What Makes People Tick?

  This is what broke me.  Silly fool me, I figured I'd 'catch up' on what's happening in the world by checking Twitter (I mean X) before heading to bed, a few days ago. I saw this report on how women had been raped by the Hamas terrorists on October 7th. Not just one rapist, but many. Not just a man or multiple men using their body parts to do the rape, but evidence that they used other things as well. I believe the report mentioned knives, and other things too. Evidence that women were alive when that happened, or alive for at least part of it.  It broke me. It made me scared to go to sleep in my own bed. Scared because I was worried that I'd have nightmares based on what I'd read, and scared because being asleep means being unable to run from possible attackers. No, I'm not in Israel. But I'm still a woman, and there are fanatics the world over. Fear isn't necessarily rational, it just is. Let me be honest: As a person and as a human being, this re...

  Last weekend, on Saturday the 7th of October, a great number of people got together to cross a border. Some flew over using gliders. Others toppled a fence in a lot of places. Through the breaches in the fence came people. Men. In cars. On motorcycles. They didn't come through that fence to find freedom, or to flee from persecution. They didn't cross the border hoping for a better life, for the fulfilment of a dream. The men who crossed the border, they came to kill, to murder. To shoot people in their homes. To kill babies and children in their beds. To go into communities full of people, civilians, and indiscriminately shoot everyone and everything. To go to a festival where people were dancing, enjoying themselves, and to shoot, kill, rape those people. The stories of the survivors are horrifying. Stories of people rushing for their cars, driving, being shot at. Stories of people running, being shot in the back. Stories of people hiding, being found, finding new places to ...