In my first year of secondary school, 52 years ago, with the madness of war in south-east Asia playing itself out, and the Cold War continuing to be very cold, I learned in English that "the first casualty of war is truth". I think the larger topic within the English curriculum was "Propaganda."
In 2025 this acute and accurate phrase seems as pertinent to discernment when reading the news as ever.
No one doubts that Gaza has been mostly destroyed, that a lot of people have lost their lives, many more injured, and there have been shortfalls of basic facilities to meet needs - damaged hospitals, interruptions to supplies of food and the like. But what is true and what are lies (or fudges) about precise numbers, about whether there has been famine, about whether Hamas or other gangs have stolen emergency supply lorries and subsequently sold goods at inflated prices, about whether the undestroyed parts of Gaza have flourishing food markets and restaurants (I have seen photos ... but photos can be doctored, produced from the past as though present reality, etc), about whether (say) journalists have been working for Hamas (so Israel claims in justification of killing them), hospitals have been used as military commands, schools have hidden entrances to tunnels (again, so Israel has claimed) ... there is a long list. My point here is not to take any one side re truth-telling/false-narrative-spreading in this (horrible) war and this consequential war on truth, but to observe that there are reasons to think that the adage I first came across as a thirteen year old continues to hold true.
This also seems to be the case in a very recent bit of news. The older news is that terrible, deadly conflict has been going on in Nigeria between (putting it evenly, even if that itself is not a true reflection of the conflict) Christians and Muslims, especially in rural areas. The recent news is that President Trump has offered assistance to the Nigerian government to bring an end to what he describes as "persecution of Christians." Clearly a number of concerned Christians in the West, presumably particularly in the USA itself, have found the ear of the President and he has listened. My interest has then been in seeing some news articles which have taken up the challenge of explanation: what is really going on, are Christians being persecuted by marauding Muslim forces (beyond control of the Nigerian government), or is there another explanation, a socio-economic one between different groups seen from an economy perspective (which happen to be Christian and Muslim respectively)? Now I don't know enough to give any kind of precise rebuttal to such articles, but reports of terrible atrocities against Nigerian Christians have been made for years now, if not in mainstream media, then in Christian media. Where does the truth lie? Is it possible that the truth (Christians are being killed and their buildings destroyed by Muslim forces such as Boko Haram) is becoming a casualty of this particular war, aided and abetted by some elements in Western media?
It is also the case that the truth of any situation can be challenging for any of us, whether we are in a a non-military conflict or a family argument or ... church life. What actually happened? Who provoked whom? Who said what? All too many inter-personal conflicts, in the church and outside the church, in my experience (and no doubt in yours) involve "she said/he said" versions of whatever it was that actually happened. Few of us have the time to engage in detailed enquiries to determine what was actually said and who, if anyone, was at fault. But there are other situations where it is important that we determine the truth of what happened - well-being of hearts and minds, appointments, employment are at stake, depending on what actually happened between two people or two factions. In the Anglican world, recent years have highlighted around the globe, and here in these islands, both that we are in a new world of transparency (things cannot and should not be "swept under the carpet") and that we are in a new world of public accountability: locally, this has been pressed on us by the recent Royal Commission on Abuse.
Within Christian contexts we may usefully recall texts such as 1 John 1:7, "If we walk in the light as [God] himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin."; and Ephesians 4:1-3, " ... lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love ... maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
But, if many conflicts most of us will experience in our lifetimes are helped by attitudes such as "patience", we should not lose sight of the crisis in Nigeria: the longer it takes to secure peace, the more people will be hurt, maimed and killed. We should be impatient for a resolution there and, of course, to what is continuing conflict in Gaza, despite the ceasefire, and what is terrifying for Palestians in the West Bank.
16 comments:
Well, of course it is very difficult to know the truth about events far away, especially when access to these conflict zones is restricted and our conduits for information are being played (sometimes willingly) by parties on the ground - like The Telegraph report about Panorama et al which discloses that the BBC has been passing on Hamas inventions (the burials in Gaza) as the work of the evil Zionists. Or the evidently orchestrated reports of "famine" in Gaza. But that doesn't stop people very far away taking part in performative agitprop, like Anglican clerics chaining themselves to the doors of government buildings. How strange that people in Wellington "know" what is happening in a war zone many thousands of kilometres away - while just down the road probably the worst corruption in NZ Police history is about to burst open. Or also also just down the road, open tribal warfare based on corruption and family feuds breaks out in a bizarre political party that hopes to become part of the next coalition government. Some very obvious wrongdoing in these scandals which will effect the wellbeing of every New Zealander. How strange that these publicly moralising clerics seem to have no knowledge of what is going on under their noses or any opinion of them.
