The War Is in My Phone

I don’t live in Israel. There are no sirens outside my window. I don’t check the news to find out if my city still exists.

But when I open my phone, it’s as if the war — which is still very much ongoing — has spilled through the screen.

My feed often feels like a minefield. One post is a tribute to a murdered family. The next is someone I went to high school with reposting slogans that make my stomach turn. Scrolling has started to feel like surveillance. Not of the news itself, but of people I once thought I knew.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from watching a war play out online. It’s not just the overwhelming grief of it all. It’s the debate layered over the grief. The moral accounting threaded between photos of bloodied rooms and political hot takes.

One minute, I’m reading a journalist’s account from a kibbutz that was burned to the ground. The next, I’m being told that mourning someone’s death makes me complicit in genocide.

I’ve seen people argue about death tolls in the comments of hostage photos. I’ve seen friends unfollow each other over whether or not to use the word “context.” And maybe the strangest part is how normal it all feels now. Like this is just what online Jewish life looks like in 2025. It’s part grief, part PR campaign, part defensive crouch.

I never expected to feel so exposed from so far away. I’m not in danger, but I still flinch at the things I see. At the slogans. At the silence from people who should speak up. At the way some only seem to find their voices when they’re condemning us.

There’s a kind of loneliness in watching people debate whether your grief is valid. Whether your mere existence is political. Whether your people count.

Some days, I scroll past it all, unbothered. Other days, I post my thoughts and brace for impact. I’m tired of explaining. I’m tired of waiting to see who shows up and who disappears. I’m tired of having to wonder what people really think.

But I’m also more awake than I’ve ever been. I’m aware of the fragility of things I used to take for granted. Aware of the weight of being part of a people that feels ancient, and yet, somehow, under fire at every point in history. To the fact that this isn’t just a war over land. It’s a war over memory, over meaning, over who gets to tell the story.

I’m not in a war zone. But my feeds are. And every time I open log in, I have to decide what kind of witness I want to be.