“All eyes on Rafah.” In the last 48 hours, my social media has been flooded with reshares of this particular phrase. Everyone, from friends to popular social media personalities, i.e. influencers, seem to have noticed the trend. The phrase, along with an image, is urging people to pay attention to the ongoing conflict in Israel’s Gaza Strip. The image has been shared by millions of people on social media in the wake of deadly Israeli airstrikes that have killed dozens of civilians. The image, which reportedly shows a row of tents stretching into the distance with the words “All eyes on Rafah” attached, has now been posted nearly 40 million times on Instagram. This comes in response to the Israeli attack on Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, that left at least 45 people dead, most of whom had taken refuge in tents that were set on fire after the bombing.
While this trend seems reasonably successful in “finally” drawing public attention to the seven-month embargo and generating a sense of national solidarity with the people of Gaza, there are a few points that stand out about this trend beyond its surface value.
First, the social media trend came late to the party. Please forgive me for using the word “party” to describe a raging war, but the sight of the IDF taking celebratory photos from the battlefield gives the impression of a party. What concerns me most is the late awakening of the Brotherhood on social media. The state of emergency in Gaza began in October, 235 days ago, and has been in the making for decades. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has caused serious human rights violations since its inception. The decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached new heights on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. The attack caused numerous casualties on the Israeli side and captured more than 250 people for Hamas. Following this, Israel declared war on Palestine and began an intense airstrike campaign followed by a massive ground invasion of Gaza on October 27, 2023. The Israeli operation has caused widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and displacing most of the population. Now, millions (Israeli and Palestinian) have been displaced and thousands have been murdered and raped as casualties of war. The scale of destruction in Gaza is particularly shocking, but it was also predictable. When the Israeli leadership declared war on Gaza, it was clear that hell would begin in the guise of revenge. Apart from a few public voices, the silence in public forums, including social media, has been deafeningly insidious. It has emboldened the inhumane tactics of the IDF. Children, women and innocent civilians have suffered horrific fates, lives have been destroyed, dreams have been shattered, cultures have been wiped off the face of the earth and the world has adopted a “wait and see” attitude. While there seems to be a great deal of attention being paid to this war now, I cannot help but feel that it is too little, too late. A few questions arise: Why did this wave of concern on social media have to wait seven months to become a trend? Why did governments around the world only start pressuring Israel recently and not earlier? Why did the International Court of Justice ruling and the UN call for a ceasefire be delayed? The most important question is, why has this clamor not reached the ears of Israeli leaders and other co-conspirators? Is it simply because the lives at stake are something that can be sacrificed for religious and ethnic identity, easily disposable and of little value to a profit-driven neoliberal world order? Current social media trends seem jaded with respect to time and do not convey the urgency this issue deserves.
Secondly, the constant and sudden sharing of “Watch on Rafa” also suggests the culture of convenience and irresponsibility that pervades the virtual world. As mentioned above, the social media fad started the debate, but like several other fads in the past, it may end up being superficial and short-lived. Social media platforms such as IG, X, etc. thrive on the vast amount of data/information that passes through their channels at an efficient speed, responding to market demands and dominant cultural standards. Trends in fashion, politics, art, lifestyle, etc. flood social media with incredible speed, and are often forgotten within a few days and rarely resurface, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, Met Gala Fashion, Cannes Film Festival, etc. are examples. Considering the large amount of traffic on the web, it remains to be seen whether the debate on the Israeli-Palestinian war can be sustained with the same euphoria and bring about significant change in the coming days. Or will it be replaced by another trend that is more appealing? After all, social media has made public memory increasingly short-lived. Social media caters to the postmodern society’s thirst for information, but it does so in the form of “bytes” or small simplified pieces of information that are facts mixed with opinions, aiming to provide the reader with only an approximation of reality. Before one can dig deeper, one is bombarded with other information in the form of reels, hashtags, and forwards. Social media is characterized by an information explosion that makes it difficult for individuals to digest and examine what they consume, turning active social agents into passive receivers. People’s scope of action becomes limited to sharing posts and hashtags only. Actions become secondary and reactions in the form of comments take the lead. In the case of the trend “Watch on Rafah”, it is surprising that while individuals (including celebrities) recently shared #AllEyesOnRafah, they also began sharing commercial collaborations, vacation images, and other entertainment pieces within minutes. They move on after following the trend, downplaying the value of the massive horror their Gazan compatriots are enduring. There seems to be little discussion of the political and economic realities facing the people of Gaza and Israel.
Third, social media trends risk oversimplifying complex sociopolitical issues, leading consumers with only a very shallow and vague knowledge of what has happened over the centuries to engage in microaggressions of trolling, labeling, and policing of communities. The International Sociological Association website states that the recent spate of violence in Gaza has led to an increase in both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia incidents. Jews and Muslims around the world are unfairly targeted, harassed, trolled, and even physically attacked on social media simply for being members of their respective communities. Social media trends can only be effective if they move beyond the risk of stereotyping individuals and groups to stimulate deep and lasting sociological discussion of the issues at hand. As the University of Toronto Department of History and Cultures states, “it is not only permissible, but essential for scholars to situate current wars within a broader historical context that includes settler colonialism.” Our duty as citizens of this world is to maintain the forum and foster debate at such critical moments, rather than getting swayed by half-baked information or limiting our engagement to sharing, re-sharing and liking social media posts.
This article is not a critique of the “Focus on Rafah” trend, but rather an examination of social media’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and whether it has the potential to bring about change. While the “better late than never” argument may be commonly cited here, I firmly believe that delay is a luxury we cannot afford in this horrific situation and that social media’s enthusiastic supporters should have led the Gaza cause from the beginning. Waiting has proven too costly and stained the lives and times of our generation with the blood of thousands of children. As a teacher, I am haunted by these children every time I enter a classroom filled with the inquisitive excitement of my students. The blank looks on their faces as they wonder why their lives were cut short and others survived. The absence of meaningful discussion on social media of similar issues, whether in Gaza, Afghanistan or closer to home in Kashmir and Bastar, is disturbing and eerie. Social media is said to be empowering the masses to question and revolutionize, but in reality the exercise of this power has been mundane at best and riddled with prejudice against religion, gender and ethnicity.
Bhavya Kumar A native of Lucknow, Abi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Sociology of Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He is currently working on his PhD thesis, “Self and Multiple Others: Social Interaction in the Classroom”. He has 12 years of training as a social scientist, having completed his Bachelor’s (B.Sc.) in Economics from Delhi University and his Master’s in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
