Did you miss me? I traveled to Cuba on a reporting trip. Given my limited internet access while away, Plug-in took last week off.

That means this is our first edition since the Israel-Hamas war started.

What an overwhelming story with countless religious angles. But I’ll do my best to catch you — and me — up.

The latest: a blast on the campus of the historic St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City, where scores of Palestinian families had been sheltering from Israeli air strikes. The omnipresent Clemente Lisi has the details.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start, of course, with the deadly conflict in the Middle East.

What To Know: The Big Story

‘Blood libel’: “The heated discourse about the deadly rocket explosion near Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the southern Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun on Tuesday is rooted in the centuries-old religious hatred underlying the current war in Gaza.”

That’s the lede from Gil Zohar, reporting from Jerusalem for ReligionUnplugged.

The blast occurred at Gaza’s only Christian hospital, reported Christianity Today’s Morgan Lee.

The why: Hamas is selling its assault on Israel as a holy war, as Religion News Service’s Michelle Chabin and Yonat Shimron detail:

When Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian terrorist group, stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, took over military bases, massacred more than 1,300 Israelis — most of them civilians — and kidnapped 150, it dubbed its military operation the “Al-Aqsa Deluge.”