Israeli soldiers of the 155mm artillery cannons unit fire towards the Gaza Strip from their position near Israel's border with the coastal Palestinian enclave, on July 21, 2014.  [Xinhua photo]

Israel's war on Gaza is unjust, because it violates the fundamental principles of a just war: it is horrendously disproportionate and it targets civilians.

It is also illegal, because it violates the Geneva Convention as it metes out "collective punishment" and violates the principles of "necessity and proportionality."

The clear evidence of collective punishment is that 1,000 homes have been destroyed and some 85 percent of the casualties are civilians, including many women and children. According to the UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, one child is killed every hour.

Unlike Hamas' crude rockets, which caused no casualties, Israel's massive bombing, missiles and artillery fire are reducing large sections of Gaza to rubble. Even British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called the Israeli attack a "deliberately disproportionate form of collective punishment."

Another egregious crime is Israel's attack on Al-Aqsa Hospital, not once but four times. The latest shelling killed four and wounded seventy, most of them medical personnel.

According to international law, the Palestinians are a protected civilian population under occupation. The Netanyahu government blatantly denies that Israelis are occupiers of Gaza, claiming that Israeli soldiers and settlers had withdrawn from Gaza in 2005. But there is no denying that they remain in firm control of Gaza strip. Gaza's air, land and sea access to the outside world is under strict and severe Israeli control.