The battle between good and evil
A pivotal moment in the history of the world.
Do you believe in evil? Do you think you can recognise evil when you see it? Have you looked evil in the face before? Is evil something that we have within us, or is it something that takes us over? Can we do evil acts without being inherently evil? Or is evil what evil does?
I once believed in universal truths. There is a comfort in feeling like the world has got your back on the big issues. That you are part of something bigger, a larger collective of what is good, and right. I’m not sure I feel that way anymore.
Something happened on October 7th. A pivotal moment in the history of the world. A central shift that I’m not sure we will fully understand the implications for many years — if not decades. It wasn’t that terrorists were able to invade Israel, that has happened before. It wasn't that innocents were brutally murdered, we have seen that many times before as well. It wasn’t the indescribable sexual abuse against women, or the slaughter of children, or even the abduction of civilians from their homes, some still in their pyjamas — many of which are still being held captive, possibly starved, most probably abused, and most certainly terrified.
There is no doubt that evil was unleashed on that day. The kind of evil that makes young men phone up their parents and proudly gloat about how many Jews they killed that day, with their bare hands. The type of evil that had men tie women to trees, rape them, murder them, then leave them to rot, naked from the waist down. Evil that caused men take videos of their murdered victims, then send them to the victims mother.
Evil no doubt. Evil acts. Unspeakable horrors. But there is something more evil at play here. And that is what I want to talk about.
I want to talk about the kind of evil that has managed to take over large portions of our societies, the kind that makes otherwise good people snigger at the rape and mutilation of Jewish women. The type of evil that causes people to rip down, or deface hostage posters of children, a baby even.
As I am writing this the news broke that a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen who had lived in Germany for more than a decade and worked as a doctor, has just mown down a huge group of Germans at a Christmas night market1. Reports of the death toll and injured are still coming in.
The kind of evil that allows at entire nation of men to erase, silence and force the complete subjugation of women. To render an entire country of 14 million women completely powerless, uneducated and muted.2
And the type of premeditated evil that meticulously plans a campaign of lies and propaganda to hoodwink the whole world into believing a narrative that just isn’t true. The real evil of Hamas, and their affiliates, is that they understand that if they saturated the internet with horrible images and statistics of suffering women and children, that the West would eventually turn against Israel. So they launched a purposeful strategic sacrifice of their own people, in the knowledge that it would lead to an absolving of their own heinous crimes.
Mati Friedman wrote the following in a piece for The Free Press:
“Hamas also knew that when faced with heartbreaking images of civilian death, some Western leaders would eventually buckle and blame the Israelis, helping Hamas live to attack another day. It took about five weeks before this happened to Emmanuel Macron of France (“These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed. So there is no reason for that and no legitimacy”) and Canada’s Justin Trudeau (“The world is witnessing this killing of women, of children, of babies. This has to stop.”)
And Hamas knew that the international organizations that bankroll Gaza, like the United Nations, having mostly turned a blind eye to Hamas’s vast military buildup at their expense (and, in some cases, on their property), would focus their fury at Israel alone and do their best to blunt the consequences of Hamas’s actions.”3
The evil of the Jihadist ideologists has now effectively seeped into mainstream society in the West and throughout Europe. Like a virus that spreads, children are now chanting ‘Globalise the Intifada,’ and impressionable students are holding signs that read “Glory to the Martyrs.’
Never in my life time have I seen the world more divided. Family against family, neighbour against neighbour, feminists against rape victims, politicians supporting terror infiltrated institutions, allies against allies, and the Jews being blamed for it all.
Statistical outcomes from psychological experiments have shown that given a certain set of circumstances, only a quarter of people will have the guts to stand up and say “I’m not going to participate in this.” What that also tells us is that 75 percent of people will ultimately go along and participate in evil acts rather than divert from the group.4
Does this explain how thousands of people can stand in front of the Sydney Opera House on October 8 and chant “Gas the Jews,”5 or as they proclaimed rather "Where’s the Jews,” as if that is somehow less evil? Does that explain the abduction of 276 school girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram6, who were then sex trafficked through the region? Can a belief in religious dogma really pervert your moral compass to that much of a degree, that you can justify such actions?
Can we really blame a book written over 1400 years ago when men use it as an excuse to kill, to rape, to hate, to lie, to strap people with bombs, to fly planes into buildings, to gloat to their mothers about killing Jews with their own hands?
We are in a battle, however what frightens me the most is that those on the side of evil are certain that they are doing good, and those that are fighting for good are being hounded by the minions of the devil who accuse them of doing evil.
“Evil finds its almost perfect camouflage in the silent agreements of the group when it appears personally advantageous. Such unconscious “deadness” will continue to show itself in every age, I believe. This is why I can’t throw the word “sin” out entirely. If we do not see the true shape of evil or recognize how we are fully complicit in it, it will fully control us, while not looking the least like sin. Would “agreed-upon delusion” be a better description? We cannot recognize it or overcome it as isolated individuals, mostly because it is held together by the group consensus.”7
In these times, we must hold steadfast to what is good, what is right. We must fight to uphold truth. We have to cling to the light.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/21/europe/suspect-germany-christmas-market-attack/index.html
https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/for-women-in-kabul-a-cat-has-more-rights/
https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
https://apnews.com/article/nigeria-chibok-schoolgirls-kidnapping-boko-haram-feff4eebe4aedc74ce64612b01073b8e
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/evil-depends-upon-disguise-2023-05-17/
The Devil's Greatest Trick Was Convincing The World He Didn't Exist.
What you said. I live in the middle of it and I am afraid. With you and the Jewish community all the way. No. Matter. What.