If you read one story about the war in Gaza, make this one from the Atavist about Layan Albaz, a teenager who lost her friends, her family, and her legs to Israeli airstrikes, and her struggle to be fitted with prosthetics in the United States.

It’s a long read, and not light.

Lots to unpack, but as someone who’s worked in conflict zones in the name of doing good, this was…poignant.

We made a plan for the next day to accompany Layan to physical therapy. But when we arrived at the Assafs’ house in the morning, a crisis was unfolding. In an effort to plan ahead, Steve Sosebee had asked if a HEAL volunteer rather than Dina could take Layan to a medical appointment scheduled for a few days later. Layan was furious, and she refused to come downstairs. “Am I a product to be rented out to these people?” Layan screamed as Dina, remaining calm, stood in the kitchen filling a pink Stanley cup with water. “It’s my therapy. I don’t want strangers there.”

The conflict highlighted an uncomfortable reality that often comes with being a charity recipient. NGOs like HEAL rely on networks of volunteers and donors, people so eager to help a child who got out of Gaza that they’ll sometimes greet them at the airport with posters and balloons; they invite them to dinner, family events, theme parks. This in turn requires the kids to play a role: to smile, pose for photos, show gratitude.

Layan didn’t like strangers looking at her amputated legs. She didn’t want their pity. And she certainly wasn’t interested in having to glimpse their happy lives, untouched by war and loss.

Someone a lot smarter than me on these things has taught me this: "Help that doesn’t help isn’t help."

It’s many things: altruism, pity, a stab at empathy.

But it’s not help.

Help asks, “How can I support you?”

Instead, much of what we do to help others is more about helping ourselves to feel better about things that are too big for us to do anything about on our own.

So we turn to acts of charity to assuage our conscience in the name of doing good, when the only good we’re doing is for ourselves.