Trauma alone can't save Gaza

Racist media, graphic images, and what we do next

There is no denying the powerful images coming out of Gaza. And there is no denying that the heroic journalists there have radically changed public opinion around the world. Millions of people have seen Israel’s relentless attack unfold in a way unlike any devastation, let alone genocide, ever before. The instant footage of civilians being horrifically attacked has changed the response of millions and millions to what is happening in Palestine, and in doing so has changed the world. But what now? 

In a moment where there should be powerful momentum towards a ceasefire, and where there is persistent and vigorous agitation among ordinary people for peace and justice in Gaza, the ruling class isn’t responding. In fact, multiple powerful forces are instead pushing what appears to be an equal and opposite reaction. The Biden administration is bombing Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, Congress members from both parties are working on a brutal border deal, and the biggest papers in America are publishing unbelievably racist pieces dehumanizing and demonizing Arabs.

This Islamophobia and regressive anti-Arab hatred is dangerous both for the Middle East and for Arab-Americans. It echoes the worst sentiments seen immediately after 9/11, although it feels more like something you’d expect from the 19th century. It enables the bombing of multiple nations and endangers Muslims and Arabs everywhere. But what do we do? How do we push back and how do we help Gaza move closer to peace and freedom, both for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of people starving and so that war and violence do not expand across the Middle East and beyond?

I think we all feel, and have been feeling for some time, a deep exhaustion alongside our outrage. Everyone who cares about stopping this genocide has seen horrors previously inconceivable to so many of us. Millions, even billions of people have witnessed second-hand, yet up close and personal, the murder of children, the slaughter of families, the attempt to wipe a place and people off the map. And it takes a toll. So many, too many, of the journalists themselves have been killed, while some have made the immensely difficult choice to leave. Motaz Azaiza, suddenly a household name, has gone to Qatar. Wael Al-Dahdouh is also there, receiving medical care.

Motaz leaving became, somehow, an internet controversy. Some followers debated whether or not it was the right move, justified, justifiable. Meanwhile the man had spent over 100 days both bearing witness to and allowing the world to bear witness to unimaginable horror. He spoke often about the latest friends he had lost to Israeli bombs. Or rather American bombs dropped by Israel on neighbors, friends, and loved ones. In his first interview after leaving Gaza he talked about how the IDF’s onslaught affected him.

His words here are haunting, his eyes doubly so. Anyone can see the trauma, the horror, the things those eyes have absorbed and will never be able to forget. Seeing that interview, juxtaposed with the online debates about whether or not he should have left, and even the outlandish Zionist claims and theories and digs about his departure from people as comfortable and safe as Debra Messing, broke something in me. Of course some commentators will shoot their potshots, which invariably make their side look worse, but to see people who want to support Gazan journalists and Palestinians as a whole comment at all on whether or not a journalist should escape made me realize that something is deeply wrong with how some of us are relating to this genocide.

Israel is killing, injuring, and capturing journalists at a staggering rate, nearly one every single day, more than any other conflict in our collective memory. In this extremely dangerous place, surrounded by an army that murders civilians, starvation, and bombs, journalists are at an even higher risk than most people. Quadcopters, armed drones, often haunt the airspace outside their homes, and they go about their work knowing that death could descend at any second. So when one chose to leave, to save his life, there should have been nothing but support. Or simply no comments at all. But in the strange media environment of today, full of fandoms and followings, people have developed parasocial relationships with the journalists of Gaza.

And I understand why. I see how and why so many of us cling to the words of these brave journalists, and pray for their survival. They embody hope for millions and offer a way to interact with an inconceivable nightmare that is human rather than a mountain of staggering and devastating data. The point of this piece is not to chide anyone who, in the midst of feeling helpless to help Palestinians, has latched onto heroic journalists. The point is not to say that you should stop sharing their work, difficult as it might be to witness. The point is that we need to change our relationship to these journalists and their reporting. The point is that many of us need to change our relationship with this trauma and tragedy.

