How about we refuse to be manipulated by the latest rushed-to-press news story?

UPDATE: Now that some hostages have been released, some allegations of sexual abuse have been confirmed.

A brief comment because a former and now blocked reader tried to use my flash fiction to spread dubious information and accusations on the Israel/Hamas war. The commenter implied I was hiding behind my flash fiction (something I started before the war) to avoid writing about something she assumed was against my politics.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that no one knows what is happening. Really. No one knows. If you’re writing or commenting about this war, maybe be careful about what you conclude and write. It’s okay to argue about policy, legal interpretation, and opinion about who’s right or wrong or who pursued a stupid, negligent, and deadly strategy. But if you’re talking about events and occurrences on the ground, and you are not on the ground, you are not in any position to write what you’re writing, and you’re probably making things worse.

This story from The Foward chronicles how some sources that vehemently claimed brutal rape have now backed off these claims. The paper refused to post the unverified videos. We know Creepy Twitter, known as X, has allowed altered and recycled videos to appear on the site. Here too.[We also know that AI can create videos based on prompts using old videos.] The Foward concluded no one knows if Hamas committed widespread rape or not.

The primary source rape allegations, according to The Forward, was a brief video of a handcuffed woman dragged into a car who had a dark stain on the seat of her pants. Evidence of rape, or being dragged over dirt or mud, or a digestive accident from fear. We don’t know. No one knows. I feel terrible for that woman and worry about her, but spreading a story doesn’t help her. It fans the flames and makes her less secure. The stated intent of the comment I deleted on my flash fiction story was to push me into spreading the same rape story The Forward says most sources are now unsure about. Why should I spread an unverified, poorly sourced, and unverified story? I guess it would make that former reader feel better about her fear-driven feelings of hate. And that’s a point to ponder. Horrible stories seem to make people feel better because it justifies their fears and hate.

The latest, a hospital bombing, predictably elicited the knee-jerk conclusion that OMG Israel is intentionally bombing hospitals. Israel’s opponents now use this not confirmed not fact to increase the morale and fervor of people they hope to drive to more violence and terrorism. But, the story is changing and many people will be driven to violence over lies. (Sound familiar?) Now, many say the hospital bomb was an errant missile and not from Israel. CNN’s current reporting concludes that no one knows. Al Jazeera reported on the dueling theories and does not claim to know which is correct.

I wrote about politics and policy for decades. I learned to slow down or pass on real-time events to which I was not a party or attendee because I saw times when the people passionately spreading a story had to back off. I also saw people embarrass themselves by doubling down on a known lie — like WMD in Iraq and absolutely everyone at a district event came from outside of the district — and I’m talking about my former congressman known for lying and now remembered for little else.

I remember all the lies about the Iraq War. We don’t know what really happened in Iraq other than the warmongers lied about WMD and many other things to fan the flames and get the media to convince Americans and Europeans that the war was justified and inevitable and that a lot of money went missing. The Guardian story linked just above reports how the Iraq War led to the post-truth era, where everything is a lie to manipulate people. How about let’s agree not to be manipulated by unsubstantiated stories and outright lies?y

If any of the alleged atrocities are true, they should be prosecuted as war crimes.