A set of diaries written by schoolgirls in Palestine which was turned into a live production highlights what it’s like to live under occupation in the West Bank. The show breaks through news desensitisation and the increasing empathy disconnect surrounding narratives of war and conflict.
It was the year 2000 and Mirna Sakleh was 15 years old. She was attending Terra Sancta Girls School in Bethlehem, Palestine at the time, and her English Teacher, Susie got her class to keep diaries in the wake of the Second Intifada.
As the years passed and the Intifada heightened, Bethlehem became an epicenter for military action. As a result, the diary pages became overridden with the harsh realities of military intimidation, the murder of classmates, curfews, and checkpoints. A reality no human, let alone a child, should have to endure.
Mirna’s classmate Dalia Qumsieh wrote in her diary, April 16th 2002: “That time we were expecting them [The IDF] to pay us a ‘cheerful’ visit. We were ready all the time. They checked some houses in the neighbourhood. We were waiting for about nine hours. Then the tanks just withdrew… I was so angry, I wanted to throw everything at them. I know it might sound crazy, but if they had checked our house, it would have been so much better than being scared… I really feel empty, just like that street I’m staring at. You know, with the shooting and the bombing.”
This was during a pinnacle point of the Second Intifada, in 2002 when the IDF surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, an event that was heavily covered by international news at the time.
”It was very significant for Christians around the world, so it felt like everyone cared, you know.” Mirna explains.
Life was different during the early 2000s, the political situation in Palestine was different, but so was the entire media landscape. There was no social media and the internet didn’t function in the way we now know, so most people got their information about the world from the TV and the nightly news.
“So back then, writing the diaries was something really powerful and really unique. Someone was listening,” she continues.
The diaries were originally created to help the girls process the things happening around them. Later, theatre was introduced, and the written anecdotes soon turned into a way to be heard. From this, the diaries were brought to life and turned into their first live UK theatre production in London in 2004.
“Yet, in this current ongoing war, they [The IDF] bombed all the churches, all the mosques, all the hospitals, all the schools, they didn’t stop, and it can feel like nobody cares,” Mirna says.
During the current war across Palestine, there’s no shortage of people posting and sharing about the conflict, but “not everything finds someone to listen” Mirna notes.
“The first time it happens, there’s a big reaction, but then when it keeps repeating, it’s no longer significant.
“The same news doesn’t have any meaning anymore. It’s become normal. It’s just become another piece of news that no one cares about.” She explains.
Here Mirna is referring to what researchers call the 24-hour news cycle, and the influx of social media, a phenomenon that can have profound effects like desensitisation.
Professor of Communication Erica Scharrer, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst who specialises in the effects of media content says desensitisation is a “multi-faceted concept.”
“Generally where we might expect a stronger response to something that is disturbing – the more we see something that is disturbing, the more that stronger emotional response or physical response gets muted. It’s this idea of becoming inured.
”People who study the news have long found that the news itself tends to be populated with bad news, this idea that bad news travels fast, and bad news sells news. So with repetition of this content, we almost, as a coping mechanism, become a bit immune.” She says.
Professor Scharrer links ‘news fatigue’ and ‘desensitisation’, highlighting that changing media landscapes and the increasing range of readily available sources means news is fighting for an audience’s attention. She refers to this as “the attention economy”, and this current era where our attention is almost this commodity that can get bought and sold by media platforms.
This constant news supply means a news audience is repeatedly confronted with terrible and violent acts, hence the term ‘doom scrolling’, it’s this concept that there’s ‘doom and gloom’ on our screens.
Even with this constant flow of information, Professor Scharrer notes how the narrative is often depersonalised and militarised within news coverage about war and suffering.
“We almost never get the stories, we may see fleeting images of someone grieving, but real stories we almost never get. And the idea of stories of life before, as well as during, and after siege are I think really important for relatability.” She says.
The Diaries heavily pulled on this idea of relatability, as they showed the normal daily thoughts of the teenage girls; from boy bands, to dreams of college – before the invasion of Bethlehem, and then how this changed during the thick of the Second Intifada. This comparison highlighted that children and adults living in Gaza and The West Bank are not just ‘conflict stricken people’, they are people just like me, just like you, an element which can often get lost in the news.
“We all have this somewhat protective tendency when we see images of war and suffering, and even then those are somewhat rare because they do tend to be sanitised,” Professor Scharrer continues.
“But when we see that, we maybe distance ourselves from it. Almost saying thank goodness, that’s not me, right? That’s so far away, and it’s got nothing to do with me and my life, right?
“But if we see or hear things that we all do in our daily life, you know, people going to the market, and people celebrating events in their lives. Then that distance has collapsed, and there is a connection, a human connection.”
It’s this double-edged sword, we are aware and ‘connected’ to events taking place across the globe, but we’re so overrun with information and ‘bad news’, and this lack of real human connection, that we can’t actually ‘connect’ with the narrative. Our ability to empathise is diminishing the more we consume, which can lead to, as Professor Scharrer puts it, this “collective feeling of being desensitised”.
This is why the diaries were brought back for a second live production – to address this and to highlight the need for human connection amid the wars across Palestine.
“I think the world has pushed us so much, and the politicians, to become very individual people. We live in a very strange time, everybody lives in this bubble, and they don’t know how to break it. We kind of get to the point where we think nothing can be changed,” says Raeda Ghazaleh, who tutored the girls during the Second Intifada and co-directed the live theatre productions.
“That’s why the diaries are so powerful, because you realise that those are really just kids, teenagers, dreaming of things like any kid in the world would, talking about the idea of friendship or whatever it is. Then you see those normal dreamers in the middle of this war and you see it killing their feelings” she continues.
The second production called ‘Bethlehem Calling’ took to the stage in Glasgow in January this year, showcasing the original diaries from 2000, and a new set written by girls in 2024 from the same school.
2024 diaries:
Selina Odah’s diary, March 6th 2024: “I still remember them watching us through the big kitchen window as we pretended to sleep. My grandma and my cousin were crying silently, too scared to make a sound. The Israeli soldiers said something in Hebrew, then finally left. It was terrifying.”
Zeina’s Diary, November 9th 2024: “Life in here means that even the simplest trips — like going to school — become filled with fear and uncertainty… As we were waiting to pass through a checkpoint, I saw something that really shook me. There was a man just ahead of us who only wanted to get to the other side. The soldiers stopped him, and for no reason I could understand, they forced him to take off his clothes. Right there, in front of everyone, as if his dignity didn’t matter at all. I could see how humiliated he felt, and I felt a mix of anger and sadness watching it happen.”
The show worked to amplify the Palestinian voice and, alongside the new diaries, highlight the same recurring situations from the 2000’s diaries, long before the October 7th attacks.
Raeda continues: “To see this now, and know it’s happening across Palestine every day, even though you don’t really get to see it because people can’t properly communicate, they just see the images.
“When you realise through these diaries that those are normal kids, normal people being killed and in the middle of wars, and then you realise that nothing has changed over the years. That’s why it’s so strong.
“It’s the idea that we need to hear this voice to imagine that they are, you know, real people, real life, not just a picture. That’s what art does, it puts us in front of it. It’s the ability to communicate in the moment. It’s the idea that you are in front of another human being, and you’re reacting there, and you get it, it’s a real thing.”
