I was driving my son to childcare earlier in the week and absent-mindedly flicked on FM radio. Jangle was playing. Who in their right mind is listening to jangle right now? Who could possibly relate to slacker love songs at a time like this? On a daily basis I’m exposed to horrific imagery of dead babies covered in the gray dust of destroyed apartment blocks, children shaking in fear, children with the remains of their dead parents, premature infants piled together slowly dying because the energy supply to the hospital keeping them alive has been cut.
The imagery alone is traumatising, but it brings back difficult memories. For myself and my partner, it was only two years ago that our first son died of a poorly understood metabolic condition when he was only two days old.
Months after we lost him, I remember walking into a bookstore and listlessly scanning the shelves, unable to find anything that could speak to my experience or how I felt. The experience felt too taboo, too close to death to bring up at work or with acquaintances, even though it was all I thought about. Initially, close friends offered condolences, but eventually it was uncomfortable to mention even with them. I realised I was navigating grief in a place that’s actively indifferent to tragedy and the precariousness of life. This shaped how I perceive the current crisis.
While there’s a genocide unfolding before our eyes, people are engaging with this reality in vastly different ways. There’s growing tension across racial and political lines, but there’s also this fraught social dynamic emerging between those that care and those that don’t, and it’s easy to imagine that no one cares.
When I scan the headlines, I feel like I’m back in the bookstore after my son died. The media minimise this atrocity beneath articles about cricket matches and interest rate hikes, while presenting a watered down and biased version of what’s really taking place. They say we’re witnessing the necessary collateral of another war in the Middle East, another fight between noble western forces and a barbaric Islamist mafia. They never sympathise with the plight of the Palestinians being brutally killed for no good reason. On the contrary, it feels like their only aim is to crush empathy, to dissuade people from caring and to further alienate those that do.
Despite their efforts, I know there’s still many mourning for the innocent civilians who were senselessly murdered. The peaceful marches across the globe, and the pressure put on Netanyahu from both sides has likely led to the current pause in fighting… but despite the pause, I worry the wheels will start turning again soon. The politicians will refuse to listen, the media will again stay silent, and our social media feeds will be filled with more and more images of death. Meanwhile, any mention of these crimes will be met with shrugs or a belligerent form of ‘whataboutism’ and we’ll continue to be told this issue is so complex we simply have no right to discuss it. Through deceit, the discussion will become as taboo as death itself and the friction will continue to build.
The only option is to actively reject the current media landscape, to engage with different voices, ideas, soundtracks and unexplored narratives —to cultivate a new landscape we can finally grieve and find solace within.
