When torrential downpours create floods of falsehoods

We won't dwell on this any more (doing that would amount to dignifying the ugly, fact-free attacks on Israel) other than to say that disinformation campaigns like this one about lethal flooding are part of something larger - a cognitive war in which things that look like news, feel like news, that speak of facts and sometimes of statistics, are presented as true and factual - that is calculated to advance a political campaign that ultimately is a military one. A war in all respects, in other words.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
16 December '13..

We don't think we're saving the world here at this blog of ours. But there is something mildly comforting knowing that, from time to time, we can write things here, sometimes from first-hand experience, that throw a little authentic and verifiable light on silly, fact-challenged nonsense about events in this tumultuous areas that too often get reported really badly.

If, in writing that last sentence, we came across sounding sound relatively calm, it's a misapprehension. The behind-the-scenes reality is that it is frequently enraging - to the point of truly making a person nuts - to watch the daily, deadly combination of conspiracy-driven non-news propagated via today's social-media channels, on one hand, and the know-nothing, he-said-but-she-said, "serious" news reporting from mainstream media channels that all-too-often picks up those malicious stories/rumours/inventions and gives them just enough airplay and professional tone to turn them into "news".

Outside our home in Jerusalem, the weather looks gorgeous. The morning sun is shining brightly. But it's chilly. There's been a large storm system over the area since Thursday, and there's plenty of snow everywhere, and ice. Our car has not been moved - at least not by us - for days. Electricity cut-outs have been endemic, along with problems with water supply, Internet access and going shopping. Our local shopping center has been closed intermittently; staff has not been able to get to work because the bus system has been hit-and-miss. In short, a heavy winter in Jerusalem terms.

Down in Gaza, they're suffering from floods. They're serious and turning life into a new kind of misery for Gazans who have plenty of grief just from being the vassals of a religiously-driven terror-addicted tyranny. Hamas, for years, has evaded taking the steps that any government must - taxing the population on its income in order to have budgets for spending on schools and roads and infrastructure. They prefer, instead, to spend what they have on warfare, armaments, parades.

(Continue)

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