The view that Israel is using disproportionate force against Hamas
is a misconception.
No way has yet been found to conduct even the most justified war without causing harm to innocent civilians.
During World War II, Royal Air Force bombers flattened entire German cities in response to Nazi bombing and rocket attacks against civilian targets in London and elsewhere. Most of the German dead, numbering in their tens of thousands, were civilians. Regrettably, on occasions the RAF's unintended victims included Allied prisoners of war.
Australian troops fighting in Vietnam, East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan have also sometimes caused more casualties among civilians than among the enemy. Yet nobody would have the right to call Australian troops murderers.
There is simply no such thing as a mistake-free war when it comes to avoiding civilian or "friendly fire" casualties.
To apply different, and much harsher, standards to Israeli forces engaged in putting an end to more than 8000 Hamas rocket attacks deliberately aimed at killing and maiming Israeli civilians, and which constitute a war crime, is therefore the height of hypocrisy.
Nearly a million Israelis live under the threat of being bombed. They get only 15 seconds' warning of an attack.
Israel's right to use force to defend and protect its citizens from armed attack is well recognised in international law. Its attempts to minimise civilian casualties among Gazans include targeting Hamas military infrastructure only and telephoning and leafleting civilians in combat zones before raids, even though Hamas also gets the benefit of these warnings.
Faced with rocket and mortar attacks against its own citizens, neither Australia nor any other country would expect its military forces to behave with any greater level of restraint.
Hamas's strategy of attacking Israeli civilians while using Palestinian civilians as human shields is directly responsible for the current suffering in Gaza.
Hamas deliberately locates its missile launchers, weapons factories, tunnels and arms caches in densely populated residential areas, schools, homes and even hospitals and mosques.
Indeed, Hamas legislator Fathi Hamad recently boasted on Al-Aksa TV: "Palestinians formed human shields of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It was as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death like you desire life.' "
