Yes and, as I said, they've carried on longer than I think they should have. I feel incredibly sorry for the innocent Palestinians who never voted for Hamas and who never took part in the violence. Honestly, I feel sorry for majority of them, who voted for Hamas and sympathised with the violence too - it would be hard not to feel sad for people who are suffering, no matter what they've done in the past.
Nevertheless, there's a significant moral difference between the military response from Israel and the terrorism from Hamas. Hamas has bombed Israel most days for years. Palestine refused any settlement (wasn't it Arafat who said it wasn't enough to have all the territory they were fighting for - they wanted nothing short of Israel wiped off the map). I think there comes a time when responding to repeated attacks by attacking your attacker becomes self-defence. They're only going to be safe if Hamas is destroyed. I don't agree with the degree of the response but it isn't without some justification - I see it much like a woman who eventually snaps and murders her abusive partner, or who incapacitates her rapist but then carries on injuring them until they're pretty much dead. Neither response is truly proportional or morally right, but they're understandable.
But there's a much bigger difference - the difference of the nature of the violence. Israel gave warnings, allowed in food and medicine, targeted buildings and places where they had reason to believe Hamas was hiding out, and kept prisoners in humane conditions. Too many innocent people have been killed or maimed by the bombs - some of them were deliberately put in harm's way by Hamas; others were not. Some prisoners have been terribly treated over the years, but it hasn't been a policy or even systematic.
Hamas revelled in violence, rape, and torture. They systematically targeted civilians rather than soldiers or politicians, and they systematically targeted families, the elderly, children and babies. They mocked, raped, tortured, maimed, killed their victims and repeatedly captured it on film, boasting about it and further increasing their families' pain. And it's significant that none of the Muslim countries in the area welcome in Gazan refugees. They may be Israel's enemies, but they don't want such sadistically violent men in their countries.
I can't imagine the pain of having my child blown up by a foreign army and my home destroyed. But I'd rather my child be killed in a bomb, than that they be gang-raped, tortured and brutalized before being murdered.