Dark tourism and the obscenity of understanding

There is a disturbing trend of people traveling to the sadder places of the world: sites of military attacks, war zones and disasters.

Dark tourism is now a phenomenon, with its own website and dedicated tour guides. People visit these places to mourn or to remember and honor the dead. But sometimes they just want to look, and sometimes they want to delight in the pain of others.

Of course, people have long visited places like the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, the site of the Twin Towers destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, Robben Island Prison, where Nelson Mandela and others spent many years, and more recently, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. But there are more recent destinations, connected to active wars and aggression.

Since the Hamas military attacks of October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, celebrities and tourists have visited the related sites of the Nova music festival and the Nir Oz Kibbutz in Palestine/Israel.

The kibbutz tours, guided by former residents, allow people to view and be guided through houses of the dead, to be shown photographs and bullet holes. Sderot, the biggest city targeted by Hamas, is offering what it describes as “resilience tours”, connecting tourists with October 7 survivors.

Similar places are visited in Ukraine. The “popular” Donbas war tour, for instance, takes visitors to the front lines of the conflict and offers “a firsthand look at the impact of the war on the local population”, introducing them to displaced locals, soldiers and volunteer fighters. There’s also a Kiev tour, which takes in destroyed military equipment and what remains of missile strikes.

Solidarity tours

These tours have various names, but one Israeli company calls