The more details that became known of the events of that day, the more videos and photographs posted on social media, awful images that are impossible to forget, the more the extent of the sadism became apparent. This wasn’t “normal.”  

When Gaza and Israel have been at war previously, they have fired rockets at each other. It is impersonal and yes, people die, many innocent. What felt different about October 7th was not only the very personal nature of the killing, but it seemed to me as though it was the younger generations which were being particularly targeted. One story which sticks with me was that of a young teenage boy who was forced by Hamas terrorists to walk up and down the street on which he lived, calling to his neighbours that it was safe to leave their homes. He was then murdered. To me, that was so reminiscent of the Nazis going house to house to round up the Jews of Europe to send them to the gas chambers.

The delight of the Hamas terrorists who committed these horrendous acts was sickening and that is one of the hardest things to understand.

Early in 2024, the head of the UN Agency for Women was interviewed on British television. At this point, there was unequivocal evidence that rapes had taken place, but she couldn’t bring herself, not only to admit that fact, but to condemn them. It reminded me that not very long ago, women were on the streets of Britain, voices raised, holding vigils for a British woman who had been raped and murdered. Now there was complete silence. The only difference I could see was that those young women in Israel were Jewish.

There has been an exponential rise in antisemitism worldwide over the past 15 months. Synagogues have been attacked, Jews attending a football game in Amsterdam were attacked.

A ceasefire came into operation a couple of weeks ago, and yet there are still marches for Palestine, proof that they were never about a ceasefire but everything about antisemitism, and wanting to see Israel wiped off the map. My fear now is that we will not be able to get the antisemitic genie back in the bottle.

No-one can dispute that many people in Gaza have died since the onset of the war. The numbers are unclear since we have only the Hamas Health Ministry to provide them. The numbers which have been bandied about have been debunked by the Henry Jackson Institute, and it may be that we will never know. Any innocent loss of life is an appalling waste, but those unnecessary deaths are the responsibility of Hamas, in my view.

We have seen the release of some of the Israeli hostages, all young women, and I dread to think what they have been through. The world is waiting to find out the fate of the two tiny children and their parents who are still being held.