“No one is looking at us or the extent of this disaster or the crimes that we are experiencing in Gaza,” he said. Still holding his microphone, he slid off his flak jacket marked with the word PRESS and unstrapped his helmet.
“These protection jackets and helmets don’t protect us,” he said, flinging the equipment to the ground. “Nothing protects journalists. … We lose our lives for no reason.”
I think a fair amount of it is people being surprised that reality doesn’t match what they’ve been told. And that cognitive dissonance takes them time to work through. And it’s much more comfortable to say that’s not what war means, that’s not what genocide means, that’s not what ethnic cleansing means…
And of course they’re surrounded in a media soup using obtuse language to give them the impression everything’s fine.
I honestly expect most of these denial commenters don’t have an investment either way in the conflict. They just have an idea of someone is right, and they put everything into that narrative scope. It takes time to build nuance.