While Gaza writhes in agony, Middle East Peace Envoy Tony Blair’s private jet last week was in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Two months earlier Blair had certainly visited Las Vegas and Los Angeles on the same journey. In Las Vegas Blair was paid a large but undisclosed sum to attend a conference of hedge fund managers. His meetings in Los Angeles were “private”.

I have been unable to discover whether Blair was on his jet last week, or it was Cherie shopping or Alistair Campbell following up on the “business opportunities” for Blair from the July meetings. But he was not evidently in the Middle East. Just before the jet left for the USA he was in Britain hosting a lavish and deeply tasteless birthday party for his wife, two months before her birthday.

Yesterday the Guardian announced Blair’s new role as adviser to the Government of Azerbaijan, to add to the money he gets from advising Sisi of Egypt, Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, numerous Gulf despots and any other dictator who does not realise that the Blair brand has become even more toxic than their own.

Blair’s attendance at the July conference of hedge fund managers was appropriate, as they are the epitome of the heartless irresponsibility and short term financial outlook of the new capitalism which Blair so heartily embraced. His fellow guest speaker at that conference was Francis Ford Coppola. I went to bed last night mulling this article and the aptness of combination of Tony Blair and Apocalypse Now.

Then I woke up this morning to the news that after twenty years of peace fighting had broken out between Blair’s brand new client, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. The man really is cursed. Perhaps once you voluntarily brought so much war and terrible death, there is no way to stop. Apocalypse Blair. He should rename that private jet The Four Horsemen.

There is a concerted media ploy to change the narrative on the massacre of hundreds of women and children in Gaza, on the grounds that it is Hamas’ fault for breaking the ceasefire. The Israeli account of the ceasefire breakdown is parroted relentlessly.

I have put some effort into discovering why the ceasefire broke down, including contacting sources in Gaza itself. What is plain is that there were multiple incidents shortly after the ceasefire deadline, of violations by both sides. This is actually normal – such ceasefires usually take a few hours to take hold as fighting in hot progress and operations under way get stopped. At leasy eleven Palestinians were killed by shellfire in the first hour after the ceasefire.

The media has however focused solely on a single incident, that which featured missing Israeli Lieutenant Goldin. What appears to have happened here was that the Israelis were continuing with their destruction of tunnels, as the ceasefire provisions allowed. They came across a group of Palestinian fighters sheltered in the tunnels, and not surprisingly the Palestinian fighters did not interpret the ceasefire as meaning the Israelis could kill them but they were precluded from fighting. In the ensuing firefight some on both sides were killed and injured, while Lt. Goldin has disappeared.

Incidentally it is worth noting that my information is that Hamas’ statement that the incident was a deliberate ambush, and occurred before the ceasefire, is also untrue.

The Israelis immediately called in massive shellfire and missile attack. It is not improbable Goldin was killed or wounded in the firefight – or possibly just hiding – and he and his body destroyed by an Israeli shell or missile. It is a sad norm of warfare that sometimes there is no recognisable body.

Why we are supposed to be more concerned about Goldin than about the twenty Palestinian children who have been killed since he vanished, is beyond me. But you see, killing those children is now OK again, because Hamas broke the ceasefire. The media have a nice narrative mapped out for them – and boy, are they milking it.