America’s stated military policy has always been to minimize civilian casualties. Last year, the Obama administration even went further by establishing a policy that required “near certainty” that there would be no civilian casualties before an air strike takes place.

Over the last few months, the U.S. has called upon Israel to follow the same policy. That is why you heard comments from the administration that the Israeli army was “not doing enough.” As someone traveling to Israel, I appreciate the fact that Israel did so much in the last few months to eliminate some of the threats from Hamas.

Alan Dershowitz was on my radio program recently to talk about his new book on the Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel’s Just War Against Hamas. He also wrote about some of this in his op-ed on “The Education of a Wartime President.” Both were a sobering reminder of the how Hamas fires rockers from densely populated areas and how they built these terror tunnels so they could attack Israeli citizens at will.

Alan Dershowitz explained that the Obama administration has begun to exempt itself from its “near certainty” standard in its fight against ISIS. While it is commendable that the administration wanted to try to meet the “highest standard” during an attack, the reality in the field suggests that may not be possible.

When Israel is fighting Hamas, they are fully aware that terrorists are using civilians as human shields. This puts the Israeli army in a difficult position. Either they attack a legitimate target or they avoid taking out a terrorist threat. The U.S. military sometimes faces a similar dilemma when fighting ISIS fighters embedded in villages.

Perhaps the best way to understand how this dilemma plays out is to remember the phrase by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said: “We use missiles to protect our people, they use people to protect their missiles.” We should do all we can to avoid civilian casualties, but we also need to understand the circumstances on the ground.