In despero veritas

If someone want to correct my Latin, by all means go ahead. I'm sure I got some gender or tense or some other mistake there.

But the fact here is that I have tried to step away from this, I have tried to think about, post about, other things, but I keep coming back to it - and I'm not sure how much more my heart, my soul, can take. I can't even go into analysis, pretty much just simply listing some items is as much as I can bear right now.

- A neighborhood free health clinic in Gaza City run by the Near East Council of Churches was destroyed by Israeli bombing on Saturday.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of medical equipment was destroyed by the strike. ...

Nobody was injured in the attack, in part because the clinic was closed.

The NECC said security concerns had forced it to close the clinic on Tuesday. ...

The clinic was completely destroyed in the attack, along with valuable medical equipment, including ultrasound machines, laboratory apparatus, and computers, which are not freely available in Gaza.

This one can't be chalked up to a "mistake," either: The building's owners got a phone call giving them 15 mintues to evacuate. Which means not only did the Israelis deliberately bomb a building clearly marked with the insignia of the Red Cross and which had ambulances parked outside, it means there can be no excuse of "we were receiving fire" unless you believe Israel makes a practice of giving people shooting at them 15 minutes' warning they were going to shoot back.

- A coalition of nine Israeli civil rights groups has declared there is "a heavy suspicion," that needs investigation, that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.

The groups spare no words, calling the level of deaths and injuries of civilians "unprecedented" and charging that "military forces are making wanton use of lethal force" that has resulted in the deaths of "hundreds of uninvolved civilians" and physical destruction "on an enormous scale." Chillingly, they say that

Israel is also hitting civilian objects, having defined them as "legitimate military targets" solely by virtue of their being "symbols of government."

Put more bluntly, in the Israeli government's view a "legitimate military target" is whatever the military targets.

- Israel has shelled UNRWA's central distribution facility in Gaza, setting buildings ablaze and threatening "hundreds of tons" of relief aid.

"This is a hub of the whole operation, the whole United Nations operation in Gaza, this is the hub, where it all comes to, gets distributed from,"

said John Ging, director of UNRWA in Gaza. As a result, the UN has had to suspend its operations in Gaza.

Ging charged that white phosphorus was used in the attack.

"It looks and smells like phosphorus and it's burning like phosphorus. That's all I can say. That's why I'm calling it phosphorus," said Ging.

Israeli officials earlier denied using white phosphorus, but by Monday, they would only say that ordnance used in Gaza is Israeli "in accordance with international law." It's legal to use white phosphorus as an "obscurant," that is, like a smoke bomb. I wonder what they were trying to obscure in this case.

After getting a furious protest from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Israeli officials offered semi-apologies: Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Ban the incident had been "a grave mistake," while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."

However, Olmert also insisted that "it is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place," which raises serious questions as to whether it really was a "mistake" or if the mistake was not anticipating the response. Particularly since in a later version of the story, Olmert was quoting as saying the militant fire was coming from near the compound, not in it. In either event,

Ging[, who was at the facility at the time,] denied there were any militants at the compound, and also said that at the time there was "no fighting in the vicinity of the compound."

- CARE International, said it too had been forced to suspend all deliveries of food and medical supplies due to heavy bombardment in and around its warehouses and distribution sites in Gaza City.

- The Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was bombed twice on Thursday. The first attack, in the morning, was a direct hit that set the second floor on fire and left 500 people "huddled on the ground floor ... in fear for their lives and choking on dust and fumes," according to the International Red Cross.

The second came about 10:30pm,

leaving the facility in flames and forcing the staff and patients to evacuate to the streets.

The IRC and the Red Crescent Society, which operated the hospital, issued "an unusually sharply-worded statement" calling the situation in Gaza

completely and utterly unacceptable based on every known standard of international law and universal humanitarian principles and values.

- At least one Palestinian Red Crescent warehouse with relief supplies was set on fire by Israeli shelling Thursday morning. The ICRC accused Israeli soldiers of firing on volunteers to keep them from putting out the fire.

- Finally for now and also on Thursday, Israeli forces shelled offices of international news agencies, according to the Foreign Press Association.

If you have any strength left, you might read this from Juan Cole. In fact, you might do well to read him regularly.