Where Do You Go When You Feel Like Humanity Has Failed?

One of the reasons I became a journalist was to tell the truth. You could say I was under a fog of naivety and idealism, but I think that I truly believed in the best of humanity. Maybe bad things happened for so long because of an ignorant, and simple population, who just didn’t know the truth. Because if people had access to the truth then things would simply change, right? There would be no discrimination, no suffering, no war. Why would we allow it? Surely if people could see the realities of the war crimes that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, the utter horrors in Sudan and Congo and the absolutely revolting West Bank settler attacks then it would stop because people would see. See that we can no longer stand for this. 

Looking back now, it was clearly the idealism and reckless hope of a young girl, who had been born in a country with no press freedom and clung to a desperate explanation for why the world was and is, the way it is. 

So what happens when you’ve told the truth and nothing changes. When people know about civilian casualties – currently 1,616 in Iran, including 244 children, 1,461 in Lebanon, at least 124 children. When a whole genocide was live streamed to us from Gaza. When we saw blood from satellite images in Sudan. What happens when the digital age means that ignorance is no longer acceptable and a lack of knowledge is attributed to simply putting your head in the sand. We’ve heard Israeli officials speak of replicating the “Gaza model” in Southern Lebanon. The US president saying he will bomb Iran “into the stone age”, and a “whole civilisation will die tonight”. The news feels so loud now, as deafening as the bombing, surely you must have to hide away in a bunker to simply not hear it. 

In the midst of all this, four human beings travelled further from Earth than anyone has before. I remember being in the newsroom, and every screen from BBC, to Sky to CNN was covering the moment the rocket launched. When every news outlet is covering the same story, it’s a sign that either something really big or really bad is happening. I am not much of a space enthusiast by any means, but looking at those videos and pictures, how could you not be in awe? And what a story of innovation, success and history. But another stark thought: if there are other planets and civilisations out there, what must they think of us? Of our capacity for destruction? 

Being a journalist during the US-Israel war on Iran has been one of the most sobering experiences of my life. There’s two things (amidst many) that I have observed from the war so far, that we need to change going forward. First, to never stop consuming the news. And second, to never stop talking about it. 

Let me elaborate this first point. I am aware that as a journalist I have a passion for the news and global politics that not everyone has. But one thing I have noticed from conversations with colleagues and friends and listening to commentary, is just how many people are not consuming news anymore. And this not because they’re selfish or evil but because it’s too “overwhelming.” It feels “far away,” it's “too depressing.” According to a 2024 report by the Reuters Institute, 39% of people worldwide say they sometimes or often actively avoid the news, a rise from 29% in 2017. It’s a shame that not everyone has the luxury. 

We live in a world where every kind of media is accessible. You don’t need to watch one hour of television to learn about news or even read a newspaper anymore. Just by searching on your phone, you can get a decent understanding of current events in ten to fifteen minutes. You can follow news outlets or media personalities on Instagram, X, TikTok, Youtube. Everywhere you look now, the media space is saturated with long and short form content, from journalists to commentators, to even young people having conversations or writing articles. Even by following charities or people on the ground, you can understand what’s going on. I would argue that today, more at any time in history, every type of journalism is available for every kind of person. Thus, the excuse of inaccessibility or the complex news agenda simply no longer stands. 

Maybe not everyone wants to have their afternoon at the pub or Pilates class ruined by hearing about the number of protesters killed in Iran or how Gaza has the largest group of child amputees in history. But really, is that good enough? Getting to turn away, while people’s homes are destroyed, families are torn apart, when educational and civilian infrastructure become valid targets, is a choice and an immense privilege. And it mainly exists in the western world. After all, as history has told us, civilians in the Middle East are fair game, but the ones who fund it with their taxes, well, they get to turn away. 

However, globalisation means that whether you are a civilian, whether you support what’s happening or not, you are responsible or impacted in some way. If you live in America and Israel, your tax dollars pay for it. If you’re in Europe, your government may have had a delayed moral awakening, but you still likely funded a genocide for two years. And if you’re in the Middle East, it’s likely that your government, no matter how they may present themselves, probably funded terrorism or proxy war at some point. No one's hands are clean. And therefore, no one gets to look away. 

This phenomenon of looking away, doesn’t just astound me (after all as a journalist it goes against all that I believe in) it terrifies me. Our selfishness, our ability to turn off, to not care. And maybe a lot of people do. But if you’re not making a conscious effort to learn about what’s happening in the world, especially during war, then you simply don’t care enough. 

My second point revolves around conversation. As someone who deals with the news for a living, who has to sort through harrowing accounts of women in Gaza begging for their dead children to wake up or Iranian civilians telling us she’s just seen piles of bones and body parts left after overnight bombing, its harrowing and you need to talk about it. But I sometimes find myself holding back. Who wants to be the annoying leftie talking about death and destruction every time you see them?

But we shouldn’t. And I shouldn’t. Maybe I am still that naïve girl, but I think conversation can change things. Yes it won’t stop the bombs or the threats but at least with every conversation ideas will be exchanged, opinions will be formed, and all of the destruction won’t be normalised.

I thank god every day, but these days more than ever, that I was born in a country that could defend itself. But it was just luck. Luck that I wasn’t born in Gaza, or Lebanon, or Iran. Someone’s misfortune was my gain. It breaks my heart a little more every day, when I see young women who look like me, girls who look like my little sisters and streets that look like the ones I grew up on being destroyed. And it fills me with even more horror, that the world around me isn’t horrified by it.

If that was me, my family, my home, the world wouldn’t care either. I would be another casualty of a war that will be a case study in a political science class or debated on television, twenty years later, asking, did we get it wrong? People in war zones rely on us to learn and share their stories. Unfortunately, they rely on the news to give their lives and deaths meaning. Death is tragic, dying for nothing is unacceptable. So, let’s stop turning away and never stop talking about it, we owe it to those people caught in war, to regain our humanity.

Image: Flickr/Indigo Nolan

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