RUTHFULLY YOURS

If further evidence were needed to show that the rise of abbreviated Internet lingo has led to a dangerous decline in literacy, it was provided in spades this week.

As part of an educational series commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, the Israel Defense Forces has been tweeting posts relating to the events that took place in Israel and the region in October 1973. On Thursday, it sent out the following tweet, which included a link to a site containing a day-by-day account of the war that took place four decades ago: “October 10 #YomKippur73: Israel Air Force bombards airports in Syria to prevent Soviet weapons reaching the Syrian Army.”

Suddenly, the oil traders of the world went into a panic. Rumors of an Israeli airstrike on Syria hit the market, causing oil prices to rise by $1 a barrel. Clearly, those who first saw the tweet had not actually read it. Or, worse: They belong to a whole culture no longer capable of comprehending more than two nouns and a verb in a sentence — even one shortened to meet Twitter requirements.

After all, the IDF tweet begins with the date in question, including the year 1973. In addition, it refers to the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist at the end of 1991. But none of this mattered to the geniuses whose assessments affect the most crucial global market. Catching sight of the words “Israel,” “bombards” and “Syria” in a sequence was sufficient to set higher prices at the gas pump in motion.

Even more disturbing is the fact that even though traders discovered their mistake shortly after making it, oil prices continued to rise as a result of other geopolitical anxieties. By Thursday early afternoon, oil was up $2.68 a barrel, the highest it’s been in weeks.

Ironically, the infamous Arab oil embargo in 1973 (which caused a huge surge in global oil prices) was imposed on the United States by the Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries — together with Egypt, Syria and Tunisia — as a retaliatory weapon for its support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Had the current oil traders who use social media as a tool for predicting trends bothered to open the link of the IDF tweet, they could have learned all about it.

To be fair, this kind of instantaneous idiocy is not exclusive to the Twitter generation. A far more bizarre example took place in 1938, also in October.

For its Halloween broadcast, “The Mercury Theatre on the Air,” presented an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel, “The War of the Worlds,” narrated by Orson Welles. The hour-long program was a series of simulated news bulletins reporting on a Martian invasion. Listeners who missed the introduction to the radio show tuned in to hear what they thought were genuine warnings about hostile aliens on the warpath.

Terrified Americans and Canadians flooded the police with phone calls; many even fled their homes. When the confusion was resolved, public anger ensued. Numerous articles and analyses dealt with the question of how so many people actually believed that extraterrestrial beings were invading the planet Earth.

The most plausible theory is that there was an overall sense of doom on the eve of World War II, and that the realistic style of the drama unleashed an already underlying fear of imminent peril. A similar explanation has been offered for the Twitter mishap. Most news outlets suggest that the oil traders were already jumpy about a very unstable Middle East, so it didn’t take much for them to ignore the writing between the hash tags and assume that Israel was in the midst of blitzing Syria’s airports.

Adolf Hitler was pleased when he learned of the mass panic caused by the radio drama. He is purported to have called the phenomenon “evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy.”

Radical Muslims are probably saying the same thing in relation to Thursday’s rise in oil prices, spurred by Westerners in too much of a hurry to read all of 20 words.

Hitler, like his admirers in the Muslim world, was wrong. It is not democracy that is decadent and corrupt, but rather those who take it and its gifts for granted. Chief among these gifts is the access to information and education and the freedom to investigate, examine and become enlightened.

Opting for ignorance when there is an alternative is a sinful form of laziness that necessarily gives the forces of evil the upper hand. These forces are not imaginary green creatures from outer space. They are human beings equipped with fierce ideologies and weapons to match.

Surrender comes in many stages. Abandoning the will to read between the lines is one. Not even caring to read the lines themselves is the beginning of the end.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”