War on Gaza: When Death Becomes Just Another Headline

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

Sixty thousand dead.

That’s the death toll in Gaza after more than a year and ten months of war. The number is so large that it becomes abstract — just a row of digits we skim past in the news feed before clicking on a funny TikTok skit. But imagine this: sixty thousand bodies. Imagine how many stadiums they could fill. Imagine the silence of that crowd if they were all gone.

This is no longer just about missiles. It is no longer just about hunger and malnutrition. The latest headline is starvation — the complete absence of food over a prolonged period until the body simply gives up. Can you picture dying that way? Slowly, painfully, the body devouring itself, while the world scrolls on?

Missiles have struck water distribution points where children were queuing. A Catholic church, the only one in Gaza, was hit. Journalists have died covering the war. Yet our collective reaction is a shrug: So what else is new?

Psychologists have a term for this — psychic numbing. The human mind cannot truly comprehend large-scale death. We can mourn for a neighbor, empathize with a single grieving family, feel compelled to help a handful of survivors. But when the body count runs into tens of thousands, followed by zero after zero, it becomes an incomprehensible statistic, especially when it’s happening somewhere far away.

It happened here too. Thirty thousand died in the Philippine war on drugs — and many Filipinos looked away. Now, double that number have died in Gaza. Out of sight, out of mind.

Compassion fatigue has numbed the global conscience. After nearly two years of relentless images of bombed buildings, lifeless children, and desperate civilians, our hearts have grown calloused. Gaza is just 365 square kilometers — roughly the size of Camanava and Eastern Manila District combined — with a pre-war population of 2.1 million, about the same as Manila’s 2020 census count. Two-thirds of Quezon City’s population, trapped, blockaded, and now starving.

Pope Leo’s appeal is clear: humanitarian relief must reach this exhausted civilian population. The blockade of food, water, and medicine must end. The international community must resist any attempt to turn Gaza into an occupied territory.

Here in the Philippines, we have our own battles — typhoons, floods, poverty, corruption, and government failure. We may feel like our compassion is already spent. But somewhere far away, children are dying not because of the climate or neglect, but because starvation has been weaponized.

Rediscovering compassion is not just about helping others — it’s about allowing ourselves to heal from our own collective trauma. When we start caring again, we reclaim part of our own humanity.

Because the real danger is not that 60,000 have died in Gaza.

The real danger is that the more they die, the less we care.

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