As the death toll rises and media is filled with reports from Gaza, I wanted to talk to someone from there to get a personal view of Israeli attacks. I have never been there myself, and even if I did, in this moment it wouldn’t really matter. How can I portray the grief and sorrow from a war zone when I don’t have family or friends there myself?

On Facebook I have a few friends from Gaza – all of them are outside – and their updates were filed with anger and sorrow. The ones who lost friends published photos of them, the kind of status you should never have to make.

I e-mailed my acquaintances and asked if anyone wanted to tell me their feelings or a comment on the situation. Normally people are happy to give their statements and I sometimes get contacted by people who want me to blog about something they find unjust or important. My last blog post has been shared around 200 times on Facebook already, so I was expecting someone to want to share their view.

But no one wanted to. One friend who usually is very vocal and passionately speaks about the cause of Gaza, replied and told me that he didn’t want to, because he had nothing to say. It was just too terrible to him. I suddenly felt stupid having asked for a comment when the people I asked all were in the middle of a crisis, when they spend all their time worrying about relatives and friends, dreading a call from home saying they had lost a loved one.

Being from Gaza must be a burden in itself. War in other countries usually has a beginning and an end – but for Gaza it’s a never ending story. I wish I hadn’t been that pushy, not thinking about what the persons I asked went through. It’s easy when you’re from the outside, looking in. Not the one being from Gaza himself.