EDITORIAL - Perverse morality in Gaza

There is something deeply perverse about Israel's latest military operation in Gaza. And its immorality is worsened by the permissiveness of the Jewish state's critical sponsor, the United States, and that country's president, Barack Obama.

So far, the Israelis have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and wounded perhaps another 8,000. Around 80 per cent of the Palestinian casualties are deemed to have been non-combatants, including the 15 children killed by Israeli bombs on Wednesday while sheltering in a United Nations-run school that housed around 3,000 refugees. Fifty-three of Israel's soldiers have died in the fighting, as have three civilians.

Ostensibly, Israel's mission is to put an end to the ability of the militant group, Hamas, to fire its missiles - the vast majority of which are intercepted before they reach their targets - into its cities. This also includes demolishing tunnels used by Hamas to cross the border into Israel to mount attacks and to smuggle supplies and material into Gaza.

But there is a bit of context absent from the prescribed narrative of good Israel defending its citizens from Hamas terrorists. Israel possesses among the world's best-trained, best-armed and most technologically sophisticated military machines, thanks primarily to its American benefactor. Gaza is a narrow strip of land, 23 miles long and no more than seven miles wide, into which is packed nearly two million people. It is among the most densely populated areas in the world.

There are not too many places to run to in Gaza to escape bombing from aircraft and tanks, even if neighbourhoods are warned of pending attacks, and especially when your place of refuge, whether it is a hospital or school, may be the next target. Further, for eight years, Gaza has been subjected to an Israeli blockade, its borders closed, with little being able to go in or out.

The circumstances are not quite the same, but no one could be faulted if they saw in Gaza certain parallels with a Warsaw ghetto, and if Israel is warned to heed the blinking lights, which, if ignored, could lead to a moral Belzec or Treblinka. Indeed, it is in the context of this moral conundrum that many people will hear echoes of the voice of Pierre Khrahenbuhl, the head of the UN Agency for Palestine.

He warned after Wednesday's incident: "Children killed in their sleep is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today, the world stands disgraced."

The governments of Chile, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador have heard. They have withdrawn their ambassadors from Tel Aviv in protests against Benjamin Netanyahu's continued action in Gaza. The United States has not. It makes tepid statements. President Obama sees no irony between his stand on the assault on Gaza and his economic sanctions against Russia and his sanctimonious lecturing of President Putin for Moscow's support of rebels in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

Not too many people outside Gaza support Hamas, and there are fewer still who do not support Israel's right to exist. But most feel that Israel's borders must be those that existed before the 1967 war and in accordance with appropriate United Nations resolutions. Further, Israelis should understand what amounts to collective punishment, which should make them disinclined to inflict it on other people.

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