I AM reading a news story about women captured by, then freed from, Boko Haram. The women tell their stories.
The dissonance between the report and the reality screams.
One woman: I survived, but my child was lost. Then, the story moves on to the next paragraph.
Wait a minute! How can we simply move on to the next paragraph after this statement, my child was lost? How much agony is contained in that statement? Is it to be glossed over then, the next paragraph just because hundreds of other women were also captured by Boko Haram?
Second woman: Most of the women in my group were killed. Only I survived. Then, the story moves on to the next paragraph.
I cant swallow that. I am the only survivor. Anyone whos known Holocaust survivors knows what that means. This is happening again! Could it be?
Third woman: I was separated from my husband and forced to become the wife of a Boko Haram warrior. Then, the story moves on to the next paragraph.
Just like that? A woman is kidnapped and subjected to repeated rape. If this had happened in Denver, it would be quite a story. It would unfold over several days. The various charges, pleadings and outcomes would be rightly reported, analyzed and dissected. Is the law sufficient? Are the sentencing guidelines correct? Did neighbors know about this? If so, did they report it? Were the police on top of this?
This level of intensity is precisely the degree of attention that the press is paying to the Aurora theater shooting trial right now.
But in the Boko Haram story I read, it reported that the woman was forced to become someone elses wife, then the story just moved on to the next paragraph.
Fourth woman: I was beaten mercilessly.
Theres no need to see through any euphemism (forced wife) here. How can one just move on to the next paragraph, but thats what the story does, moves on to the next paragraph.
Fifth woman: I watched them behead my husband.
Then the story moves to the next paragraph.
THIS IS what happens when we deal with mass murderers and inhumane serial criminals. Their horrible acts pile up and cancel each other out.
Apparently, Stalin didnt actually say the following, but his actions and the response to them testified to it: The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of one million people is a statistic.
Stalin surely embodied the unbelievable cruelty behind that statement. This we can see. What we see less easily, whether as reporters or readers, is that our sensitivity to human suffering declines in proportion, ironically, to the intensification of that suffering.
The more attacks Boko Haram undertakes, the less we pay attention.
The more people that radical Islamists brutalize, the easier we find it to move on to the next story.
The more horrendous the brutality up to beheadings! the more we forget how terrible the other crimes are, as if child disappearances, forced marriages and beatings can be minimized.
Sensory overload, its called. We can absorb only so much suffering before we shut down.
This would not be dangerous if our decreased sensibility did not entail increased indifference. If somehow we can compartmentalize can shut out the emotional power of the brutality as a necessary mechanism to sustain our willingness to do something about it, fine. Usually, however, diminution of sensitivity also dulls the will to act. Witness the thousands of Germans who lived right next to Dachau as mass murder took place there.
All of which cannot hide the accomplishment and accompanying satisfaction that at least one mass kidnapping by Boko Haram did not fully succeed. All of the women testifying to the horrors that Boko Haram imposed on them did so after having been rescued.
THERE IS a related diminution. Its not a deadening of sensitivity to the crimes of Boko Haram, but to all radical Islamist groups. Can you list them? Who can keep up with them?
Theyre in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Algeria. And maybe even the United States. They yank us between being focused on one such as Hamas, when there is war in Gaza to another such as the Houthi, when there is war in Yemen.
They fool us into thinking that just because there is no war on Israel from Lebanon right now, the radical Islamists there (Hezbollah) pose no threat.
They fool us into thinking that Egypts war on the Muslim Brotherhood is over.
That matters in Libya are under control.
That Turkey, just because it doesnt threaten Israel directly, is no threat to Israel.
That Americas own faraway war on ISIS is going well.
That the overarching threat of a nuclear Iran can minimize the beheaders and brutalities carried out in the name of radical Islam.
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg may be reached at hillel@ijn.com.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