Too many people are living a digital existence and not a real one. It's all performative, with no more depth than the pixels on their smartphone screens.And too many of us acquire our "knowledge" of the world through entertainment instead of the hard, exacting work of serious reading and reflecting, the only way through which anything worthwhile can be known.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William
I agree with you that discerning the truth of things (especially far away) is hard work and needs to be done. Of course, things closer at home such as Te Pati Maori's issues and the now much headlined NZ Police stories this week, are "far away" in another, non-geographic sense ... who knows exactly what went on when things began to unravel etc - and similar hard work is needed!
Hard work is needed - but also openness and honesty, not the use of injunctions and court orders to suppress the truth. And a good, hard look at how "public servants" in NZ Police see themselves as the real power in the land, seeking to secure the next senior appointments and the continuance of policies they want rather than the elected government. And this they would do to the extent of intimidating someone complaining about actual crimes and corruption. Not to mention the scabrous person they were seeking to promote. If NZ clerics wish to opine on political questions, there is plenty here. (Unfortunately, the principals here are progressivists of the left, the architects of "policing by consent".) As for TPM (and the Greens), this shows us the absurdity of an ethnic electoral system that returns to Parliament emotional teenagers and student demagogues whom most people, if they actually met them, wouldn't trust to run a pie cart.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
I am definitely very weary at this present time about information and the truth of it from any source. What surprises me is the number of people who take things as a given and don’t look past their first source of information. Often if I raise an alternative viewpoint just to broaden understanding, as opposed to saying that ‘it is the actual truth,’ they are surprised there is another viewpoint. So yes I agree +Peter, truth and searching for it or standing by it in the face of much falsehood is a worthy pursuit aligned with another commonly referenced quote, “when good men (humankind) do nothing evil flourishes.”
I too am cautious of the trend to have mass rallies about global happenings as the sources of people’s information can be acutely bias and I get concerned when I see them being used themselves as propaganda to support particular entities. Meanwhile as a local society we seem to get enraged by sexual abuse happening when it is disclosed (of course this is appropriate) but not so much that there seems to be an attitude of ignorance or being blasé about the sexualised content on our TV’s and the cultural normalisation of sexual immorality (it is the only term for it - some adverts for series of programmes I find disturbing without even watching them like partner swapping and lets kill off the people we find we don’t like) in everyday living without a thought of the two being inter-related. Perhaps because the first involves others, the second requires accountability from all of us.
Local or global I agree +Peter, both are obscured in terms of really knowing the truth because unless we are at the coal face it is all second hand information. That being said, like in biblical times, those who are true witnesses tend to be the best form of source - more so if there are multiple witnesses whose experiences co-relate. I see the first memoir of a Hamas hostage has been published. Albeit no doubt a heavy read it does sound insightful as he has given his first hand accounting without comment on any of the political aspects. I also came across an interview of a young man (relatively new immigrant) who is part of the West Banks new settlements who openly said he was not concerned about Palestinian farmers and what happened to them as he saw them as the enemy.
I suspect William that there is/was famine in Gaza and the debatable part is who is at fault. Hamas stealing aid and re-selling it, Israel stopping aid distribution to starve out Hamas…. As for Nigeria my understanding is the conflict over land use is less indexed to religion but Bako Haram’s continual persecution of people is indexed to their groups extremist Islamic views which also see more moderate Islamic sects as apostates alongside Christian’s. It does appear extreme Islamic teaching in many countries contains inherently violent ideology whether it is towards people, largely women, within their family context or outwardly towards those who do not adhere to their beliefs.
Jean, the use of the words 'famine' and 'genocide' was all part of a PR game of lawfare against the State of Israel - by the very same actors who have NEVER once attempted to arraign Hamas for public executions or murdering homosexuals, let alone the vast number of crimes that Hamas committed before and after 7 Oct 2023. In other words, politics parading as political piety.
Did these self-appointed jurists ever pronounce on the actual genocide of Israeli babies on 7 Oct 2023? Of course not. Did these high-minded persons seek to prosecute Hamas for building bases and tunnels under hospitals, schools and mosques, in flagrant violation of international law? It was all performative politics.
The real criminal in my view was the world political order that allowed Hamas to stay in power all these years, terrorising the people, preventing any elections, and stealing aid, while receiving money and arms from Iran for the purpose of attacking Israel. If the US, the EU and the UK had worked together, they could have strangled the Hamas monster in 2008. But they didn't because the political will wasn't there and appeasing Muslims at home is the no. 1 policy requirement of the left - in Britain, for example, the Labour Party is terrified of losing Muslim votes.
The death toll in Gaza - whatever the true figure - is awful and the destruction utterly immense. (The actual figure may never be known, but remember the utterly wild claims that the Israelis had 'bombed' Al Shahli hospital and 'killed 500 ' - both claims completely fallacious but duly reported.) But three factors must be borne in mind (and this is relevant to the matter of Peter's op-piece):
1. Hamas doesn't fight in uniform (except when attacking or intimidating other Gazans), so nobody knows how many of the dead were 'civilians' and how many were Hamas terrorists. Of course, pretending to be civilians, using human shields and building bases under schools, hospitals etc are all against every law of war. But hey, Hamas gets a pass.
