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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Gaby Hinsliff

When the fog of war envelops everything, we owe it to those who suffer to admit doubt

A cameraman films while smoke plumes billow during Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City.
‘It’s not just the BBC that must do better in coming days, but all of us with access to wifi.’ A journalist in Gaza. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

Death has climbed in through our windows; it has entered our fortresses.

Throughout these days of unbearable stories, from the slaughter of small children in their kibbutz bedrooms to the fireball at a Gaza hospital where families were seeking sanctuary from bombs, those words have echoed around my mind. Taken from the biblical book of Jeremiah, they entered my thoroughly godless ears via a comforting-sounding rabbi on the BBC and stayed. It is no criticism of its competitors to say that in this house at least, in times of trouble, it’s always the BBC. Though nobody knows better than a journalist that journalists aren’t infallible, there are times when only the Pavlovian effect of the pips or of Lyse Doucet’s voice will do.

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