In a World Distorted: Reflections on the Israel–Gaza War
An emotional journey through conflict, shared grief, and the universal yearning for peace
What happens to our collective soul when war becomes the background noise of our daily scroll? What does it mean for us as global citizens when photos of rubble, children crying, and blood-smeared walls become just another headline - then disappear?
This isn’t just about geopolitics.
It’s about people.
It’s about all of us - watching, reacting, numbing, feeling, forgetting, and remembering again.
The Israel–Gaza war has pierced through the fabric of global conversation once more. But beyond the facts, the fatalities, and the furious debates, lies something far more fragile and frightening - the distortion of our empathy.
Let’s talk about that.
Where Were You When It Began (Again)?
There’s a strange déjà vu every time conflict flares in Gaza or Israel. The global feed erupts with anguish. Social media timelines fracture into outrage and silence. Hashtags are thrown like spears. Algorithms favor violence. Truth becomes secondary.
I remember sitting at my desk when the first explosion was reported this time around - early June 2025. I didn’t flinch.
Not because I didn’t care. But because my nervous system, like many of yours, has grown calloused.
How did we get here?
How did the sight of a destroyed school become less shocking than a broken iPhone screen?
Empathy Fatigue Is Real. But So Is Selective Outrage.
We’re inundated with suffering. Yemen. Ukraine. Sudan. Gaza. School shootings. Earthquakes. Fires. Drones. Doxxing. Displacement.
It’s not that we don’t care - it’s that we don’t know how to care anymore.
We’re trapped in a cycle of performative grief and immediate forgetting. It’s as if the human heart wasn’t designed to process global grief at this scale.
"There’s a numbness that sets in when the screen becomes our only window to the world."
- Personal journal, June 2025
But let’s be honest. Some grief gets amplified more than others. And some lives - in Gaza or in Tel Aviv - feel, to the global lens, more disposable than others.
That’s not just a media problem. That’s a mirror problem.
What War Does to the Human Spirit
Whether you’re Israeli or Palestinian - war warps you.
It doesn’t just destroy buildings. It distorts memory. It teaches a generation that safety is a myth and peace is fiction. Children learn to recognize the sound of drones more quickly than lullabies. Mothers memorize escape routes before recipes.
In an article titled “Lost in the Haze: How to Find Your Path and Truly Grow”, we’re reminded of how personal trauma maps itself onto our identity. Imagine mapping generational trauma onto an entire population.
This isn’t about who started what. This is about what it’s doing to us.
To live under the sound of sirens and rockets is to live in a constant state of hypervigilance. It’s PTSD on loop.
And even if you’re thousands of miles away - watching - something inside you shifts.
What Stories Are We Choosing?
There’s a story behind every missile.
Behind every funeral.
Behind every silence.
And behind every narrative war.
Media machines on both sides feed us carefully curated truths. Context is weaponized. The phrase “both sides” becomes its own battlefield.
We stop asking: What happened?
And we start yelling: Whose side are you on?
This binary thinking is the death of dialogue.
In a powerful post from The Story Circuit about value-based education, the writer notes:
“Without values like compassion and critical thinking at the core of our education, we raise adults who can argue-but never understand.”
We don’t need more arguing. We need radical listening.
The Most Dangerous Casualty: Hope
Hope is a fragile thing in warzones.
And yet, some still water it.
A friend of mine - a nurse working in a Gaza hospital - wrote:
“Every time I clean blood off a child’s face, I tell myself there’s still a chance. If I lose that, I lose everything.”
That broke me.
Not just because of the imagery. But because of the quiet rebellion in that act. To believe in healing in a place built on pain - that’s resistance too.
What’s the Cost of Watching?
Let’s pause.
You, reading this.
Have you noticed the cost of consuming trauma?
Nightmares?
Restlessness?
Scrolling endlessly, yet feeling nothing?
This isn’t your fault. But it is your responsibility.
We must relearn how to hold space. How to pause. How to digest sorrow without being swallowed by it.
A few journal prompts might help:
- When was the last time I truly felt grief - not just saw it?
- What stories am I amplifying - and which am I ignoring?
- Is my empathy dependent on proximity or identity?
- What small, real act can I do today to center humanity?
Cultural Wisdom: Remembering the Third Path
In many Indigenous traditions, conflict isn’t seen as “one vs. the other.” Instead, elders speak of the Third Path - the space between.
It’s not neutrality.
It’s sacred holding.
It’s saying: I see your grief. And I see theirs too. I will not let the loudest voice dictate the only story.
Imagine if more of us walked this third path - refusing to reduce complex pain into partisan noise.
What Can We Actually Do?
This is the part everyone skips.
Because helplessness is heavy.
But there are things we can do:
- Educate yourself from multiple perspectives.
- Share voices from within the conflict zones - not just commentators.
- Support vetted humanitarian efforts.
- Write. Reflect. Create space for uncomfortable conversations.
- Amplify healing. Start here.
Remember: feeling something is not enough.
Translating emotion into motion - that’s where change begins.
Grief Needs a Language
And maybe that’s what we’ve lost - a shared language of grief.
We’ve politicized mourning. We’ve monetized conflict.
But somewhere, under the noise, someone is whispering to their child in the dark. Hoping they’ll live to see the morning.
Shouldn’t that be enough?
At the end:
There is no neat way to end this. Because the war hasn’t ended. And maybe that’s the point.
We’re not here to close the story.
We’re here to hold it - messy, raw, unfinished.
In every conflict, there’s a front line.
But the real war is always inside us.
Will we let fear win? Or will we let humanity speak?
Your move.
“Peace is not the absence of conflict - it’s the presence of understanding.”
- Unknown
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