2. Both Hamas and Egypt refused to allow the civilians to evacuate to allow a straight Hamas v. IDF battle - which is how most wars in the modern era have been conducted. Why didn't the Egyptians allow the Gazans to evacuate to the Sinai? For the same reason all other Arab states don't want Palestinians living among them and destabilising them, as the Palestinians did in Kuwait, siding with Saddam Hussein until they were expelled in 1991.
3. Urban warfare where civilians are not allowed to evacuate is always going to be horrific. New Zealanders of all people should know about the Battle of Manila in Feb 1945, when the Japanese kept the city captive while the Americans attacked. In a few weeks at least 100,000 civilians died and vast areas were devastated. For this, the Imperial Japanese Army, with its racist contempt of non-Japanese lives, was entirely to blame.
The truth is, since 1977 the Palestinians (an ethnic identity not known before c. 1965) have had endless opportunities to seek a 'two-state solution' with Israel, Why has this never happened? There have been recalcitrant Israeli politicians, to be sure, but the fundamental reason is that too many Palestinians don't actually want that outcome, they still dream bizarrely of driving the Zionists into the sea - a zero sum game that is fed by ethno-religious fanaticism. That this anti-semitic idea has caught on in the western left-green is very worrying for our politics.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
William regardless of the mis-use of humanitarian suffering for political point scoring do you think that means there was no lack of adequate food supplies in Gaza? UNICEF did do a nutritional assessment of children in Gaza city and found one fifth to be suffering from malnutrition. That civilians are casualties of war is a given but it does not make it less tragic.
I do think the lack of coverage particularly by the international media of what happened on October the 7th was evident and surprised me at the time.
My understanding is that the term Palestinian was coined by the Romans way back when to describe a group of people living in a regional area who came from many surrounding countries and the Holy Land itself - hence we get Palestinian Arabs, Palestinian Christians etc…. In regards to Egypt my understanding is Hamas originated in Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood and it took them a long time to quell the political unrest cause by them and hence (only in my opinion) it wasn’t surprising they weren’t keen to open their borders.
The history of the PLO, and the creation of the Palestinian Authority who now have some role in governing the West-bank/Judea/Samaria with Israel is a long one. To say the Palestinians in this area had plenty of opportunities to implement the two state solution I think is too generalised, there has been violence towards Israeli’s in these areas by Palestinians during uprisings but at the same time Israel has restricted the movement of ‘regular’ Palestinians and their access to water and continued constructing more settlements on land supposedly to be given back to Palestinian Governance.
I understand Hamas and the extremist Islam ideology they adhere to includes getting rid of the State of Israel, I don’t know if the majority of Palestinians want all Israeli’s ‘gone’ taking into account 21 per cent of the population of Israel is Palestinian by ethnicity.
Jean, I have no doubt that Gazan children were suffering some level of malnutrition - war does that to people. Don't forget that the war was started by Hamas on 7 October 2023 when they swarmed across a basically unguarded border and murdered 1200 (including babies decapitated) and kidnapped over 200. Plenty of Gazan 'civilians' joined them to rape, murder and kidnap.
Israel left Gaza in 2006. Gaza was 'Judenfrei' and running itself all that time. Gaza could have stayed at peace with Israel and Gazans could still be working in Israel as they used to. But they decided to provoke a war and hoped that Iran and Hezbollah would join in. But Israel largely disabled Hezbollah and the Americans blew up the Iranian nuclear programme.
Egypt could have let the Gazan civilian population take refuge in the Sinai - but they didn't. They know that Hamas are Islamic fundamentalists who cause dissension and conflict everywhere they go. The Israelis conducted urban warfare in a way no one had ever seen before: they actually phoned up the apartment blocks where Hamas were located to tell the people they had ten minutes to leave before firing began. cancer that is Hamas has to be excised. Hamas fighters do not wear uniform, so IDF forces have to be wary of everybody. Soldiers in civilian dress is a violation of the laws of warfare, as is using homes, schools, hospitals, mosques etc as attack bases. Who in the left has condemned Hamas for this? No one. Sheer bias and hypocrisy - as well as the soft bigotry of low expectations.
The Romans never used a demonym of 'Palestinian'; AFAIK. The people of Syria-Palestina were not Arabs either - they were Jews and Hellenistic Syrians for a very long time. The area did not begin to be Arabized until the 7th century, and had numerous overlordships over the centuries, but mainly Turkish, then British. The ethnic term 'Palestinian' only dates from c. 1965. Israeli Arabs are not 'Palestinians', they are Israeli citizens who speak Arabic and Hebrew.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hello William and Jean
There is a very complex situation in the above discussion.
