Anyone awake?

[Cathadtwobreakfasts]

Lying here awake not able to sleep yet again. I get about an hour a night. It’s been like this for the past month. I’m not understanding how people can function properly seeing what’s happening in Gaza. I think about it most of the day. Are people just watching the news? It’s so highly censored. I’m following many accounts of the press actually in Gaza. It’s horrific. I’ve seen hundreds of dead children. Babies. Body parts just on the street. Children carrying the body parts of their parents. Starving people, starving animals.
I can’t fathom it. I’m meant to go Christmas shopping today for my last bits. How are people walking around cheery, so self absorbed with their own lives.

Yes there’s other terrible things in the world, but this is huge. This is the equivalent of the holocaust. It’s genocide. Ethnic cleansing. People talk about Germans living so close to concentration camps and knowing and doing nothing. The whole world knows about this. I can’t change it any more than you reading this post but how can people just block it out. I don’t understand. It’s not ok to ignore it, no matter what is going on in peoples lives. My life is a shitshow but I cannot stop thinking about those people, children, babies.

I know. It’s tragic.
Your comparison to the concentration camps is something I hadn’t considered.

It’s not the reason I’m awake but I hear you.

Gosh I’m sorry, I’m awake but I can’t even fathom taking on that mental load

I can't watch it , I don't understand how it can be happening, being viewed by the world and it continues.While the governments are debating, not wanting to interfere . And how ironic is it that Israel, a Jewish nation is responsible.
But I confess , I am totally focused on my own issues , on my own problems to the detriment of all else.

I’m lying here hearing that rain. Knowing there’s children sleeping under plastic sheets with rain too, hearing bombs drop around them not knowing if the next one that lands will hit them. It’s like trapping fish in a barrel and shooting.
Isreal are telling them where the ‘safe spots’ are and them bombing there.
Im so heartbroken

Blimey I'm.awake.and came to give solidarity with the insomnia bit that's a bit much. I've had a shit couple of months (still not much better), I won't apologise for looking forward to bloody Christmas.

I don't watch the war news, I get anxious enough about things I can control let alone taking on the mental load of things I can't.

See, I did the same. I knew I’d struggle and I had so much of my own problems to think about so I didn’t read, I didn’t watch the news. But I realised my ignorance is utterly selfish and how could I just ignore it and sleep safe in my bed at night when those people are enduring that. It’s horrific, but I won’t stop watching. If it were my children I’d want the world to know, I’d want them to see what’s happening

Yes, it is horrific, I cry a lot. No Christmas spirit here when the West is celebrating the birth of a Palestinian man 2000 years ago but literally refusing to stop a genocide in that country. When people are losing their jobs for supporting Palestine and you aren't allowed to say a Pro-Palestine slogan for fear of sounding anti-Semetic but it's okay to drop bombs, shells, shoot, starve etc an entire country. Cutting off water? How barbaric. Yet you have to take down artwork by Gazan children in a hospital because its offensive to certain people. But bombing and bulldozing hospitals is okay!
I can't understand the people who are unbothered, who just don't care and I can only assume its racism or ignorance.

yeah it’s shit, but I can’t get my head round why it’s any shitter then the wars and disasters going on in Africa, Afghanistan, Chinese oppression

It’s a bit much? Excuse you? Yes of course it’s a bit fucking much that children are being blown apart.

I can't understand the people who are unbothered, who just don't care and I can only assume its racism or ignorance.

You’re completely right in everything you say and as the highlighted part of your post it’s both. People welcomed Ukrainian strangers into their actual homes. But they were white and anyone offended by me pointing that out and not seeing the difference or being aware enough to know the western world doesn’t care about brown people is ignorant.

Why are you picking a fight with people at 5am?

Your level of blame on regular people going about their own daily drudge is a bit much yes. Nobody is saying its OK, quite the opposite, but not everyone is mentally strong enough to take on watching 'bits of bodies' and 'babies being blown up'.

I agree that it’s horrendous and definitely shouldn’t be happening but you getting yourself in a state throughout the night and not sleeping isn’t actually helping anyone. I think everyone has to have a bit of self preservation that they need to keep in order to function effectively themselves.
Maybe stop watching so many news reels, get some sleep and in the daytime do some fund raising to help send much needed supplies - raise awareness in a useful way if you want.

I was following it closely, until it started affecting my mental health and I decided that me falling apart wouldn't help anyone anywhere.

Well your ignorance to the situation is right there. They can’t receive aid. Isreal won’t allow it.

@Cathadtwobreakfasts

While i understand your rage, directing it at strangers on an internet forum is irrational
I haven't watched the coverage, I can't watch it. If I did my mental health would be terrible.
Not everyone has the resilience to watch hours and hours of horrendous footage. And in the most gentle way, it's it's affecting you so badly, maybe you too should limit your watching.

