When Misinformation Reaches Home: A Sikkimese Student Reflects On Gaza

I have taken a step back from my usual choice of topics to discuss something that I came across recently on my Instagram feed. While reading the comments under a post about the ongoing Israel- Palestine conflict, I came across a comment by someone I know from Sikkim. But what I read left me disappointed. Their comment read, “The Hamas started the conflict in October 2023, so Palestine is just facing the consequences of their actions.” 

To think that misinformation about a conflict happening miles away has reached our local community is quite alarming but not surprising in today’s globalised world. Still, I do feel a sense of responsibility both as a Sikkimese and as a Political Science student to at least try to educate my folks about this conflict or urge caution before making such sweeping and frankly ignorant public comments.

Whether you sympathise with one side or the other side of this conflict is not what I am concerned with. I am concerned with the misinformed certainty with which people form and share opinions on long- standing and complex conflicts like this one. What I want to make clear is that the conflict did not start on October 7th, 2023 as claimed by my acquaintance. 

The roots of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict can be traced back to the early 20th century. Israel- Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire until its disintegration towards the end of World War I. This area was religiously diverse including Muslims, Christians and also a small number of Jews who coexisted in peace. However, people in the region were starting to develop a sense of not only being ethnic Arabs but also Palestinians, a distinct identity. Alongside there was also a growing Zionist movement which sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 

After World War I the area was administered by British from 1920 to 1948 under the League of Nation’s British Mandate for Palestine. During this period Jewish migration from Europe increased, particularly after the Holocaust. But as more Jews arrived tension grew between the Jews and Arabs. In 1947 United Nations proposed a partition plan which divided British Palestine into three parts: a Jewish state, an Arab State and the City of Jerusalem to be placed under the International Trusteeship. Thus, emerged Israel, as the first ever Jewish state in the world. On the other hand, the newly independent Arab states in the region saw this as a form of European colonialism. By the end of the 1948 Arab- Israeli War, Israel controlled far more land than the UN had allocated and mass displacement of Palestinians took place, an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba or catastrophe. 

Further escalation occurred in the Six Day War of 1967 where Israel occupied all of Palestinian regions demarcated by the Partition Plan (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) as well as some parts of other Arab nations such as the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Though peace talks followed such as the Camp- David Accords and the Oslo Accords but none of them directly addressed the issue of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip.This is when the conflict became Israeli- Palestinian struggle. 

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was formed in 1960s to seek a Palestinian state that included all of British Palestine. Meanwhile, more Israelis began to settle down in the West Bank and Gaza Strip forcing Palestinians off their land. Palestinian frustration exploded in the form of two major uprisings or Intifadas:the First Intifada (1987-1993) and the Second Intifada (2000-2005). In the 1980s, a group of Palestinians in Gaza who considered PLO too secular and compromising created Hamas, a violent extremist group. 

In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza after which Hamas gained control of the strip and split from the Palestinian Authority (the Executive Committee of PLO). Since then, a civil war divides Gaza (under Hamas) and West Bank (under PA). In the West Bank, Palestinians resort to protests and sometimes violence. In Gaza, Hamas and other violent groups engage in periodic wars with Israeli forces, the most recent being the October 7th 2023 incident where Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel where an estimated 1,100 Israelis were killed and more than 200 were taken captive according to reports. The response from Israel has been swift and devastating.Since 2023, Israel has attacked Gaza more than 1000 times with more than 30,000 airstrikes many of which  have struck civilian places including hospitals, schools and relief camps creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. As of July 2025, more than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed, 17,000 of them being children, and over 1 lakh injured. 

Almost every day, for a few minutes, my heart sinks and my chest tightens as I come across another image or video shared by the Palestinian photojournalist, Motaz Azaiza. His lens documents the brutality and the horrors of this war in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. He shows us the bare truth; doctors in relief camps seeing bodies of their loved ones arriving on stretchers, a boy seeing his brother blast into pieces right in front of his eyes and what is truly more haunting is the image of a newborn killed before even taking a full breath. As gruesome as these images are, they are someone’s reality and the least I can do is to not look away. These images stay with me and run through my mind before I make any hasty comment reminding me of the human cost behind every headline.

It might seem distant. You might be thinking, “What does Gaza have to do with us?” but when misinformation reaches our communities and shapes opinions that are then posted for the world to see we inevitably become part of a global narrative. In the age of social media where information and misinformation spread like wildfire, we cannot afford to be careless. A single uninformed comment can contribute to the erasure of truth. All I am asking for is a pause before posting, a moment of thoughtful inquiry before jumping to conclusions and above all, a commitment to human empathy regardless of which flag is being flown.

(tapapriyasubba05@gmail.com)