I have 104 things I want to time travel to change, but I’ve seen enough time travel movies to know doing that would not be a good idea – Butterfly effect and all. Time has a mysterious way of responding to attempts to change it. You fix one thing, you create a timeline with something just as terrible as what you fixed happening if not worse. But for the sake of this post, I don’t know better, and I am in fact changing something. But what is it?
The Israel-Palestine War
I thought long and hard before deciding on this one. Nobody likes war. Even if it’s not at your own doorstep, the entirety of humanity pays dearly for it in the casualties. The most recent war (and probably still going on) is the Israel-Palestine war. I’m not sure what name the history books will call the war, but I hope they tell the stories right and true.
Wars in the past have been fought in almost complete secrecy because the only way to find out about them were to rely on reports of mainstream media, read about them after they end, or learn about them in the history books. But one of the very few downsides to widespread internet and advanced social media is that we had the unfortunate pleasure of watching this war happen, with people both in the warzones and out regularly reporting numbers that left us in shock and terror. I remember I used to watch this Palestinian lady (I don’t remember her name, sadly, but I think it was something-san), and every day when I came across her videos, I would wonder if this could be the last time I was seeing her.
If you monitored it when it was most intense, it felt unreal the numbers we would hear and the stories citizens in both countries reported. We saw people get hit with missiles whiles going about their regular day, others whiles fleeing from war zones. Parents tattooed their kids’ bodies just so they could identify them in the unfortunate case that they were blown into pieces. I’m not even sure which would be worse, surviving something like that, or dying. Even some of those who survived the bombing died of hunger and thirst because of the blockades placed on the entry of food to certain regions. And if you did survive it all, can you ever live a normal life after suffering trauma of that kind, especially as a child?
If I really could travel back in time, this is what I’d be going to stop. All the death, and pain, and misery, and trauma that this particular war caused. I don’t think anyone deserves to go through what they went through (or are going through). There’s obviously been more devastating wars and historical events like slavery, 9/11 and others, but I’m particular about this one because this is what I’ve been around to witness and it’s also just recently happened. I’m curious to know your take on this matter.
All images were generated with AI