From the Editor May/Jun 2018
As I sat in church a few weeks ago, a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time turned around to tell me how cute my grandchildren are. My first thought was, How would you know what my grandchildren look like? They live 600 miles away. And then it dawned on me: Facebook!
My daughter the social-media maven is always posting photos and comments on a variety of social-media platforms and even runs a small business on them. She belongs to a local Facebook “market” where she buys household items and sells clothes and toys my grandchildren have outgrown. She also joined a slew of Facebook groups to learn and share information about subjects she’s interested in; and to build up her business, she teaches seminars on Facebook and markets her products.
Welcome to the interconnectivity of social media, where the universe has become the size of a cell phone screen; you can live stream your entire life, if you feel like it; and you can post videos, photos, and comments that people everywhere can read seconds later.
It’s a whole new world (and often a helpful one) for billions of people—literally. But it can also be a dangerous new world. Bullies can now ridicule their victims online in front of hundreds or even thousands of people. “A 2016 report from the Cyberbullying Research Center indicates that 33.8% of students between 12 and 17 were victims of cyberbullying,” enough.org reported.
In less time than it takes to cook a pot roast, you can amass a mob that either invades a mall to rob a store or to hand out tracts and sing the Hallelujah Chorus.
Truth and lies and good and evil travel like lightning through cyberspace. One subject that generates much traffic on both sides of the spectrum is Israel. So in this issue of Israel My Glory, we’re examining social media and Israel. We also look at Israel turning 70 in Steve Herzig’s article, “Happy Birthday, Israel!” which discusses the Jewish nation’s unlikely yet divine rise from the ashes to the thriving country it is today.
Dr. Renald Showers’ outstanding piece, Five Facts You Should Know About Israel, explains why the Jewish nation is unique. We think everyone should read it. It’s also available for purchase. And we coaxed our former executive director, Elwood McQuaid, into writing the editorial. His books Zvi: The Miraculous Story of Triumph Over the Holocaust and Halina: Faith In the Fire, make him particularly suited to comment on the importance of what’s happening in Poland today.
This is an important, relevant issue, and we hope you enjoy it.
Waiting for His Appearing,
Lorna Simcox
Editor-in-Chief
