Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s recent criticism of Israel put me in mind of the wise words of legendary Soviet Union human rights dissident Natan Sharansky, who referred to the concept of “3D antisemitism” consisting of “demonisation, delegitimisation and double standards”. These elements are in play with the repeated dark aspersions by the Australian government in equating Israel with Russia and China when it comes to the question of abiding by international law.

In the course of a long career in the army, including deployments in Somalia, Bosnia, Timor-Leste and a year in Iraq, and while managing the Middle East, United Nations and NATO desk in strategy group as a colonel, I acquired a deep level of experience in geopolitical dynamics – and Middle East realities in particular. I also became very familiar with the practical application of the laws of armed conflict, which led me to complete a related PhD. This was built upon by my subsequent 13 years in politics, including as Labor minister for defence materiel, on the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, and as national security adviser to Bill Shorten when he was opposition leader.

This experience leads me to assert that the true imperialists in the Middle East are Russia and Iran. It is they who have repressed the people of Syria and Lebanon and enabled unbridled aggression, terrorism and death throughout the region. In Syria, about 500,000 civilians have been killed in the course of the fighting over many years, including by use since 2013 of chemical weapons and barrel bombs containing sarin and chlorine gas provided by Russia, and by deployment of sarin and chlorine gas, causing agonising deaths. Russia vetoed action to eliminate these weapons in the UN Security Council.

These malign actors are waging an unrelenting information war against liberal democracies, including through UN mechanisms and agencies, and we are haplessly going along with this.

Israel is fighting an existential war of self-defence against a phalanx of evil actors who have assailed it every single day since October 7 last year. The Australian government must acknowledge that we would not have been able to conduct this war any differently, as evidenced by the fact that the Labor shadow national security team, including the current foreign affairs and defence ministers, signed off on the war against Islamic State and the siege of Mosul in particular. From October 2016 to July 2017 in Mosul, the Australian Defence Force, as part of a coalition effort, employed the same military tactics and generated the same level of casualties and damage that we have seen in Gaza.

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The current war, initiated by Iran and its proxies, has without doubt produced great suffering, destruction and loss of life in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel. In evaluating this horror in terms of the laws of armed conflict, Israel’s methods have to be viewed in the context of its fight for survival. This is the “military necessity” and “direct military advantage” underpinning its operations. Israel is half the size of my former electorate of Eden Monaro. It has no strategic depth or margin for error and faces threats emanating from multiple sources and directions. To put this in perspective, in 1994 the International Court of Justice refused to rule as unlawful the use of nuclear weapons in an existential situation for a state.

I suggest we try this thought exercise in a proportional analogy for Australia, translating relative per head and geographic impact. What if we had endured 18 years of a barrage of tens of thousands of rockets, missiles and drones unleashed by enemies whose avowed aim is the total destruction of our country and the death of all our people? What if we were then invaded by a large formation of heavily armed terrorists who raped, sexually mutilated and murdered more than 3000 of our men, women and children, including the elderly and disabled (more than 1200 died in the October 7 attack on Israel), and took hostage more than 750 of our people?

What if we were forced to evacuate Queensland and Victoria and force all those people to huddle between Sydney and Wollongong while we endured daily indiscriminate and constant bombardment for a year? What do we imagine would be the public and media response to this? How do we imagine we would have been forced to respond to such a threat?