On the one hand, I am appalled (per what William says) with the direction Hamas has taken Gaza in, when its future without Hamas could have been so much better, and peaceful.
On the other hand, there is a deep root within many "ordinary" (i.e. non-Hamas) Palestinians which longs for "return" to the villages and lands they/their families were displaced from in 1948 (and, we might note, we are seeing further displacement occurring TODAY as uncontrolled settler aggression burns and pillages its way through the West Bank.) Might Palestinians ever accept that there is going to be no return?
On the other hand, there are political forces in Israel keeping Netenyahu's government in power, which have extreme anti-Palestinian (possibly even anti-Israeli Arab) views, fuelling some acts of aggression by the IDF (i.e. yes, they did ring apartments ... but they have done bad things) and fuelling the settler aggression on the West Bank. It is not clear to me at these political forces are any more interested in genuine peace than Hamas are.
Please don't forget we're talking about WARTIME conditions in Gaza - there were ALL KINDS of deprivations and part of that was cellphone coverage often wasn't available.. some things may look good on paper but reality is very different!
OK, I've found an article that throws much more light on issues to do with "warnings": https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68687749
I agree +Peter
My concern William is not your comments concerning Hamas or the lack of publicity given about people who have condemned Hamas and demanded they disarm and end their rule of Gaza. People have and by those in positions of authority but it has not been picked up or publicised by the media at large in the same way the news about Israel’s actions in Gaza have been, which does indicate a bias. And unfortunately as you indicate many people distanced from what is going on do seem to have taken up one narrative without exploring the reality of the situation.
My concern is you appear to put all Palestinians in one box, and just as I doubt all Russian’s agree with the war in Ukraine I doubt all Palestinians share the views of Hamas. I do fear they may be more inclined towards doing so if as +Peter mentions above mistreatment of segments of the Palestinian population continue. This YouTube link I think provides a insightful overview of Palestinian Israeli perspectives - it is produced by a Jewish Israeli -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBJDRljP1so&t=893s
The last one was me…. Definitely Liz, it;s hard to conceive of what it is to live in conflict zones regardless of the place.
I have no doubt a lot of Arabs would like to move to the villages their grandparents fled from in 1948 when the Arab states tried to destroy Israel - and similarly when they tried to destroy Israel in 1967 and lost more land. Israel would be much smaller today if the 1948 plan had been accepted. But such are the ways of Providence (it seems) - the pre-1967 "Green Line" being simply the 1948 armistice line. It was never sn i ternational border. But losing wars does have consequences and the Palestinians' irredentist feelings are by no means unique or the worst in the world. Here are a few modern examples: 1. Over 100,000 Armenian Christians were recently "ethnically cleansed" from their homes in Nagorno Karabakh by Azerbaijan. 2. Hundreds of thousands of Cypriot Christians were expelled from Notth Cyprus in 1974 by Turkey. Who is protesting today for Armenians or Cypriots? 3. Millions of Germans were expelled from Pomerania, East Prussia and Sudetenland in 1945 and Germany's borders were fiercely changed by the USSR - and a similar thing happened to the Polish and Ukrainian borders. Do the Germans have a right of return? Nobody today says so. 4. A big chunk of Austria was transferred to Italy as part of the Treaty of Versailles (but even today there are plenty of German speaking Italians).
One may also ask why the Arab Christian population has dwindled so dramatically in the West Bank. The Arabs would of course blame the Israelis but I think it likelier that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism has encouraged many Christian Arabs - many of them highly educated and Anglophone thanks to the British Mandate which established excellent schools - to emigrate to the US and Australia. Christian numbers in Lebanon and Syria have declined significantly in the past 40 years as Islamism has grown, and as those countries have been convulsed by terrible sectarian warfare.
There are certainly extremist Israelis who would like to absorb all the West Bank, and their cause tends to fluctuate according to incidents of street crime against Jews in Jerusalem. Israel is certainly not perfect, but ask yourself this question: would you rather be an Arab prisoner in an Israeli jail or a Jewish prisoner in a Gazan jail? The answer you give shows the scope of the problem we have. Hamas must first be extirpated.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
The video link from Jean is *so* interesting.. thanks Jean!
Link: Who are the Palestinians Living in Israel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBJDRljP1so&t=893s
Oh YES!!! Thank you…
I am glad you found the clip interesting Liz & Moya, it was nice to get such a rounded presentation of an issue.
William have you read the book Son of Hamas? I thought that gave quite a good insight into being in an Israeli jail albeit many years ago now alongside other insights. Mosab of course now a Christian and very outspoken against Hamas…. I would like to read the book just recently released by the Israeli hostage but will have to put that on the ‘to read one day’ list. It is as my nephew would say a ‘travesty’ what the influence of Iran has had via Hezbollah over the years on Lebanon.
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