Israel-Hamas conflict: 'It's just bad news, in hammer blows' for Yorkshire communities fearful for friends and family caught up in war

For Leeds North East MP Fabian Hamilton it’s his mother’s cousin. There was a text to say the family is safe, but scared. They have been hiding in the safe room sometimes.

And barrister Simon Myerson KC, who went to school with two of those shot dead. His daughters are safe, he said. They are both preparing for funerals.

One Israeli family living in Leeds, he added quietly, has seven members held hostage in Gaza.

“Shock, I think, is the only way I can describe it,” said Mr Myerson, chair of the Leeds Jewish Representative Council. “Everything started to filter through slowly. We had this huge period of waiting. Then it’s just bad news, in hammer blows.”

Across Yorkshire, families have been struck stunned at the scale of Saturday’s attack. The bloodiest day in Israel’s history.

Leeds’ Jewish community is among the biggest in Britain. Everybody, said Mr Myerson, is numb.

“I think I’m a pretty resilient person,” he said. “I don’t think I have ever experienced anything quite like this. Our hope is now we are through the worst of it. But then I find it astonishing that I’m even saying that, with 1,200 dead in an absolute atrocity.”

Mr Myerson was among community leaders who organised a vigil on Wednesday evening, drawing a crowd some 2,000 strong.

Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn, opening speeches, spoke of his hope for peace in the Middle East. And he spoke of his sorrow at the loss of life, with young people gunned down as they tried to flee.

“At a moment like this all of us stand together in solidarity,” he said.

And MP Fabian Hamilton, who has family that emigrated some years ago. There is a strength of feeling, he said, that is huge and worrying.

“What I find hard to digest, if this was any other country, or any other faith, the world would be rising up,” he said. “This is not acceptable.

"There’s no excuse, no reason or justification, for this murder. And that’s what it is - the murder of innocent people. We have got to stop this violence.”

Such terrors abroad strike closer to home when there are loved ones to fear for. Some echoes of tension have rippled over the region this week, to a heightened anxiety.

On Tuesday evening the Israeli flag was torn down from the roof of Sheffield Town Hall. It was replaced with the Palestinian flag, to cheers from those gathered below.

Council leader Tom Hunt was unequivocal: “This is not what we stand for”. And now as each new day dawns, a brutal truth hangs over this mourning call.

Above politics, above history and religion, what hurts is the fear and the worry.

There are British-Palestinians, terrified for loved ones now facing threat of a brutal siege. Then British Israelis, still reeling from the shock and the loss.

Mohammed Awad’s entire family live in northern Gaza. The atmosphere, they tell him, is “full of the terrors of war”.

They have one hour of electricity a day, and are fasting as they have little access to food.

Mr Awad, an English teacher from Cambridge, said he was “terrified”, adding: “I don’t eat or sleep for days now. I cannot control my emotions.”

And Ahmed, an IT consultant who did not wish to share his full name, whose family lives in southern Gaza. He checks his Facebook feed often, making sure there is no news to say they are dead.

He distanced the Palestinian people from the actions of Hamas militants.

“There are lots of civilians who have nothing to do with what’s going on and simply want to live,” he said.

“It’s like taking one single brush and colouring two million people with one single colour because of the actions done by a few people.

“We are all human beings and we all have the same rights.”

Qari Asim, Imam at Leeds’ Makkah Mosque, said he is praying for the violence to end.

The loss of life is “horrific”, he said, the indiscriminate killing of civilians to be “utterly condemned”.

The tragedy, he added, “challenges our sense of humanity to the core”.

With every life shattered in the Middle East, there are communities in the UK that are fearful for family and friends in Gaza and Israel.

The violence there must not be imported into the UK, he implored.

“It is essential that the international community comes together to deescalate the dreadful situation in Gaza-Israel before more lives are lost,” he said.

“I urge restraint on all sides, and renewed efforts towards a credible, peaceful and sustainable solution to this seven decades long ongoing destructive conflict.”