It is always at bedtime that the horror of Gaza hits Naila Khan. “You know the images of those Palestinian parents, where they’re rocking their dead child?” she asks me, from Manchester. “Every evening when I’m rocking my child, all I can imagine is those mothers holding their children and I think to myself: my child is breathing, is alive, is healthy, safe, has got shelter. We’re not being bombed.”
Khan is a mother of four and, like many parents, she is struggling to process this war and the horrific impact on the children of Gaza. The death toll is unprecedented in our lifetimes, as is the on-the-ground footage we are seeing. I now understand why my mother couldn’t watch the news for years after I was born, and yet I can’t turn away. This war has galvanised my friends and acquaintances on social media, many of them parents. I get a lot of parenting content from Instagram, and use the platform to share my experiences. The horrifying footage of dead and injured children and distressed parents is now mixed in – it is a constant on my feed – eroding any barrier to empathy that might have existed between us before the age of social media.
