The Enemy Within: What I See as a Mother Watching the World Burn

I sat down to write this when my husband and daughter stepped out to pick up some groceries. I kept aside my phone and the news images finally stopped playing behind my eyelids. I couldn't stop thinking about what I've been watching unfold. Not as a commentator. Not as an expert. Just as a mother. Just as a woman who has held her own children through nightmares and cannot fathom being the one to cause another mother's child to have them. 

I have an observation. It's been forming for weeks, months, years really, watching conflict after conflict, violence breeding more violence, hatred passing from parent to child like an inheritance nobody wants but everyone collects. 

The only thing the present war in the middle east is proving is that so long as we fear differences, we will be easily let into hatred and continuous conflict. We are our enemy, gullible and vulnerable. And political leaders, whether we idolize or fear them, will use our fears effectively to continue to grab power and serve their own interests. That is the only truth. 

 Let me tell you what this looks like from where I sit. 

The First Thing We Do Is Stop Seeing Each Other 

I remember teaching my children to look at people. Really look. The elderly man on the bus who might need a seat. The new student sitting alone at lunch. The cashier who looks exhausted. I taught them that every single person has a story, a mother who loves them, a life as real and vivid as their own. 

And then I watch war happen and realize that the very first thing it demands is that we unlearn this. We must stop seeing. We must stop recognizing. We must transform human beings into categories, into threats, into symbols of everything we've been taught to fear. 

When I see a child in Gaza, I see my son's face. When I see a child in Israel, I see my daughter's eyes. And I cannot understand how any mother anywhere looks at someone else's child and feels anything other than her own heart breaking. 

But we are taught to fear differences. We are taught that their pain is different from our pain. That their dead are counted differently. That their tears mean something else. And once we believe that, we are already lost. Already capable of anything. Already ready to hate. 

I See Myself in This and It Haunts Me 

This part is the hardest to admit. It would be so much easier to point fingers, to blame them, to pretend I am above all of this. But I have felt the pull. I have felt the anger rise when I see injustice. I have felt the desire to draw lines, to pick sides, to decide who deserves my compassion and who has forfeited it. 

That is what frightens me most. Not the hatred of strangers, but the hatred that lives quietly in my own heart, waiting for permission. Waiting for a reason. Waiting for someone to tell me that this time, it's justified. 

We are so gullible. All of us. We want so badly to be right, to be good, to be on the side of justice, that we will swallow any story that makes us feel righteous. We will believe any narrative that confirms what we already suspect. We are vulnerable because we are human, because we are scared, because the world is terrifying and belonging to a tribe feels safer than standing alone with our doubts. 

I have caught myself doing it. Accepting headlines without question. Sharing outrage without verification. Letting my fear of one group justify my indifference to their suffering. And every time I catch myself, I have to sit with the shame of it. Because I know better. Because I am raising children who are watching me. Because the cycle continues through people like me who should know better and still get swept up. 

And Then There Are the Men Who Profit From Our Pain 

This part makes me want to scream. Because while we are out here, holding our children, worrying about their futures, crying over news that breaks our hearts, there are people in power who need this. They need the fear. They need the hatred. They need us divided because divided people are easy to rule. 

I watch them on television, these leaders. The ones I admire and the ones I despise. And I have started to notice how similar they are. They all speak in certainties. They all paint the other side as monsters. They all promise protection in exchange for obedience. They all need the conflict to continue because without it, what are they? 

The leader we fear becomes the villain we need protecting from. The leader we admire becomes our savior, our shield, our strongman. Both of them depend on our fear. Both of them profit from our pain. And our children, all of our children, pay the price with their futures. I think about this when I tuck my kids in at night.

I think about mothers doing the same thing on the other side of the world, under different skies, speaking different languages, praying to God by different names, but doing the exact same thing. Loving their children. Wanting them safe. Dreading the morning. And somewhere, men in suits are making decisions that ensure none of us will ever feel safe again, because our fear is their currency. 

Maybe This Is the Only Truth Worth Knowing 

I wrote that line and I meant it. Not because I have given up hope, but because I think we have to name the thing before we can change it. The conflict is not just out there, happening to other people in other places. It lives in here, in my heart, in your heart, in the way we learn to see each other, in the stories we accept without questioning, in the fears we carry without examining. 

I do not have answers. I am just a mother. I am just a woman who cannot look at a dead child anywhere in the world without feeling something break inside her. I am just someone who is tired of being afraid, tired of being used, tired of watching the same cycle repeat itself while the people who could stop it profit from its continuation. 

But I have to believe that noticing this matters. That naming it matters. That somewhere, another mother is looking at her children and having the same thought. That if enough of us refuse to be enemies, refuse to be used, refuse to let our fear become hatred, maybe something shifts. 

I don't know. Maybe that's naive. Maybe that's just what mothers do, hope when hoping seems foolish, love when loving seems dangerous. But it's all I have. And I'm putting it here because I need to believe I'm not alone in feeling this way. 

With a heavy heart and unshakeable hope, 

A mother who refuses to stop seeing