On Saturday, Oct. 7, news alerts across the world blared devastatingly: Hamas (the terrorist or militant group, depending on who you ask), had mounted a widespread and devastating attack against civilian communities across Israel, assaulting, kidnapping, and killing hundreds. The following days have seen bombing and starvation and fighting grow in nauseating intensity. Like hundreds across the world—and on this campus—I felt a sharp pit nestle in my stomach. Since then, the days have been full of shaky breaths and frantic phone calls and the deep ache of waiting for death counts to rise. 

But as I gauntly walked across campus this week, unable to wash the images of the dead from my eyelids, I returned the same question: Why was this bothering me so much? I have loved ones in Israel, but they were all safe. So why haven’t I been able to breathe for seven days?

And as I braced myself and opened Instagram, I watched hundreds of loud, dogmatic, violent posts barrage my feed and ask the same question. For so many people with different relationships to the conflict, why is this bothering everyone so much? 

In an age of news cycles that show us natural disasters, human rights crises, and wars twice a week, our tolerance for conflict is quite high. Couple this with a record-low collective attention span, and it’s amazing anything holds Instragam’s attention for more than an hour. And yet, I have not opened my phone even once this week without seeing a tweet, video, infographic, or grand statement about this impending war. 

This question can initially be answered through the lens of proximity. There are students on campus who are from Israel, who have family there and speak Hebrew, who fear for the lives of those they are closest to. There are those of us with friends, loved ones, or memories from Israel, mourning the deaths of people we care about and a land we know. There are diaspora Jews, whose relationship with Israel cannot be expressed in so short of an article, but who mourn deeply, too. There are students who are Palestinian, who have fear for their family and grieve the tragedy of their dead. There are Arab students who mourn their friends and an impending war. And there are many for whom this war is an abstraction, who have no relationship to human beings in the Levant, who know this conflict not from their blood but from articles and infographics. But I think there is something that cements this tragedy in a way all of us, no matter what perspective, are not used to: the absolute and entire lack of clarity. 

This conflict is not simple. It is the messy culmination of different political leaders, domestic Israeli and Palestinian affairs, genetic and historical trauma of many different people, interaction with the rest of the region, and hundreds of other factors complicating it. If it was simple, there would be some degree of consensus from smart, left-leaning people across the world, who can often agree on matters of good versus bad. But if this week has taught us anything, it’s that there is no consensus. 

I think this is part of the reason the conflict has inflamed so much turmoil. Every single person on the internet with equal conviction states contradictory opinions about the nature of the conflict, about the blame, about the solution, and about which deaths we should mourn. Every single news source publishes a different story, and every single one accuses their competitor of lying.

This is a really novel way to experience a global tragedy—we are used to death, yes, but we are also used to knowing how to feel. We are used to seeking refuge among the people who agree with us, we are used to being told by our favorite newspaper what to believe. We are used to seeing consensus—knowing what flag to hang outside our houses, knowing what hashtag to use. But suddenly, the ground has been pulled out from under us. 

So yes, we are sad, we are angry, we are grieving. But we don’t necessarily know for whom! And if we figure it out, there will be a development in the story, a different post, or a loud voice that tells us we are wrong. I sat with the Rabbi this week and told him how much I was struggling, how angry I was. And when he asked who I was angry at, I did not have an answer. This epitomizes the confusion I’ve observed: I felt the pit in the stomach, but I didn’t know who I was allowed to cry for. 

The second reason I think this war hits so devastatingly hard for so many is because there hasn’t been space to breathe. To add onto the emotional confusion, even if you do figure out what you believe or who you want to grieve, there is nowhere to go. Humans are used to war and death, and we’ve developed infrastructure to handle it over time. We host vigils to grieve our dead. We host protests to retaliate against those responsible. We turn to communities—friends, online groups, synagogues or mosques or churches—to find support and validation.

But suddenly, these places do not hold room to breath. When a tragedy is politically charged, every attempt to process it becomes equally charged. Vigils send a political message and incite protests and vitriolic online backlash, as well as the potential to target violent acts against those grieving. Protests are laced with antisemitism and Islamophobia, and are about as political as you can get. Families are having vicious disagreements about whose side they align with, and friendships are being ended over differing stances. Even when one does enter a religious space, there is a huge gradient of beliefs within faith communities, making it hard to have civil and honest conversations that actually provide catharsis because of a game of don’t-say-too-much-in-case-everyone-disagrees. 

Entering these places has become work, not rest. Trying to gauge the temperature of each room, what people think, debating in the comment section, intentionally omitting your feelings to prevent conflict, have become common practices at a time when so many of us need to curl up and cry. It hurts to see people you love express an opinion you find dehumanizing; it hurts even more to feel that there is just nowhere to go. All of the places we have been trained to rely on for catharsis or emotional relief have become entirely submerged in political stances that can’t provide the peace we need, and I think it’s important to acknowledge how much harder that makes processing this war. 

And where does this leave us? So many people across the world are watching body bags pile up with tears in their eyes. Add onto this pain the pain of not knowing what information is true or why everyone around us disagrees with such conviction. And, even further, add onto that the fact that there is no community infrastructure or support that allows us to process this pain. So our mourning becomes three-dimensional: We mourn for the lives lost, for the truth lost, and for the time and space lost. 

I worry that political tragedies so quickly become simply political, and do not give time and space for the tragedy as social media becomes a game of watching death tolls rise and seeing political points instead of human bodies. In the confusion and the dogma of the war, I have observed many rely on politics as a lens to manage grief, and I don’t mean to take away from this at all. There are absolutely things to be protested and scolded and changed. But we should consider how this action interacts with our humanity. Maybe it is easier to lean into political rage or debates than it is to sit with admitting the pain and powerlessness that comes from not knowing everything or not having an easy enemy. I know I’ve certainly struggled with this.

But there is no easy answer, no Instagram post that can sum up the right way to feel. This is a decades-long story, one that tells with equal truth the suffering of the displaced and abused Palestinian people and the embrace of a Jewish homeland after centuries of persecution of the Jewish people. For that reason, across the world, we are all mourning different people and different things. But I believe it is a shortcut—and an unfair one—to assign simplicity for the sake of our consciences.

Perhaps part of properly and honestly grieving the war is coming to terms with how frustrating it is to not always know, or to not always agree. Part of the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the terrible entanglement of confusion at a time when we most desire an easy and common enemy. But I think there is a responsibility to engage with the reality that maybe there are multiple enemies and multiple truths, for the sake of the real human beings who suffer in every direction. This causes confusion, it causes fighting, and I think we have a responsibility to confront this confusion with respect, to research for learning and not for confirmation, and to trust the sadness in the pit of our stomachs. 

And it certainly hurts, but perhaps the protests and vigils and friends we once used to find peace can’t give that to us this time, because they need to be loud and active. But everyone who is mourning this week deserves time and space to do it. Maybe that means talking things out in a private space with a religious leader or therapist, free from the political entanglements that have left so many feeling stuck. Make private art, call the people you love. Smash pumpkins or take naps. Say prayers for those who have died, share donation links for those who are living.  

This conflict hurts many people for a plethora of political reasons I can’t explain. But somewhere in this hellfire of death and misinformation and existential ache and political correctness, there is loss. Try to have the courage to confront that loss with respect and honesty, and grieve. I think it’s the bravest thing you can do. 

 

Julia Schroers can be reached at jschroers@wesleyan.edu.