Riskgaming

Solemn Sadness

Photo by inhauscreative via iStock/Getty Images

A comment about Hamas’s recent attack on Israeli and international civilians

Every day, the Lux partnership comes together around a shared mission: the passionate pursuit of human progress through scientific innovation. We are strongest when we work together to defend knowledge, dignity, progress, and morality. It’s a transcendent mission informed by the diverse perspectives sitting around the table, a table that today includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, Agnostics, Atheists and more. Our unique experiences combinatorially create the conditions for our pursuit of lux, Latin for light: the enlightenment that comes with the advancement of human dignity, free expression, and wisdom.

So it is with utter shock and abject horror this past week that we witnessed the terrible atrocities committed by Hamas on Israeli civilians and international visitors, with the devastation and loss of so many innocent lives. Even in a complex world, the kind we regularly cover in “Securities”, there’s a crystalline clarity to what took place: this was wrong. Hamas’s mass killing of civilians is a crime against humanity, and there can be no place in our world for these acts of terrorism.

Acts that erase innocent human lives — and their unwritten futures — unjustly bludgeon individuals into a blur of indiscriminate group identity. That is why we must make a moral distinction: our rightful enmity towards terrorists like Hamas and its atrocities cannot and should not extinguish our empathy for innocent Palestinian civilians.

Cowardly terrorist attacks and the killing of civilians will always be wrong. We must hold every person and every nation to the same singular standard. Violence does not create knowledge, it destroys it. War does not create human dignity, it extinguishes it. Hate is — and always has been — that great cudgel against human progress.

We stand with the many friends, family members, and colleagues with loved ones in the region who are experiencing this horror in their own streets and homes. We hope you’ll join us in contributing to humanitarian efforts to support the victims of violence.

Lux Recommends

  • There’s endless writings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both historical and covering the present events in realtime. Our sole recommendation this week though is Isaac Saul’s profound meditation on X/Twitter about the challenges of navigating identity, hope and morality amidst this terrible tragedy.

That’s it, folks. Have questions, comments, or ideas? This newsletter is sent from my email, so you can just click reply.

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