No need to be rude OP! I actually do know that little aid is getting in at the moment but the World Food Programme had 46 trucks going in on the 20th December and all the major charities are collecting and asking for donations.
You seem intent on arguing with everyone so no need to say more.

I agree with you@Cathadtwobreakfasts that it's horrifying, and that the response to Ukraine was / is quite different - hard not to see racism at the core there. I didn't sleep well during the early days of the assault on Gaza. I have also seen some images and videos that I'll never forget, and except that Palestinian children have no choice but to see, and hear, and smell the reality of it all day every day, I would wish I hadn't seen these things.

But @Nannydoodles is right, your distress doesn't change anything. I wear a keffiah, to show solidarity, to be visible as one of the many millions who are on the side of the Palestinians, and have also found myself far, far less irritable/ impatient with my children. I think Gaza has made me realise the amazing luck I have had to be born somewhere peaceful, to be able to put my children to bed somewhere warm and safe after a hot meal and a bubble bath. The little things they do - squabbling etc etc - just don't bother me the way they used to, so I respond far more calmly. I remember doing bedtime once in the early days of this genocide, imagining how it would feel to do it if I was in Gaza, how unfazed I'd be by my children's normal bedtime stalling. Somehow that's converted into a deeper appreciation of how lucky I am that my children are safe, and a far calmer more present way of parenting. Can you try to convert your very legitimate distress into something more positive? Fundraising, raising awareness, demos etc, as @Nannydoodles suggested but also something positive in how you see / experience your own life? Treasuring the peace and relative prosperity we almost all have in Europe/UK/ Australia might also make us take the biggest threat to that peace - climate change - more seriously.

I haven’t watched any of it.
I can’t do anything and know the images would affect me deeply. It’s not ignorance or ignoring it’s happening, it’s just self protection.

You should consider the same OP

I completely agree with everything you are saying OP. We are watching ( or not watching as many people on this thread have said) a genocide unfold. It is utterly horrific, and I find it hard to fathom how so many turn a blind eye... because it is 'too upsetting'. I am finding it very hard to reconcile enjoying Christmas when 10,000 children have been murdered.
I am involved in Palestinian Solidarity, have attended lots of the marches and vigils. I will continue to speak up for these people and hope against hope for a ceasefire.

@Onlymeagaina It is different from other conflicts because of the sheer barbarity of Israel: the bombing of hospitals, refugee camps, schools. The people of Gaza were already under seige, everything controlled and now they have had the equivalence of 2 nuclear bombs dropping on them.

No aid, no food, no water. No water? How evil do you have to be to cut off water?

And it's different because even though mainstream news won't show any of this thanks to social media we can see exactly what they are going through.

We know their names, the brave reporters like Wael who lost his entire family and kept reporting and then got shot and lost his cameraman and kept reporting. The young reporters like Bisan crying for her kittens, Motaz who has gone grey at 25, the mother mourning her IVF baby who took 580 injections to conceive and was killed by a single bullet. The medics who have been targetted and massacred. The surgeon who had to amputate all four limbs of his child without anaesthetic and the child died from shock and pain.

And the kind-faced grandfather who broke all our hearts when he lost his beloved beautiful granddaughter Reem calling her the "soul of my soul".

These people are real and they are wonderful and they do not deserve any of this hell that has rained down on them for 75 years.

I understand where they are coming from because I’m very mentally vulnerable and stayed ignorant at first. I didn’t even know what the issue was that’s how uninformed I kept myself. But we can’t.

My heart breaks for them. Watching men carry their children in bloodied sheets sobbing on the side of the street before having to put their child in a mass grave. Those people are in a nightmare they can’t wake up from yet they’re getting up every day and caring for Their children, and I’m sorry but if they can keep persevering after burying their children then people can give them the respect to at least watch the news.

People commented on the thread the other day about the little boy who was killed in a hit and run and wrote about how they watched the parents interviewed. They managed that but it’s ‘too upsetting’ when it comes to Palestine.

Something I have always struggled with is feeling the gravity of people in the news being real people with lives, interests, families. Watching the footage coming out of Gaza has really humanised them for me. Like the other poster said, they are real people like Reem, that gorgeous little girl. They aren’t just numbers. We have to feel the full gravity of it or we lose our humanity.

What struck me is a sense you need to watch and read it to do your bit, as you say you feel bad for not doing so. Thing is, nothing changes whether you look at these things or not.

Conversely, I was on X and saw a distressing image of a beheaded child and deleted the App immediately. Distressing myself only harms me, doesn't help them.

What would be helpful for you to do? Are you campaigning? Raising awareness? Stop looking at this stuff it's hurting you.

Your compassion is admirable but honestly for your own sake you need to pull back from looking at it all. It's clearly doing you no good as you are up all night. Perhaps just limit your exposure?

I watched some but I've stopped.

You watching hours of this is not helping those people at all.

As others have said, donate or volunteer if you want to help.