Karim
Ben Khelifa

There is something obscene in the way we consume war now.

It arrives not with the weight of history or the stench of blood,
but as a fleeting image on a screen.

Compressed between an influencer’s breakfast
and an ad for the latest electric car.

The crying child in a cratered street.
The severed limb in the rubble.
The dust cloud hanging like a ghost.

All of it is real.
The camera does not lie.
But the camera cannot speak.

What it captures is stripped of its context.
Violence, without memory.
Suffering, without history.

The viewer scrolls on.

The missile strike dissolves into a meme.
The tragedy fades behind a tap.

We are living through a collapse of moral proportion.
War and comedy. Atrocity and lifestyle tips.
Carnage and celebrity news.

All of it delivered in the same feed.
All of it treated the same.

Even the legacy media now trades in euphemism.
“Surgical intervention.”
“Kinetic action.”
“Targeted neutralization.”

Words chosen not to disturb.
Not to offend. Not to feel.

This detachment is not neutral.
It shapes opinion. It shields us from guilt.
It makes war seem manageable.

And a war that is not felt is a war we can ignore.

The tragedy is real for those who endure it.
But unreal for those who consume it.
Filtered. Softened. Suspended between spectacle and fact.

Yet anyone who has stood where the camera stands
knows how violently the screen is void of meaning.

As a conflict photographer, I have been there.
I have heard the aftermath of shelling at dawn.
It still vibrates in my ribs.
I smelled the bitterness of torn steel.
Of melted plastic. Of burning flesh.

I have seen a father kiss a scorched plank of wood.
That once was the door to his child’s room.

In my work, I try to tear through that veil.
Not to show war, but to make it present.
Not to trigger emotion, but to restore agency.

Because war has many dimensions.
And unless we find ways to feel what we cannot see,
we become numb to the horrors,
untouched by the very catastrophes we allow to continue.