To do things like persecute entire communities, invade countries, go to war, change our way of life in terms of human rights and privacy, because of a tiny threat… You kill 20 people and you have 60 million people frightened that there is a terrorist behind every tree. Nevertheless, terrorism manages to capture our imagination in a way that car accidents don’t. I mean, the terrorist attacks themselves are of course horrific, and I don’t intend to minimise the tragedy of the people who are killed, but if you look at the big picture it’s a puny threat…įor every person who is killed by a terrorist in the UK there are at least 100 who die in car accidents.
‘The most dangerous thing about terrorism is the over-reaction to it.
Writing only a month ago, after the Manchester slaughter, he claims that Britons need to accept that terrorists may kill a few people a year. He’s a history professor of repute and celebrity at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, “probably the most fashionable thinker on the planet right now,” according to the Daily Mail. Let’s see what else Harari’s on about (not mentioned by Corbett) besides deadly soft drinks. But no thanks, Review editors, for allowing Corbett/Harari to trash The Australian’s reputation for intellectual rigor, let alone common sense. Thanks for that, Claire Corbett, and thanks for your second-hand imbecility about soft drinks’ deadly threat. ‘Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about three million people,’ Harari writes,’ terrorists killed a total of 7697 people across the globe, most of them in developing countries.’ He notes that for the average person in the affluent West, soft drinks pose a far deadlier threat than terrorists.” (My emphases). The danger comes most from our over-reactions. “As historian Yuval Noah Harari points out in his 2015 book Homo Deus terrorists have almost no capacity to threaten a functioning state. Now turn to page 22 of Review (editor Tim Douglas, and Literary Editor Stephen Romei, who staff say selects the book reviewers)), in which fantasy novelist and journalist Claire Corbett reviews three books on counter-terror units, including Sons of God about the Victorian Special Operations Group and two about the US Navy SEALS, The Killing School and The Operator.
Had it succeeded, hundreds of deaths would have traumatised the country. This alleged plot was the thirteenth thwarted in the past three years. On the same day the paper hit the streets on Saturday, July 29, Sydney counter-terror operatives were arresting four Islamists over an alleged plot to bring down a domestic airliner with an explosive device. But Editor-in-Chief Paul Whittaker really ought to take a look at what goes into the Review magazine inside The Weekend Australian – editor Michelle Gunn. The Australian is normally a voice for sanity in this country’s political debate.
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