Today's Dark Hour

Rain in the night but happily another chilly sunny morning. News from Gaza continues to be distressing, with the Israeli military ordering the evacuation of staff and patients, plus thousands of homeless people taking refuge in the grounds of a hospital, said to have the Hamas command and control centre concealed in a network of tunnels underground. It's impossible to respond to this, as the means to evacuate 400 sick people and thousands of refugees are insufficient in a ruined city. 

It seems Egypt is now expressing willingness co-operate with Israel in facilitating the faster flow of aid trucks into Gaza. This morning, 118 trucks are reported to have crossed over the past two weeks, it's a fraction of the daily passage of 500 trucks. It doesn't include fuel, so water pumps remain idle.

The UN and governments around the world are calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. The more this falls on deaf ears, the more the Israeli government will lose world sympathy and be accused of war crimes. More worrying is the increase of anti-semitic attacks in the UK and elsewhere. In the Russian Republic of Dagestan, a predominantly muslim country, a mob attacked an airliner, just landed, after social media reported it had Israeli citizens on board. It remains to be seen how Putin will deal with this in the light of nationalistic xenophobia stoked up by his regime since before the war with Ukraine.

Then, at the end of the lunchtime news, a fresh report of a video produced by Hamas of three hostages appealing to Netanyahu urgently to swap Palestinian prisoners for  hostages. It's a subject that has been under debate in Israel recently, so the captors are taking advantage of what is still a minority public opinion.

After breakfast I did the hoovering then worked on next week's Sway and sent out the Sunday readings. Then I recorded next week's Morning Prayer and Reflection before starting on lunch - a joint effort with Clare today. After we'd eaten I finished editing the audio files, ready for producing the video slideshow. Quite a productive time actually, until some display glitches were pointed out to me creating a problem that took me hours to resolve, before my afternoon walk. I went out so late it was dark when I reached the home stretch. The only compensation was seeing the moon rising in between the trees, with bright Jupiter seeming to race ahead above the horizon.

Cousin Dianne sent me a statement she'd received from Pat Mitchell, a women's peace movement activist in America. It was devised by a network of eminent persons; ex-heads of state and international agencies appealing for a just and equitable resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It's entitled 'Today's dark hour must be a catalyst for change' You can read it here.

I spent the evening uploading and editing photos and continuing to troubleshoot Sway. I got there in the end, but what a waste of time. Then I spent an hour reading the first chapter of Diana's new novel before turning in for the night.