How Precious Is Your Mental Health?

Personal mental health is important. Absolutely. But how important?

I’ve been polling friends and acquaintances all over the country, asking three simple questions:

Q: Have you been following the news on the war in Gaza?
Q: If so, where are you getting that news from – any particular network or outlet?
Q: If not, why not?

An answer I’ve heard quite a lot is, “I don’t really follow that news because I want to protect my mental health.”

Okay, granted there is a lot going on in the world right now – a lot.

But unless you’ve been in a coma for the past nineteen months, you must be aware that something is going on over there.

If you know there’s something going on, but prefer to stay uninformed in order to protect your mental health, I have a fourth question for you:

Q: What is the real cost of ignoring this particular topic – the war in Gaza?

A: You are ignoring a genocide. That is to say, you are permitting a genocide to happen in your lifetime without doing anything to intervene. Or to put it another way, you are complicit in genocide.

Gen. O. Cide.

What is the real cost of ignoring this, a genocide?

There is a cost to you, but the genocide isn’t about you – so let’s focus first on the people of Gaza. At least 53,000 people have died, the majority of them women and children. With every passing day, more die, obviously.

The cost to the Palestinian people in Gaza, then, is their lives. Our inaction thus far has led to their deaths.

To be precise, the latest figures confirm 16,503 children have been identified as killed since the conflict began (thousands more lay buried under rubble and presumed dead):

Infants (under 1 year): 916 killed
Children (1–5 years): 4,365 killed
Children (6–12 years): 6,101 killed
Adolescents (13–17 years): 5,124 killed

One woman, a doctor, went to work last week, to save lives of children who’d been bombed, shot, or starved. Her husband (also a doctor) was at home with their ten children when their house was bombed. Nine of their children were killed – some had severed limbs, others had head wounds, others were burned alive. One child survived, and her husband is in critical condition.

We could have saved them. The war should have ended months and months ago.

That is the cost to Palestinians of our neglect.

What is the cost to you?

The cost to you is not nearly so dire. You will merely have a vague but nagging sense of regret, and it may linger for the rest of your life. You will be like the Christians who, when the trains carrying Jews to the death camps went past their church, sang louder so they couldn’t hear their cries for help. You will keep yourself occupied with other things for the rest of your life in an attempt to block out the memories. Images you unexpectedly glimpsed on your phone will haunt you if you’re not careful.

In a small way (or maybe not so small), your happiness will be marred because you turned your gaze away from fellow human beings in their suffering.

That is to say, your mental health will suffer later if you try to protect it now.

If you are listing excuses right now in your mind – “it’s Hamas’ fault”; “the Bible says the Jews must have the land”; “they attacked Israel first” – stop for a minute.

Listen.

There is more to the story than you know.

If you have been ignoring this issue, or barely following it, or getting updates from mainstream media, you don’t know enough to pass judgment. You don’t. You may be very intelligent, but you’re not informed.

Start by humbly admitting you have a lot to learn. Start by saying to yourself, “there might be a genocide going on, and I owe it to my fellow human beings to learn a little something about it.

“I like having peace of mind, but I’d rather be helping to stop a genocide.”

Then stay tuned. We’ll talk through your hesitations.

Until next time, I encourage you to read 5 tips for finding the best news reporting on Palestine and other posts listed below.

I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter. I write about the Palestine-Israel issue regularly, and other issues relevant to progressives or those considering becoming progressive. If you would like to comment on this post, please pop over to my Facebook page. All of my posts are there and open to constructive comment. I welcome your thoughts.

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FEATURED IMAGE: Patrick Malleret via Unsplash

How precious is your mental health?