Palestine is showing us our broken systems — that's why we can't look away

It is a mistake to call it doomscrolling. The compulsive, unending consumption of footage from Gaza is not a passive act of self-flagellation, but an active search for signal. We are not just witnessing a tragedy; we are engaged in pattern recognition.

The obsession is not only grief, but recognition. For many, the moral clarity feels absolute. This is not, however, simply a case of right versus wrong. It is a moment of system-clarity. Every major institution that underpins Western civil society is being floodlit in real time, and its wiring is being exposed.

Start with the media. The gap between the language of established news outlets and the reality captured on a phone screen has widened into a chasm. We are told of ‘clashes’ when we see massacres, ‘evacuations’ when we see forced displacement, ‘collateral damage’ when we see a family tree annihilated.

This is not a simple complaint of bias. We are seeing, with stark clarity, the architecture of narrative construction. Mainstream media is revealed not as a window to the world, but as a system for managing consent and risk on behalf of the state and its allies. The trust that is evaporating will not be easily replaced.

Then there is the law. The entire apparatus of the ‘rules-based order’ — the UN, the International Court of Justice, the body of humanitarian law — is showing its limitations. These are not broken systems; they are systems revealing their true purpose. They exist to manage conflict between powerful states, not to deliver justice to the powerless.

The global south has always understood the selective application of these rules. Now, the rest of us are being given a lesson in the difference between the law in theory, and the law as a function of power.

Look at our universities. They position themselves as bastions of free inquiry, yet student encampments protesting a genocide are met with riot police. Academics and students face disciplinary action for expressing solidarity with Palestine, while university administrations fret about their endowments and their political donors.

The university is not being broken by these protests. It is showing us what it is: a corporate body, deeply embedded in the political and economic establishment it claims to critique.

And finally, the technology platforms through which we see all this. The promise was a decentralised, democratised public square. The reality is a set of privately-owned arenas where the algorithm is king, and the king has his preferences. Content is suppressed, hashtags are shadow-banned, and the raw material of history is filtered before it reaches our screens.

These platforms are not neutral conduits. They are active participants, shaping the narrative landscape while professing to merely reflect it. Their own institutional interests are now part of the story.

This is why we cannot look away. We are watching a live X-ray of the systems we were told to trust. The insistent, horrifying truth of Palestine is that it is showing us the world as it actually is, not as we are told it is.

The world does not fold back to its previous shape after a revelation of this magnitude.