Every blogger, every tweeter, every facebooker is sounding off at maximum volume and at increased frequency. Emergency updates are pouring in, irregular newsletters are arriving daily, donations are being requested.
It was all started by Hamas of course. Or was it all deliberately provoked by Israel? I am sent competing timelines for who did what and when.
Israel holds its breath in fear. Gaza life goes on hold.
I've been invited to attend demonstrations in solidarity with Israel at this grave hour. I've been invited to attend demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians, also at this grave hour. Usually they are in the same place and at the same time. However, none of them are being held in Kendal, Cumbria.
I later receive reports about said demonstrations. On one side of the road they shout: "Long live Israel" and sing the British and Israeli national anthems. And on the other side of the road it's: "No Justice, no Peace, Israel out of the Middle East."
I'm hearing firsthand accounts from air-raid shelters in Gaza City and from Tel Aviv.
I'm being told by the professional polemicists that Israel is facing Jew hatred on a genocidal scale with Jihadists armed to the teeth by Iran. I'm also being told that Palestinians are facing another massacre at the hands of the Zionist army, for this is Operation Cast Lead "part 2".
Plenty are saying that this is Netanyahu's re-election campaign. Stoke up fear, side line economic and social issues, put the threat of terror centre stage, the country always rallies around the government at such moments of crisis.
But is such cynical behaviour really credible? I suppose plenty have done just this throughout history.
Others point at how patient the Israelis have been to tolerate missile attacks from Gaza week after week. What country could stand back and let its citizens be attacked like this?
Gaza is burning and my inbox is full of noise.
And what of the assassinated Hamas leader, Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas' military wing? Either he was a militant, a leader of terror and the mastermind behind Gilad Shalit's hostage taking, or he was a pragmatist willing to broker cease fires at the very moment he was killed...the victim of Netanyahu's political expediency.
And then there's more...there's always more!
Actually, I am assured, it's all about stopping the Palestinians in their tracks from their bid to win upgraded observer status at the United Nations General Assembly at the end of the month. Or is it just about telling President Obama that his re-election victory (despite being supported by 70% of US Jews) will change nothing when it comes to trying to push Israel into genuine talks on a two state solution.
I have decided that it is possible to be 'over informed'.
In fact I am tempted to switch off the war of words being played out across the screen of my ipad, as I travel back and forth by train from Kendal to Manchester each day. I fear my ethical sensibility is in danger of being caught in the electronic cross-fire.
Gaza is burning and my inbox is full of noise.
But then I touched one more hyper-link and the moral mist began to clear.
A letter of 'support' and 'solidarity' to His Excellency, Daniel Taub, the Israeli Ambassador to the Court of St James, signed jointly by everyone who is anyone in the UK Jewish establishment. You can read the whole thing here and view all of the signatories on the Jewish Leadership Council website. Here's an extract though:
Over the past decade we have rallied together in support of Israel under the banner of ‘Yes to Peace, No to Terror and No to Hamas’. The current Operation Pillar of Defence is an entirely understandable response to the intolerable assault upon the citizens of Southern Israel and the continued provocations of Hamas – an antisemitic terrorist organisation.
We take pride in the commitment of Israel’s political and military leadership to leave no stone unturned in seeking to avoid civilian casualties and remain true to the Jewish ethical ethos that underpins the doctrine of the IDF.
No nuance. No subtlety. No history. No context.
One side (ours) is totally innocent. The other side (theirs) are nothing more than anti-Semitic terrorists whose only motivation is pathological hatred. Our response is 'entirelly understanable' while their behaviour is totally incomprehensible.
Nothing conflicted in their inbox, that's for sure.
So where exactly is the reconciliation strategy? Where is the pursuit of justice? Where are the negotiation skills? Where is the greater vision?
And where, dear God, are the universal Jewish ethics I was taught by these very same Jewish institutions?
Why is there such a catastrophic mismatch between Jewish teaching and Jewish behaviour when it comes to actions by the State of Israel?
This is the same IDF that allowed 318 children to be killed in three weeks of bombardment of Gaza in 2008/9. This is the same Israel that has blockaded air, land and sea around Gaza since 2005 destroying any chance of a normal economy developing and undermining any remaining social cohesion. This is the same Israel that condemns 'unilateral action' by Palestinians at the United Nations while unilaterally announcing expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the same month.
Gaza is in conflict with a powerful neighbour which is armed with the most sophisticated military hardware on the planet and a highly trained army and airforce. However, the slightest use of force against the Israelis plays into their hands allowing the narrative of illegitimate terror verses legitimate defence to continue to be played out. But I cannot accept that Gaza's force is always immoral while Israel's is always just.
The UK Jewish establishment is once again failing itself, the Jews it claims to represent and indeed the best interests of Israelis. They have once again climbed to a giddy height of denial about the role Israel has played, and is playing, in the decades long oppression of the Palestinian people.
By 'circling the wagons' and refusing to express the slightest independence from Jerusalem's hard line, our 'leadership' is ripping to shreds three thousand years of Jewish ethical tradition because all that matters is to demonstrate 'solidarity' and 'support'.
As I've said many times on this blog, if there had been less 'solidarity' and less 'support' coming from the Jewish diaspora over the last forty years, I doubt Israel would be the pariah state it has become in the eyes of most of the world.
So, rather than writing letters such as this to the Israeli Ambassador, I would recommend that our leadership learns to become more conflicted and more confused. It's a much healthier state of mind. And I strongly suspect it would reflect the thinking of far more UK Jews than they would ever care to admit.
Gaza is burning and my inbox is full of noise. And thank God for that noise.
In the meantime, can we all remember that narrow Jewish nationalism is not the core message from Judaism's heritage. The prophetic vision we should be hanging onto is this:
"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4