To change these relationships we need to first consider them thoroughly. How do we consume a first-hand account of genocide? How do we grapple with the first genocide we’ve had live streamed into the palms of our hands? These are not easy questions. For one, the urgency of this moment, the urgent desire and need to stop a genocide that has been steadily growing worse for four months, makes the act of stepping back to consider it difficult. That urgency combines with the guilt that millions of people across the West feel over our governments funding and arming Israel. The effect can be masses of well-intentioned people seized with an inability to act effectively, instead sharing traumatic content one day after another in a state of semi-shock.

Others are simply beginning to look away, or have looked away for some time now. Some don’t care, and grappling with that is an immensely difficult task. But others can’t process the horror, the visions of death and destruction and despair. In particular, they can’t process it when the nightmare of it all is paired with an inability to affect change. Millions of people who want to help instead feel stuck taking in one terror, one trauma after another with no way to convert it into aid, assistance, or action. 

So those of us still working to not look away, to fight towards a ceasefire and free Palestine, must ask ourselves if we’re stuck in a cycle of atrocity and trauma. I know this isn’t an easy question on multiple levels, and if your response is anger at me, I understand. But the plight of Gaza demands our effectiveness, not just our attention. Raising awareness is not the mission now. The world knows what Israel is doing. If we’re stuck thinking that sharing and sharing and sharing traumatic and brutal scenes will somehow break through, we haven’t accepted the reality that political leaders know, most likely even better than we do, how bad the situation is in Gaza. They know the death, disease, and starvation that the IDF is forcing upon millions of civilians. They don't care. And our job is not to make them care, it’s to make them act.

There can be a great pain that comes with accepting this, a great pain in knowing that some people can see a genocide perpetrated and have no change of mind or heart. But we have to accept that reality, difficult as it may be. Part of this acceptance is acknowledging that we don’t in fact live in a democratic country here in the U.S., or just about wherever we are across the globe. I don’t just mean that we have a representative democracy, or a democratic republic, but that these officials are fundamentally not interested in listening to the majority of their constituents. If they were, we'd have universal healthcare, a higher minimum wage, and a strong demand for a ceasefire.

I know that a lot of what I’m saying can be hard to hear or accept. In working to bring about peace, justice, and a free Palestine I think there’s a lot more hard reckoning for many of us across the West to do, unfortunately. The narrative that sharing traumatic images is doing valuable work must, ultimately, be questioned. That does not mean we don’t share what’s coming out of Gaza, but it means we don’t deceive ourselves about the importance of these likes, retweets, and posts. It means we sit with the difficult fact that awareness of horror simply is not enough, especially without action. Even people who want to help can go numb, burn out, and feel sick and helpless with nowhere to turn. Put another way, the issue with traumatic content is not fundamentally the content itself, but rather the way we relate to it.

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

We should support Palestinian journalists and should not let the issue of Palestine go away until we see an end to the apartheid and an end to the occupation. We should seek clarity in working towards that end, and always keep in mind that Palestinians and journalists in Gaza are calling us to act, not just on social media but in the world. We should know that the ruling class will not develop compassion overnight, and see how Western politicians are embracing harsh border politics and the bombing of multiple countries in the Middle East right now. We should look clearly at the billionaire owners of the biggest publications in the country being overtly racist. And ultimately we must know that it is only power which can move the powerful. 

We should not be seeking our personal absolution, or our personal cross to bear. I know that sometimes it feels like there's nothing we can do besides share content and spread the word, but that could not be further from the truth. Despite what we’ve been told in countless ways, we are not powerless, and politics is not merely a sport for us to watch. We are actors, we have agency, we have power. We can build that power together and build the capacity to use it. We can organize within our spheres of influence like our jobs, our apartment buildings or our blocks, our neighborhoods and places of worship and beyond so we can take action and build power to bring about peace and bring about the world we want to see, for ourselves, for others, and for the next generation.