The images coming out of Gaza and Israel on social media are horrifying – but we mustn’t look away

Videos from the conflict are so harrowing I flinch to view them, writes Alan Rusbridger. But I’m glad someone is there to bear witness to the horrors, and while they risk their lives to capture these images, it’s the least I can do to confront them

There are unspeakable horrors and atrocities on both sides of the conflict (Reuters)

Each morning I pick up my phone and flinch slightly before tentatively opening Instagram. Some weeks ago I decided I had to follow Motaz Azaiza, a 24-year-old photographer working on the ground in Gaza, where he lives. Some 15 million others have made the same decision, which probably makes Azaiza one of the most influential journalists in the world just now.

I’m pretty sure all 15 million of us flinch before we see Azaiza’s daily stream of images.

Here’s a young girl stuck under the rubble of her destroyed house after reportedly being bombed by Israeli warplanes. In a piece of pure chiaroscuro – you could be looking at a Caravaggio – a light illuminates her face. She is still alive, but her situation looks mortal. There’s no such heightened art in another: simply a woman’s arm protruding from a heap of rubble and dust. Or a video of a charred child, one leg missing, jerking his head near a roadside gutter.