What We See—and What We Don’t: Watching Gaza Through the Television Screen
Each evening, on international news channels and social media platforms—not typically on Israeli television—viewers encounter haunting images from Gaza. A toddler, coated in dust, is pulled from the rubble, too stunned to cry. A boy trapped beneath concrete raises a bloody hand, pleading for rescue. These are real children experiencing fear, injury, and grief, not abstractions or statistics.
Behind them, devastation stretches across entire neighborhoods. Streets lie buried beneath shattered concrete. Smoke rises from collapsed buildings. Many displaced families now live in overcrowded shelters, UN-run schools, or tent encampments with little access to electricity, clean water, or basic medical care. Children wander barefoot through the debris, their faces hollow with hunger and fear. Survival has become the daily struggle. It is a scene of profound human tragedy, and it rightly demands our sorrow and attention.
But this is not the whole story.
These powerful images are often shown without context, framed as humanitarian tragedy rather than as the consequence of Hamas’s deliberate strategic choices, including its ongoing repression of Gaza’s civilian population.
Missing from many broadcasts are the origins of the current war: the October 7 massacre, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 251 taken hostage by Hamas. Today, approximately 50 hostages remain in Gaza, with about 20 believed to be alive, yet their fate is rarely featured in the same news cycles that rightly highlight Palestinian suffering.
Also underreported is Hamas’s role in prolonging the conflict. Despite sustained mediation by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, Hamas has repeatedly refused to release the remaining hostages or agree to ceasefire frameworks. These are not diplomatic failures, they are calculated political decisions. Hostages have become tools of leverage. And while the world focuses on Gaza’s devastation, far less attention is paid to those who are actively preventing its resolution.
Hamas’s conduct within Gaza is also largely shielded from international scrutiny. Credible reports document executions of suspected collaborators and the seizure and black-market resale of humanitarian aid. These are not unfortunate byproducts of war; they are central to a strategy that places civilians at risk while avoiding accountability serving the singular aim of preserving power.
Meanwhile, within Israel, a deepening internal divide remains largely unaddressed by the government: the growing tension between broad public support for a hostage deal and the leadership’s continued pursuit of war. A clear majority of the public, over 70 percent, according to recent polls, supports a negotiated deal to bring the hostages home, even at the cost of halting the war before Hamas is fully dismantled. Yet the campaign continues. Many believe political considerations are now driving its prolongation more than defined security objectives.
What emerges is a troubling asymmetry. Gaza’s suffering is shown—and must be—but often without naming the actors and decisions that perpetuate it. Few ask who obstructs ceasefires. Who withholds release. Who benefits, strategically and symbolically, from ongoing devastation.
To expose human suffering while ignoring the forces that caused or now sustain it is not merely incomplete—it risks becoming a form of complicity. Empathy without context may move the heart, but it can also cloud judgment and obscure responsibility. In a war shaped by propaganda, brutality, and moral evasion, clarity matters. And that clarity must also include a measured reflection on Israel’s contribution to the devastation through the difficult realities of wartime decision-making, the limitations of its broader strategic approach, and the internal political paralysis that has shaped the conflict’s trajectory.
If we are to speak meaningfully about this war, we must look not only at what is shown—but also at what is deliberately hidden.
