Mark Kenny | The West weakening its own principles in Gaza

This is the justification for denying millions in one of the planet's most densely populated enclaves water, food, medicine and fuel, while raining a hellfire of 6000 missiles (its figure) killing civilians in the thousands - with worse to come.

At least the heartless zealots on both sides have one thing in common - contempt for a negotiated two-state arrangement to which previous more moderate leaderships had formally pledged.

In Israel, those zealots make up the right-wing Netanyahu government. In Gaza, it's Hamas.

Thirty years after the Oslo Accords licensed a limited form of self-government in Gaza and the West Bank, the idea of Israel and Palestine living side-by-side, remains both fanciful, and yet the only conceivable settlement.

The Accords (1993 and 1995) between the PLO's Yasser Arafat and Israel's PM Yitzhak Rabin, were a remarkable diplomatic achievement.

The Palestinians agreed to recognise Israel, forswear violence as a political tool, commit to negotiation, and comply with international resolutions.

The Israelis committed to recognising the PLO as the representative negotiating partner, to a staged withdrawal of from Palestinian territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) and to ceasing its extraterritorial settlements.

As an international facilitator/mediator under then president Bill Clinton, the US undertook to provide guarantees and accountability.

But then the crazies took over.

Israeli Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated in 1995. In the Gaza Strip, the suicide attacks began even before the Accords were signed. The late Arafat's Fatah party which still runs the ineffectual Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, was defeated in Gaza in elections in 2006 by Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya ("Islamic Resistance Movement"), AKA Hamas.

Since then, Israel has weathered endless suicide attacks in Jerusalem and other cities, and rockets emanating from Gaza - home to 2.2 million Palestinians and what some have estimated to be 500 kilometres of tunnels.

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Tel Aviv is right about Hamas. It should not exist because first, it is a ruthless death cult which murders for political effect, and second, because it is now as dangerous to Palestinians as the Israel Defence Forces.

Its grotesque assassination of around 1400 Israeli civilians on October 7 intentionally condemned more than two million residents of Gaza to lethal danger.

From this fact, it is no stretch to imagine it would blow up its own hospital in Gaza knowing the atrocity would be attributed to Israel regardless.

Who would believe Israel didn't fire the 6001st missile? Or that a church sheltering civilians that was hit two days ago (the oldest in Gaza dating back to the fifth century) was not also a deliberate Israeli target.

These are somebody's war crimes. That much is certain.

While such horrors explain emotional responses on both sides, they do not explain the West's green light to Tel Aviv to commit its own war crimes in retaliation.

In the immediate aftermath of the sickening Hamas attacks, Australian politicians and journalists competed to show who was the truest friend of Israel. Tel Aviv was encouraged to undertake any actions it deemed necessary to defend itself and avenge its fallen citizens.

Penny Wong, Australia's Foreign Minister came under ferocious media attack for urging restraint. Others lost their bearings entirely. Defence Minister Richard Marles branded Greens and independent support for an amendment condemning Israeli atrocities "completely despicable". There are many "despicable" things happening right now but this was not one of them.

Things like the "collective punishment" of civilians, and avoidable civilian casualties. Yet those citing these crimes are accused of siding with terrorists, condoning murder and kidnapping. Even anti-Semitism.

Beyond the obvious human disgust at Hamas' action, there are reasons why this occurs in relation to Israel. They include the centuries of discrimination, and violent pogroms against the Jews culminating in the Holocaust. And they include Israel's unique regional status as a liberal democracy with "shared values".

But another reason is the Israel lobby's success in turning senior political and defence journalists in Canberra into political class influencers. In recent years, many have travelled to Israel on all-expenses paid study tours. MPs also.

While there, they are given privileged access to the top levels of government, academia, and the security state. Briefings emphasise the frequency of attacks, the daily threat to citizens, and the array of hostile forces gathered on the tiny country's borders.

It is a powerful pitch. I should know, having done it myself in 2014. Participants are encouraged to view the conflict in all its dimensions as a moral binary. Inherently, Australians, Brits and Americans feel a quicker, readier connection with Israelis than with the Arab world with its mysterious rituals and shrouded women.

But what is the West as a worthwhile concept if not the immutable defence of the right to self-determination, the rule of law and the protection of international norms?

It is these very foundations upon which our vast expenditure is made to halt Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Yet in the Middle East, the toadying tone of US, British and Australian leaders debauches these values. We understand Israel's human pain but as Labor's Afghan-born first-term senator Fatima Payne said last week, "the price tag of Israel's right to defend itself cannot be the destruction of Palestine. Israel's right to defend its civilians cannot equate to the annihilation of Palestinian civilians."

Exactly.