The intentional killing of civilians, where civilians are the target is a war crime. So Hamas committed war crimes in the October 7 attack. The random killing of an identical number of civilians by Israel as retaliation would also be a war crime. The killing of civilians is always a war crime other than where it is incidentally unavoidable and proportional in the context of a necessary military objective of the war. There will always be subjectivity in this area. Is it proportional to kill a senior Hamas Commander, if to kill him would require also killing 25 children in his immediate vicinity? This is not particularly different to the undefined "reasonable" person/action which is an ordinary feature of our domestic law.
