Thanks to Simon Jenkins for his article about a conundrum I struggle with constantly: how to stay aware of what’s happening in the world without turning my back on it to preserve my own sanity (We cannot turn away from suffering, but I can no longer watch the news coverage from Israel and Gaza, 7 November).
The impact of a constant bombardment, not of real bombs but of images of suffering people and blasted homes, desensitises us, damaging our mental health and discouraging us from doing those small things we can do – all to no end. As he comments, there is blame without understanding, heat without light.
In 1969, I came back to the UK after a couple of years with Voluntary Service Overseas in east Africa. The Biafra war was on the news, complete with pictures of starving children, not so familiar to us then. My mother, a kind-hearted woman with a soft spot for small children, switched the television off, and I, in my 23-year-old arrogance, lectured her about not burying our heads in the sand. Now I, like Jenkins, don’t even turn the news on.
Susan Hofsteede
Bangor, Gwynedd
• Simon Jenkins tells us that he can no longer watch the news coverage from Israel and Gaza. Me too. Since September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I’ve become highly selective in what I permit myself to read, having realised that my mental health was suffering. Mercifully, the Guardian website offers collapsible sections, which allows one to hide, for instance, the Israel-Hamas or Ukraine wars, although bits do leak out as they appear in the headlines section as well.
Lest anyone think that this betokens a lack of empathy, I’d argue that it’s the reverse. What it betokens is a lack of agency. Reading about these events makes me angry and upset, but I can do nothing except watch helplessly.
Just as I wouldn’t slow down to look at a crash on the motorway, neither would I turn my eyes to look at the events in Gaza or Israel. All I can do is to donate money to the various appeals, which feels like a nugatory drop in the ocean.
Edward Collier
Ballabeg, Isle of Man
• Simon Jenkins tells us that he is upset by the coverage of the violence in Israel and Gaza. So am I. But his conclusion that we should be spared such horrors is profoundly wrong. “News,” he says, “should be about … facts and their informed interpretation.” Facts unadorned and unillustrated change little.
Before the photographs of the Belsen concentration camp, the true horror of the Holocaust could not be comprehended; the photograph in 1972 of the naked, burning little girl in Vietnam charged the antiwar movement as nothing else could have done.
And now we are having to see and understand the reality of war and terror as we have never had to do before. Seeing the destruction, the grief, the body bags large and tiny, may perhaps move us to less lightly go to war, to seek peaceful solutions, to try harder to help the suffering.
Sir Gerald Warner
Kemerton, Worcestershire
• I too sometimes find it impossible to watch the live streaming from this war. But perhaps it is necessary to confront this reality in all its raw horror, suffering and emotion, to maintain a moral compass. Concurrently with news from Israel and Gaza we have been witnessing the Covid inquiry and the shocking evidence of our so-called leaders’ huge disconnect with people’s suffering, as well as their own humanity, morality and humility. We are subject to manipulation by broadcasters and also by the government. But it should not be beyond us to seek out experts and to look for truth. We might find it easier to take a break from the overwhelming and upsetting depictions of war, but one thing is clear, denial is not an option.
Sue Cox
Upton, Norfolk
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