How To Overcome Compassion Fatigue
The war in Gaza , one year in
Hello friends.
I’m composing this to the rattling of jackhammers. The sidewalks of my narrow street are being torn up to work on the gas line underneath (Triggering a thought: the city should be going electric. We cut our gas line two years ago already). An airplane roars overhead in a milky, opaque sky.
I had several Climate Week events and I’ll probably compose something about them for my next post, but right now I’m thinking about Gaza. I’m thinking specifically about how to re-fill my well of compassion in a world that so constantly drains it.
I was on a plane, taxiing onto the runway, last October 7th when I first got the news. “Netanyahu got exactly what he wanted,” I immediately thought. A war to distract from the months of protests, from his corruption scandals and his attempt to take over the judiciary. By many accounts, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, got what he wanted too—”putting the Palestinian issue back on the table,” in New Yorker editor David Remnick’s words, even at a terrible price to his own people.
A member of my community, someone with whom I shared 50 mutual friends on Facebook, was murdered by Hamas that day. He was a photographer. His girlfriend was expecting a baby. I attended his NYC memorial.
In the early days, we were tender. We were listening. Every day rained fresh blows. Since then, there’s been so much pain. So much division. I’ve been to a few protests and vigils. I’ve written a few articles. I’ve had fiery, tense and healing discussions with family and friends, I’ve sat in community listening circles, and still I’ve avoided far more conversations than I’ve engaged in. I’ve sent money to World Central Kitchen, Rabbis for Human Rights, Gisha, and given a little moral support and editorial advice to A Land for All.
None of it feels adequate. And what I’ve noticed lately, inside myself, with anguish, is a turning away. There has been so much suffering, it feels impossible to hold. More than 41,000 people killed in Gaza, another 95,000 injured, 1.9 million people displaced. An estimated 73,000 pregnant women, right at this moment, surviving in the devastation, in famine conditions. And in Israel—tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes for a year now. Hostages shot dead. Those kids on the soccer field. And in the West Bank. And now in Lebanon.
It’s possible to experience real traumatic stress from exposure to violent and disturbing images of world events, via media and social media. This is called vicarious trauma, and it’s been studied in the context of 9/11, school shootings, war and the COVID pandemic. These images and stories can activate your own grief and anxiety, and it’s a natural, self-protective instinct to distance yourself.
But this can also lead to desensitization.
I’m fighting back against that impulse. I have to protect my heart, but not at the cost of feeling my pain for the world, the way Joanna Macy urges us to. Because it can recommit me to right action. Because it’s a way of being whole. I want to trust my capacity to feel, and I want to grow that capacity.
So I’m checking back in, and to do that, I dedicated some time to reading about Hind Rajab.
She was five or six years old—accounts vary. Fleeing from Gaza City in a car with her uncle, aunt, and cousins on the 29th of January. Evacuation orders said to go south, but that way was blocked by a bombed building. The Israeli military fired on the car. Her 15 year old cousin Layan Hamada called the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for help. During the call, you can hear 64 gunshots in just six seconds, and screaming. Hamada is killed. The dispatcher, a woman named Rana, calls back, and this time the little girl, Hind, answers.
“Who are you with?”
“With my family,” … “they are dead.”
“How was the car hit?”
“A tank…the tank is next to me … it’s coming towards me … it’s very, very close.”
Rana stayed on the phone with Hind for three hours, trying to reassure her, as her colleagues worked to get permission to bring an ambulance. The little girl was injured, shivering. Inside a small car with six dead bodies. She told Rana she was afraid of the gathering darkness.
“Is there gunfire around you?” Rana asked.
“Yes. Come get me,” Hind pleaded. “I’m so scared, please come.”
The ambulance came within 50 meters of saving her. But the Israeli military shot at both vehicles. A forensic investigation found a total of 335 bullet holes on the body of the car. The bodies of the paramedics and of Hind and her family were recovered two weeks later. According to the investigators, based on the distances involved, “it is not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children.”
Her cousin said Hind was a “funny kid” with dreams of becoming a doctor.
In death, Hind became, in some ways, a poster child. The protestors at Columbia renamed Hamilton Hall “Hind’s Hall.” The rapper Macklemore released a song named after that.
And then a torrent of other things happened. Colleges cracked down on protestors. The election dominated the headlines for months and months. The war expanded beyond Gaza.
So I’m taking a moment for a forensic accounting of my own. Is it plausible that I could not see the civilians, the children? Is it believable that I could overlook, or come to turn away from them? If I do, what am I?
On this topic: poet Hala Alyan on “Why must Palestinians audition for your empathy?”
For something completely different:
write an awesome travel newsletter, . We share many interests in parenting and sustainability, and they just did a travel guide with lots of recommendations for my ‘hood in Brooklyn!https://substack.com/@paviaandjeralyn/p-149068828
Good staycation inspiration.
I appreciate your willingness to discuss this, Anya. It is hard to have an open heart amidst the ongoing & expanding violence that we are witnessing. I have noticed similar experiences within myself--as well as a feeling of despair that the protests and actions have done little to nothing to move things in the direction of peace.