Every morning, I look at the News app on my iPhone, and I fully expect to see something horrifying and unimaginable a couple of decades ago.
My expectations are met with depressing frequency. (I should make some reference to the doppler effect as we hurtle headlong toward catastrophe, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)
I'm old enough to recall the Yom Kippur War, being 16 at the time. I knew relatively little about Israel back then. What I did know was influenced by things like the movie Cast A Giant Shadow, which I'd seen on television at some point.
Today I know a great deal more about Israel and its complicated, very complicated, history.
Today there are 16-year-olds who are perhaps learning about Israel for the first time. Certainly, Israel is in the news almost continuously, but that puts it largely in the noise, even for 16-year-olds who pay attention to the news. This is different, being described as Israel's 9/11.
Sixteen-year-olds weren't alive on 9/11.
I try to imagine today's 16-year-olds fifty years from now.
I think that the whole world may be a lot like Israel in 50 years. Perhaps sooner. You can decide if that's a good thing.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:45 Wednesday, 11 October 2023