The Gaza Envelope Massacre

This was the day when up to 3000 Hamas operatives massacred 1400 Jews and others in the kibbutz villages and at a music festival in the area of the Gaza Envelope that lies adjacent to the Gaza Strip.

It was the worst loss of life in a single day since the founding of Israel in 1948 and the worst loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust .

Subsequent reports detailed the terrible acts of wanton violence, torture, and mutilation carried out on civilians - some of whom were babies and children. In addition Hamas operatives seized over 230 hostages - children, women and men and the old and infirm, the vast majority of whom were civilians.

They now are held captive in Gaza. Four have been released and one military hostage was freed by Israeli forces. One hostage has died or was killed whilst being abducted or whilst in captivity.

It appears that 1000 Hamas operatives immediately paid with their lives for this grievous atrocity as the Israeli Defence Force rushed troops to the area.

This was the day on which I temporarily stopped posting photos. It just seemed too awful to post photos of my banal life in the face of such horror and the further horror that was inevitably to come as Israel ferociously launched its right to self defence against Hamas.

The subsequent blockade of fuel, food and most (95%) water, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and the massive air bombardment and the destruction of 10% of the buildings in the Gaza Strip has cost and continues to cost the 2.3 million people living in the Gaza Strip dearly.

The Financial Times, in a leader comment published today that calls for a ‘humanitarian ceasefire’, states that 8,000 people in Gaza - of whom 3,000 are children - have been killed by the three-week bombardment.

Israel’s ground offensive has been launched as the bombardment continues and the most awful catastrophe upon the initial catastrophe of the Hamas atrocity is unfolding before our eyes. This may or may not be accompanied by an escalation of the conflict across the Middle East.

I feel that I can only go on documenting the days of my banal and safe life if I acknowledge the magnitude, the horror and the agony of the massacre carried out by Hamas and the subsequent and daily increasing counter massacre of innocent lives in Gaza by Israeli forces, whether within or outwith, as many now argue, the international laws of war as they stand.

On that basis I have decided, as they say in the parlance, to backblip photos that I took on 7th October and subsequent days within the bounds of Blipfoto’s principles.

It is fearfully difficult to write about this stuff, to try and be balanced and hold the two sides of a growing tragedy.

And then the news of the massive bombing by the IDF of the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City comes in and I just want to scream.

(The photo, taken on 7th October, is of a stone in the wall of our house.)

Written and on October 31st. Posted on November 1st.